Intel Arc Alchemist Reference Boards Offered to Partners

[Uskompuf]

Intel Senior VP and GM of Graphics Group, Raja Koduri has recently been interviewed by Japanese site ASCII where he revealed some new details about the companies upcoming Arc Alchemist gaming graphics cards. The cards will be manufactured on the TSMC N6 process instead of Intel's 7 node due to limited capacity however he did confirm that future cards could be manufactured directly by Intel. Raja also confirmed that Intel was currently offering reference boards to their partners to develop custom Arc Alchemist cards. This reference board is likely the same one we saw in early leaks from Moore's Law is Dead and the design featured by Intel in their promotional videos. The board partners may use the same cooler design in their cards or create semi-custom solutions.

Partners and I think there will be a differentiation of ODM, and that will lead to the ultimate customer interest

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[Steevo]

So, reviews yet? Raj is already talking about manufacturing on Intel nodes that don’t exist, much like this product.
Where is the proof, much less the pudding?

 

[EzioAs]

So, reviews yet? Raj is already talking about manufacturing on Intel nodes that don’t exist, much like this product.
Where is the proof, much less the pudding?

...what?

They're slated to launch next year and you're complaining that there are no reviews out?

 

[Tomorrow]

Well good luck with that. With TSMC bogged down Intel's cards will not be any more available or MSRP priced that Nvidia and AMD cards are riight now. Not to mention that both AMD APU's and consoles are supposed to move to N6 too.

 

[Tardian]

What is the firmware for vapourware?

 

[eidairaman1]

So, reviews yet? Raj is already talking about manufacturing on Intel nodes that don’t exist, much like this product.
Where is the proof, much less the pudding?

Fugly sample to boot

What is the firmware for vapourware?

It does not compute

Well good luck with that. With TSMC bogged down Intel's cards will not be any more available or MSRP priced that Nvidia and AMD cards are riight now. Not to mention that both AMD APU's and consoles are supposed to move to N6 too.

Bet APUs will trounce Raja.

...what?

They're slated to launch next year and you're complaining that there are no reviews out?

By the time intel gets these out AMD and ngreedia will have new parts out.

 

[EzioAs]

By the time intel gets these out AMD and ngreedia will have new parts out.

Your point being...?

 

[Crackong]

Reference "boards" not reference "cards" ?
Could be just bare PCB with layout and traces.

More hype, more disappointment.

 

[ixi]

Fugly sample to boot


It does not compute


Bet APUs will trounce Raja.


By the time intel gets these out AMD and ngreedia will have new parts out.

If everything comes out as planned for now. Intel release will be next year start ehile amd and nvidia at the end of the next year.

This is the reason why I ordered msi 3060 ti gaming z trio for 600e...

 

[eidairaman1]

Your point being...?

That intel will already be behind architechurally.

Remember Raja is a AMD leftover that was fired due to the handling of Vega and his lying.

PowerVR/Imagination Technologies has a better chance at competing against both AMD and ngreedia if they were to release a X86 discreet GPU.

 

[watzupken]

That intel will already be behind architechurally.

Remember Raja is a AMD leftover that was fired due to the handling of Vega and his lying.

First point, I agree. By next year, both AMD and Nvidia should be ready to announce their next gen GPUs if the rumours are true. So releasing a new GPU that matches say a RX 6700 XT and RTX 3070 is not going to go far. They may sell well at the start since the shortage is still bad, but post that, they either have to compete on price, or end up stuck with unsold GPUs.

For point 2, is this fact or just speculation? I've not recalled reading anything about this. I am no fan of Raja and his beat around the bush method to try and minimise disappointment, but to his defence, AMD likely don't have a lot of budget for him at that point in time for the development of Vega. I recall AMD was at the brink of bankruptcy. Budget is less of an issue over at Intel (though he don't have infinite resources). If the product is on point with the target performance, I think Intel/ Raja have done pretty well for their first GPU. Just that the release timeline is quite late, so back to point 1.

 

[Patriot]

First point, I agree. By next year, both AMD and Nvidia should be ready to announce their next gen GPUs if the rumours are true. So releasing a new GPU that matches say a RX 6700 XT and RTX 3070 is not going to go far. They may sell well at the start since the shortage is still bad, but post that, they either have to compete on price, or end up stuck with unsold GPUs.

For point 2, is this fact or just speculation? I've not recalled reading anything about this. I am no fan of Raja and his beat around the bush method to try and minimise disappointment, but to his defence, AMD likely don't have a lot of budget for him at that point in time for the development of Vega. I recall AMD was at the brink of bankruptcy. Budget is less of an issue over at Intel (though he don't have infinite resources). If the product is on point with the target performance, I think Intel/ Raja have done pretty well for their first GPU. Just that the release timeline is quite late, so back to point 1.

He went on sabbatical immediately following Vega launch.... https://www.anandtech.com/show/11836/raja-koduri-sabbatical

And never returned.... Joined intel a month after going on a 3mo. sabbatical.

 

[olymind1]

Well good luck with that. With TSMC bogged down Intel's cards will not be any more available or MSRP priced that Nvidia and AMD cards are riight now. Not to mention that both AMD APU's and consoles are supposed to move to N6 too.

I was hoping too that they would make their GPUs in their own factories, so there would be more cards available worldwide, but they are using TSMC, like they don't know that they have limited capacity. So much for the cheap intel graphics cards.

Remember Raja is a AMD leftover that was fired due to the handling of Vega and his lying.

Didn't he also design the NAVI/RDNA architecture too? Or lead the team making it?

 

[ZoneDymo]

really sad that they dont make something on their easy well established 14nm+++++++ tbh because then they might actually be able to do something to shake up the status quo.
going to tsmc like everyone else just means we will get another overpriced product.

 

[watzupken]

He went on sabbatical immediately following Vega launch.... https://www.anandtech.com/show/11836/raja-koduri-sabbatical

And never returned.... Joined intel a month after going on a 3mo. sabbatical.

Yes, but that itself is not proof that he got fired. Perhaps he took sabbatical leave with intention to jump ship to Intel. I am pretty sure for the role that he got at Intel and the position he held at AMD, it is not something that you interview, resign and join all in a month or 2 timeline.

Didn't he also design the NAVI/RDNA architecture too? Or lead the team making it?

I think he may have a hand in the design of RDNA since GPUs normally take many years to develop. Given that AMD don't have that much budget for R&D work back when Vega was released, I don't believe they will throw the design away and start RDNA design from scratch. But there could be significant changes made after he left. Just my speculation.

 

[Vya Domus]

Hard to believe, usually the likes of AMD and Nvidia usually deliver reference boards a couple of weeks before launch but Intel for some reason did it months before release ? Yeah, I'm not buying it.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I was hoping too that they would make their GPUs in their own factories, so there would be more cards available worldwide, but they are using TSMC, like they don't know that they have limited capacity. So much for the cheap intel graphics cards.

It's a real shame. It would have been a decent use of their 14nm node now that CPUs are moving to 10nm, and honestly if it were price competitive I think enough people would have tried it. Making another GPU at TSMC is a waste of time.

Didn't he also design the NAVI/RDNA architecture too? Or lead the team making it?

Technically yes, but in reality the majority of the work done to rDNA was done after he left. Once Raja took off members of the Zen architecture team were brought in to lead the team that made rDNA. rDNA was still in the earliest design stages when raja left.

His real claim to fame was polaris,w hich was compettive, but instead of scaling it up he went with the 3DFX strategy and vega was the result. The zen led team did finally manage to get vega to a point where it is an efficient iGPU design, but it took years. If he'd just scaled up polaris to meet at least the 1070 he wouldnt have earned the reputation he did....

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

...what?

They're slated to launch next year and you're complaining that there are no reviews out?

Well we have been hearing about them they're entire pre built life FFS.

They're setting themselves up for a driver fail fall, with quite the hype train.

 

[Operandi]

It's a real shame. It would have been a decent use of their 14nm node now that CPUs are moving to 10nm, and honestly if it were price competitive I think enough people would have tried it. Making another GPU at TSMC is a waste of time.

Technically yes, but in reality the majority of the work done to rDNA was done after he left. Once Raja took off members of the Zen architecture team were brought in to lead the team that made rDNA. rDNA was still in the earliest design stages when raja left.

His real claim to fame was polaris,w hich was compettive, but instead of scaling it up he went with the 3DFX strategy and vega was the result. The zen led team did finally manage to get vega to a point where it is an efficient iGPU design, but it took years. If he'd just scaled up polaris to meet at least the 1070 he wouldnt have earned the reputation he did....

Different nodes have different design constraints and 14nm has no future. So yeah they could have made a short lived 14nm GPU on their own node but it would have been a waste of time and effort to design a chip on a node with no future, and presumably what they design for TSMC 6nm is at least somewhat applicable to their own 10nm and 7nm nodes so at least some of the engeineering work and lessons leaned would carry over. Not to mention the disadvantage of building 14nm GPU dies vs. what your competition is doing with 7 and 8nm in terms of production cost and the resulting embarrassingly high power consumption that would be associated.

Given time frames of when Vega came out and how long architectures take to develop RDNA design work would have been pretty much 100% done so it would stand to reason that Raja would have seen that through from start to finish as well from a design perspective.

 

[eidairaman1]

First point, I agree. By next year, both AMD and Nvidia should be ready to announce their next gen GPUs if the rumours are true. So releasing a new GPU that matches say a RX 6700 XT and RTX 3070 is not going to go far. They may sell well at the start since the shortage is still bad, but post that, they either have to compete on price, or end up stuck with unsold GPUs.

For point 2, is this fact or just speculation? I've not recalled reading anything about this. I am no fan of Raja and his beat around the bush method to try and minimise disappointment, but to his defence, AMD likely don't have a lot of budget for him at that point in time for the development of Vega. I recall AMD was at the brink of bankruptcy. Budget is less of an issue over at Intel (though he don't have infinite resources). If the product is on point with the target performance, I think Intel/ Raja have done pretty well for their first GPU. Just that the release timeline is quite late, so back to point 1.

Amd was not anywhere near bankruptcy (console APUs)

 

[uuee]

That intel will already be behind architechurally.

Remember Raja is a AMD leftover that was fired due to the handling of Vega and his lying.

PowerVR/Imagination Technologies has a better chance at competing against both AMD and ngreedia if they were to release a X86 discreet GPU.

Vega was AMD's most mature arch ever. Flawless drivers without the usual annoying bugs. Finally working idle (idle hbm clocks even with multiple high refresh rate displays). Very high quality boards. Scaled extremely well downwards... If the goal would be around 1070's performance, they could make it with similar power consumption. Unfortunately, AMD decided to run Vegas way beyond their sweetspot clocks and left them with a huge voltage headroom (I guess because of yield problems). Properly tuned Vega is not bad at all.

 

[Vya Domus]

Unfortunately, AMD decided to run Vegas way beyond their sweetspot clocks and left them with a huge voltage headroom (I guess because of yield problems). Properly tuned Vega is not bad at all.

That's because Vega was likely never intended to be sold to regular consumers, it's a compute focused architecture with a huge transistor budget and expensive HBM, that's also why it was so good at mining and why it worked very well under low clocks. There is no way to know this for sure but my guess is that AMD planed for two architectures around that time, one for compute and one for graphics (same way Nvidia does it) but for some reason, likely cost and time, the graphics focused one got axed/was postponed (RDNA) and we got Vega everywhere.

 

[Steevo]

That's because Vega was likely never intended to be sold to regular consumers, it's a compute focused architecture with a huge transistor budget and expensive HBM, that's also why it was so good at mining and why it worked very well under low clocks. There is no way to know this for sure but my guess is that AMD planed for two architectures around that time, one for compute and one for graphics (same way Nvidia does it) but for some reason, likely cost and time, the graphics focused one got axed/was postponed (RDNA) and we got Vega everywhere.

This.



Sure AMD has come up with a LOT of good ideas and they haven’t had the funds or people to bring a few to fruition. Raj was so focused on making high performance compute parts that were supposed to be great at everything he forgot GPUs are for gaming. He is doing the same at Intel and they will have (someday after the smoke clears, and the mirrors are broken) a compute die that also does graphics at mediocre performance and or high performance with high TDP. The supposed huge performance increases we were told about that were first only IGP parts that failed to meet competitive benchmarks against Vega ( XE was 10% slower) in the same power envelope (Intel 15W VS AMD 15W) AMD also having twice the cores, and better overall performance.

 

[Operandi]

That's because Vega was likely never intended to be sold to regular consumers, it's a compute focused architecture with a huge transistor budget and expensive HBM, that's also why it was so good at mining and why it worked very well under low clocks. There is no way to know this for sure but my guess is that AMD planed for two architectures around that time, one for compute and one for graphics (same way Nvidia does it) but for some reason, likely cost and time, the graphics focused one got axed/was postponed (RDNA) and we got Vega everywhere.

In retrospect thats how Vega looks now but Raja hyped this thing to the moon before its release on all kinds of media outlets that are heavily consumer and gamer focused. Vega was definetly supposed to power high-end gaming graphics cards based on what AMD was saying at the time, whether it started that way on paper or not is anyone's guess.