According to ServeTheHome, Intel has decided to discontinue its high-performance computing (HPC) product line, Ponte Vecchio, and shift its focus towards developing its next-generation data center GPU, codenamed Falcon Shores. This decision comes as Intel aims to streamline its operations and concentrate its resources on the most promising and competitive offerings. The Ponte Vecchio GPU, released in January of 2023, was intended to be Intel's flagship product for the HPC market, competing against the likes of NVIDIA's H100 and AMD's Instinct MI series. However, despite its impressive specifications and features, Ponte Vecchio faced significant delays and challenges in its development and production cycle. Intel's decision to abandon Ponte Vecchio is pragmatic, recognizing the intense competition and rapidly evolving landscape of the data center GPU market.

By pivoting its attention to Falcon Shores, Intel aims to deliver a more competitive and cutting-edge solution that can effectively challenge the dominance of its rivals. Falcon Shores, slated for release in 2025, is expected to leverage Intel's latest process node and architectural innovations. Currently, Intel has Gaudi 2 and Gaudi 3 accelerators for AI. However, the HPC segment is left without a clear leader in the company's product offerings. Intel's Ponte Vecchio is powering Aurora exascale supercomputer, which is the latest submission to the TOP500 supercomputer lists. This is also coming after the Rialto Bridge cancellation, which was supposed to be an HPC-focused card. In the future, the company will focus only on the Falcon Shores accelerator, which will unify HPC and AI needs for high-precision FP64 and lower-precision FP16/INT8.

During the ISC High Performance 2023 international conference, Intel announced interesting roadmap updates to its high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). With the scrapping of Rialto Bridge and Lancaster Sound, Intel merged these accelerator lines into Falcon Shores processor for HPC and AI, initially claiming to be a CPU+GPU solution on a single package. However, during the ISC 2023 talk, the company forced a change of plans, and now, Falcon Shores is GPU only solution destined for a 2025 launch. Originally, Intel wanted to combine x86-64 cores with Xe GPU to form an "XPU" module that powers HPC and AI workloads. However, Intel did not see a point in forcing customers to choose between specific CPU-to-GPU core ratios that would need to be in an XPU accelerator. Instead, a regular GPU solution paired with a separate CPU is the choice of Intel for now. In the future, as workloads get more defined, XPU solutions are still a possibility, just delayed from what was originally intended.

Regarding Intel's Gaudi accelerators, the story is about to end. The company originally paid two billion US Dollars for Habana Labs and its Gaudi hardware. However, Intel now plans to stop the Gaudi development as a standalone accelerator and instead use the IP to integrate it into its Falcon Shores GPU. Using modular, tile-based architecture, the Falcon Shores GPU features standard ethernet switching, up to 288 GB of HBM3 running at 9.8 TB/s throughput, I/O optimized for scaling, and support for FP8 and FP16 floating point precision needed for AI and other workloads. As noted, the creation of XPU was premature, and now, the initial Falcon Shores GPU will become an accelerator for HPC, AI, and a mix of both, depending on a specific application. You can see the roadmap below for more information.

Intel has decided to re-organize its Max series of Data Center GPUs (codenamed Ponte Vecchio), as revealed to Tom's Hardware this week, with a particular model - the Data Center Max GPU 1350 set for removal from the lineup. Industry experts are puzzled by this decision, given that the 1350 has been officially "available" on the market since January 2023, following soon after the announcement of the entire Max range in November 2022. Intel has removed listings and entries for the Data Center GPU Max 1350 from its various web presences.

A (sort of) successor is in the works, Intel has lined up the Data Center Max GPU 1450 for release later in the year. This model will have a trimmed I/O bandwidth - this modification is likely targeting companies in China, where performance standards are capped at a certain level (via U.S. sanctions on GPU exports). An Intel spokesperson provided further details and reasons for rearranging the Max product range: "We launched the Intel Data Center Max GPU 1550 (600 W), which was initially targeted for liquid-cooled solutions only. We have since expanded our support by offering Intel Data Center Max GPU 1550 (600 W) to include air-cooled solutions."

Late on Friday in a newsroom posting by Intel's Interim GM Jeff McVeigh a roadmap uplift was quietly revealed. Rialto Bridge, the process improved version of Ponte Vecchio currently shipping under the Max Series GPU branding, has been pulled from the roadmap in favor of doubling down on the future design code-named Falcon Shores. Rialto Bridge was first announced last May at SC22 as the direct successor to Ponte Vecchio, and was set to begin sampling later this year. In the same post Intel also cancelled Lancaster Sound, their Visual Cloud GPU meant to replace the Arctic Sound Flex series of GPUs based on similar Xe cores to Arc Alchemist. In its stead the follow-up architecture Melville Sound will receive focused development efforts.

Falcon Shores is described as a new foundational chiplet architecture that will integrate more diverse compute tiles, creating what Intel originally dubbed the XPU. This next architectural step would combine what Intel is already doing with products such as Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio into one CPU+GPU package, and would offer even further flexibility to add other kinds of accelerators. With this roadmap update there is some uncertainty as to whether the XPU designation will make the transition as it is notably absent in the letter. It is clear though that Falcon Shores will directly replace Ponte Vecchio as the next HPC GPU, with or without CPU tiles included.

During the International Supercomputing Conference on May 31, 2022, in Hamburg, Germany, Jeff McVeigh, vice president and general manager of the Super Compute Group at Intel Corporation, announced Rialto Bridge, Intel's data center graphics processing unit (GPU). Using the same architecture as the Intel data center GPU Ponte Vecchio and combining enhanced tiles with Intel's next process node, Rialto Bridge will offer up to 160 Xe cores, more FLOPs, more I/O bandwidth and higher TDP limits for significantly increased density, performance and efficiency.

"As we embark on the exascale era and sprint towards zettascale, the technology industry's contribution to global carbon emissions is also growing. It has been estimated that by 2030, between 3% and 7% of global energy production will be consumed by data centers, with computing infrastructure being a top driver of new electricity use," said Jeff McVeigh, vice president and general manager of the Super Compute Group at Intel Corporation.