New news on the Intel CPU and AMD GPU collaboration

[Mr.Meerkat]

Yes, I know there is a thread created in December about this but there is now new information about it and is kinda different from the reported IP purchasing so...here we go...

 

Quote

The whispers are growing louder, with Hard|OCP editor Kyle Bennett (who broke the original December story), reporting that the first product of this collaboration could be out within 2017. According to Bennett, posting on the Hard|OCP Forums, the first Intel product with AMD Radeon GPU IP could be a special processor with an AMD Radeon GPU die, and a CPU die based on the "Kaby Lake" micro-architecture.  The whispers are growing louder, with Hard|OCP editor Kyle Bennett (who broke the original December story), reporting that the first product of this collaboration could be out within 2017. According to Bennett, posting on the Hard|OCP Forums, the first Intel product with AMD Radeon GPU IP could be a special processor with an AMD Radeon GPU die, and a CPU die based on the "Kaby Lake" micro-architecture. 

 

 

 

It's happening! The only real issue I can see is how this could be a direct competitor to their Zen APUs unless the supplied GPUs are considerably worse than the Vega chips in the Zen APUs  

 

I mean it's a win-win-win scenario for AMD...

AMD gets a load of cash from Intel for them to supply the dies and intel to be able to use AMD patents

If Zen APUs fail, they are still in the "high performance" iGPU market segment as it's their GPU that's powering dem intel chips and if Zen APUs turn out to be a massive success, they are still benefiting from the sales of Intel CPUs with their dies 

Their product portfolio has one extra segment now which investors like seeing... 

 

While it's a win-win scenario for Intel where they can downsize their GPU division (already happened) and to release CPUs with iGPUs that are not completely potato. 

Also, it's not like Intel isn't using AMD's AMD64 instruction set so all this does is "bond" their relationship even stronger...

 

Sources:

http://www.eteknix.com/intel-processor-radeon-graphics-coming-year/

https://www.techpowerup.com/230360/first-intel-processor-with-amd-radeon-graphics-within-2017

 

Edit: Forgot to mention how this probably means no more royalties to Nvidia when Intel sells a CPU with an iGPU so it's possible that AMD is asking less compared to Nvidia and Intel doesn't have to design any more GPUs.

 

 

[themaniac]

interesting, wonder if this will be a desktop consumer cpu or something else

[Guest]

#Team Purple? @Dan Castellaneta

[Fetzie]

I wonder how significant the income stream from the licensing deal was to Nvidia, what with Intel paying a royalty on every consumer chip manufactured.

[Mr.Meerkat]

3 minutes ago, Fetzie said:

I wonder how significant the income stream from the licensing deal was to Nvidia, what with Intel paying a royalty on every consumer chip manufactured.

Could have been loads...as Intel did kick Nvidia (and AMD) out of the on-(mother)board GPU for desktop or even those cheap ass dedicated GPUs.

[Remixt]

I wonder if this is why Nvidia is pushing into the automobile industry so hard. Gotta replace that lost revenue in another way?

[arbellason55]

I find it kinda funny how competitors collaborate on products, gotta love tech. 

[Cracklingice]

22 minutes ago, themaniac said:

interesting, wonder if this will be a desktop consumer cpu or something else

the picture appears to be of a mobile variety.

[themaniac]

1 minute ago, Cracklingice said:

the picture appears to be of a mobile variety.

I see, now to wonder if it would be possible that it is an atom with a small Polaris/vega chip to get back into the smartphone market or if its for laptops

[Coaxialgamer]

16 minutes ago, Remixt said:

I wonder if this is why Nvidia is pushing into the automobile industry so hard. Gotta replace that lost revenue in another way?

The reason they are doing it is because there isn't much money in the gpu market for graphics.  They are better off pushing the compute capabilities of their processors in markets that need that power.  The real money isn't in geforce,  and not really in quadro either.  It's in tesla and gpgpu,  which means cars,  deep learning, etc. 

Think about it.  Intel sells a 1700$ die that measures 240mm².  Amd and nvidia both sell dies around that size ( gtx 1060 and rx 480)  for around 200-250$.

The profit margins are considerably lower in the gpu market,  unless you're selling accelerators like the tesla line.

 

Amd is doing the same thing.  They are pushing avionics and embedded systems.  They had projects for self driving cars.  Even the vega gpus ( radeon instinct)  are heavily marketed for deep learning and gpgpu,  because that is where he money is. 

[Humbug]

Doesn't matter for AMD if it's a Ryzen competitor. Either way they are selling something and making money... This way they make money regardless of whether the consumer decides to go for AMD or Intel. And Intel sells way more units anyway so this is good for AMD to cash in on them.

[Misanthrope]

It's good news for 4k playback intel probably recognized that things are moving faster than their pathetic igpus (Notable exception being iris pro 6200 of course but apparently it's too expensive and they haven't shown it past the extremely rare broadwell 1150 chips)

[Citadelen]

Seeing as Kyle Bennett is the source, I'm inclined to call bullshit. I guess time will tell...

[Mr.Meerkat]

7 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Seeing as Kyle Bennett is the source, I'm inclined to call bullshit. I guess time will tell...

Wut he's totally the most reliable source tho...

[Trixanity]

This isn't happening. Intel is merely licensing some AMD patents in order to avoid infringing which any GPU will. They haven't renewed their previous agreement with Nvidia. It's not worth it for AMD to give Intel any advantage in the integrated graphics space.

[Humbug]

29 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Seeing as Kyle Bennett is the source, I'm inclined to call bullshit. I guess time will tell...

what's wrong with Kyle Bennett?

[themaniac]

30 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

This isn't happening. Intel is merely licensing some AMD patents in order to avoid infringing which any GPU will. They haven't renewed their previous agree with Nvidia. It's not worth it for AMD to give Intel any advantage in the integrated graphics space.

except Intel sells way more units so if they can put their gpu's in intels cpus they can make quite a bit of money from it, they could easily keep the better chips for their apus, and I highly doubt anything other then their apus will have igpus so they wont be competing in that area other then the lowend

[unsubscribed]

I can't see this happening. It would be great in a sense that we could finally have proper entry level gaming ultrabooks for reasonable money. At the same time it makes no sense as Intel is doing great as is with their CPUs and GPUs. Besides, it would be confusing as hell for regular Joe who would stop seeing Intel and AMD as competition. Why go for Intel CPUs then?

Perception is a strong thing. Brand name is everything. Intel wouldn't do that to themselves.

[Trixanity]

34 minutes ago, themaniac said:

except Intel sells way more units so if they can put their gpu's in intels cpus they can make quite a bit of money from it, they could easily keep the better chips for their apus, and I highly doubt anything other then their apus will have igpus so they wont be competing in that area other then the lowend

So AMD can make pennies on the dollar on Intel products and effectively cripple their only advantage therefore making Intel the obvious choice? Sounds like an excellent strategy.

 

There are integrated graphics in anything from lowly single digit TDP mobile processors all the way up to 90W 4c/8t desktop processors like the 7700K. It's the bread and butter of the CPU market. It would be incredibly stupid for AMD to give Intel anything unless they want to exit the CPU market.

[Mr.Meerkat]

51 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

So AMD can make pennies on the dollar on Intel products and effectively cripple their only advantage therefore making Intel the obvious choice? Sounds like an excellent strategy.

Thing is, Intel had to pay royalties to Nvidia on every single CPU they sold with an iGPU so...why wouldn't AMD want to jump onto that money where Nvidia has been receiving for a long time? 

Also AMD was already "making" money on Intel CPUs (technically) as they own the X86-64 (aka AMD64) instruction set/architecture so ya know  

 

1 hour ago, edsdrafts said:

I can't see this happening. It would be great in a sense that we could finally have proper entry level gaming ultrabooks for reasonable money. At the same time it makes no sense as Intel is doing great as is with their CPUs and GPUs. Besides, it would be confusing as hell for regular Joe who would stop seeing Intel and AMD as competition. Why go for Intel CPUs then?

Perception is a strong thing. Brand name is everything. Intel wouldn't do that to themselves.

Hmmm...well Intel no matter what has to give money to either AMD or Nvidia in order for them to have GPUs into their CPUs so...does it matter which company they are paying to have iGPUs in their CPUs? 

Also a regular Joe wouldn't even know it's an AMD GPU inside the intel CPU...

[Citadelen]

2 hours ago, Humbug said:

-snip-

 

http://m.hardocp.com/article/2016/05/27/from_ati_to_amd_back_journey_in_futility

 

Nonsense like this, he's gone to massive lengths to paint AMD in as bad a light as possible all because he didn't receive an R9 Nano to review. As such I take whatever he says with a grain of salt now.

 

[Bananasplit_00]

probably because they got sick of sending loads of cash to NVIDIA for the tech in there current IGPUs, i remember something about them needing to pay for the use of some NVIDIA patent for every IGPU lol

[Trixanity]

35 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Thing is, Intel had to pay royalties to Nvidia on every single CPU they sold with an iGPU so...why wouldn't AMD want to jump onto that money where Nvidia has been receiving for a long time? 

Also AMD was already "making" money on Intel CPUs (technically) as they own the X86-64 (aka AMD64) instruction set/architecture so ya know  

 

Hmmm...well Intel no matter what has to give money to either AMD or Nvidia in order for them to have GPUs into their CPUs so...does it matter which company they are paying to have iGPUs in their CPUs? 

Also a regular Joe wouldn't even know it's an AMD GPU inside the intel CPU...

There is a vast difference between paying a license fee and/or royalties for using patented technology and actually making GPUs for someone else.

 

The OP and the one I quoted seem to think AMD will make actual GPUs for Intel and/or give them access to Radeon GPUs/GCN-based graphics. It would be stupid of AMD to do that and they won't. They're merely giving Intel access to patents so Intel can continue to make their own integrated graphics. As I did say in my post: Nvidia used to provide that license for Intel but for whatever reason it was not renewed and Intel needs to secure a new license to avoid a lawsuit. AMD would be happy to oblige in giving them that license agreement and getting some money - no doubt. But that's it. No GCN for Intel. No Radeon GPUs on a MCM package.

[Okjoek]

Looks good for everybody, but nVIDIA.

[patrickjp93]

Rumor, rumor, rumor, and still no source... I believe we'd have seen the blip in the financials Intel's released to the SEC by now had this deal actually happened.