Ever seen a person eat his personal head? Most likely not, however you are very seemingly going to see one thing virtually as unusual, an Nvidia GPU made by none apart from arch rival Intel.
Nvidia’s CEO and leather-based jacket aficionado Jensen Huang has confirmed that the corporate plans to make use of Intel’s new cutting-edge chip manufacturing facility in Arizona (opens in new tab).
At this level Nvidia is not detailing what chips precisely. So, it may very well be one thing apart from GPUs. However Nvidia is primarily a GPU firm, so Nvidia GPUs made by Intel simply grew to become a really real looking risk.
In fact, we have seen oddities like this earlier than, as arch rivals come collectively in some pragmatic shared trigger. It wasn’t that way back that Intel teamed up with AMD to insert Radeon Vega M graphics into an Intel cellular CPU package deal (opens in new tab).
That by no means actually appeared to catch on and Intel has since embarked by itself graphics chips with the Arc sequence of GPUs (opens in new tab). But it surely’s an instance of how a aggressive relationship will also be symbiotic.
Making chips for purchasers is central to Intel’s plan to reinvent itself as not solely a full built-in chip design and manufacturing powerhouse, but in addition as a foundry to compete with the mighty TSMC.
As we not too long ago reported, Intel is sticking publicly to its aggressive plans to roll out no fewer than three new chip manufacturing nodes within the area of a yr (opens in new tab), beginning with its new Intel 4 node, previously generally known as 7nm.
Intel 20A supposedly follows in early 2024 with Intel 18A in late 2024, at which level Intel claims it is going to have essentially the most superior chip manufacturing expertise round.
For Nvidia, a innovative different to TSMC could be very useful certainly. Partly, that can assist to maintain TSMC trustworthy with regards to pricing. However in strategic phrases, being a fabless firm counting on only one choice for manufacturing have to be a bit terrifying, particularly when that choice is situated on an island within the South China Sea that’s at the moment the topic of maximum tense geopolitics.
Admittedly, Nvidia did go to Samsung for its Ampere era of GPUs together with the RTX 3090 (opens in new tab). So TSMC is not actually the one choice. However Ampere, although pretty efficient in efficiency phrases, was a reasonably inefficient structure, in no small half because of the traits of Samsung’s 8nm node, which most trade observers contemplate far inferior to TSCM’s 7nm expertise of the time.
Anyway, it isn’t a nailed on certainty that Nvidia GPUs will probably be made by Intel. Heck, it is from assured that Intel will get its manufacturing expertise sufficiently in control that Nvidia will even wish to use it. However Nvidia graphics made by Intel very a lot appears to be the plan. And that can take some getting used to.