New news on the Intel CPU and AMD GPU collaboration

[themaniac]

1 hour ago, Trixanity said:

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.

I was mainly just trying to see a positive for amd if they supplied intel with chips for the igpu

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, themaniac said:

I was mainly just trying to see a positive for amd if they supplied intel with chips for the igpu

Intel won't be returning to an MCM design except for having the big L4 cache be a separate chip. The design complexity and multiple points of failure just aren't tolerable.

[themaniac]

13 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Intel won't be returning to an MCM design except for having the big L4 cache be a separate chip. The design complexity and multiple points of failure just aren't tolerable.

like I said, I was mainly trying to find the positive for amd, not intel

[patrickjp93]

22 minutes ago, themaniac said:

like I said, I was mainly trying to find the positive for amd, not intel

Which is fine, but you still have to approach it from the side Intel will only give AMD what it has to in such a scenario. None of this is yet confirmed anyway.

[Prysin]

12 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

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.

So you are saying that Intel is def not using Radeon tech, and instead is cutting out their iGPU completely since Nvidia is never going to renew their License with Intel. Not given how salty Nvidia is.

[Sauron]

I hope this means amd linux drivers will get a boost, they are waaaay behind the curve compared to intel's iGpu ones. I also hope this consolidates freesync and kills gsync.

[Curious Pineapple]

21 hours ago, arbellason55 said:

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

Car manufacturers do it all the time. They may be competing in certain markets, but when several companies manufacture the same kind of product, there is always one that's better than the rest. Intel can dump their GPU division as it's not a patch on what AMD and Nvidia produce, they could also possibly see an increase in sales as now Intel have a higher performing GPU and may take some sales from AMD. AMD get a constant stream of GPU sales to Intel, more R&D money, and get to laugh at the die-hard Intel fans who now have AMD technology permanently attached to their gold-plated can do no wrong Intel CPU's

[Prysin]

21 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I hope this means amd linux drivers will get a boost, they are waaaay behind the curve compared to intel's iGpu ones. I also hope this consolidates freesync and kills gsync.

they have had 4 updates to their Linux drivers in the past 2 months... Just follow them on twitter if you want to get notified right away.

[Sauron]

15 minutes ago, Prysin said:

they have had 4 updates to their Linux drivers in the past 2 months... Just follow them on twitter if you want to get notified right away.

It's not about how often they update it - performancewise it's still quite a bit behind the windows driver and not particularly stable. They are on the right track with the commitment to the open source version but they have a steep road to climb. Intel on the other hand has every interest in making sure their products are reliable and perform as expected in every use case, including embedded systems where it's not uncommon to have a linux based OS. On the same note, if apple keeps buying from Intel and is forced to adopt amd graphics in all their desktop and laptop products hackintoshing on amd may become easier (unlike nvidia, amd doesn't maintain a mac os driver).

[zMeul]

12 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

Rumor, rumor, rumor, and still no source...

I completely agree

still believe this is utter nonsense for Intel to suddenly ditch their entire Iris PRO tech - especially since KabyLake is still the only one in town allowed to decode UHD (Netflix and BluRay) streams

[Epic Wink]

On 5 February 2017 at 2:08 AM, Mr.Meerkat said:

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

 

You realise that the AMD64 (or more commonly x86-64) instruction set is basically the 64-bit version of the Intel-created x86 instruction set?

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

[patrickjp93]

8 hours ago, Prysin said:

So you are saying that Intel is def not using Radeon tech, and instead is cutting out their iGPU completely since Nvidia is never going to renew their License with Intel. Not given how salty Nvidia is.

3rd Option: Intel has enough independent IP to not need to license from anyone.

[Prysin]

7 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

3rd Option: Intel has enough independent IP to not need to license from anyone.

ahahahahahahahahahahaha, you so funny

[Mr.Meerkat]

27 minutes ago, Epic Wink said:

You realise that the AMD64 (or more commonly x86-64) instruction set is basically the 64-bit version of the Intel-created x86 instruction set?

Yep but AMD owns the IPs for X86-64 so...ya know  

There's a reason why there's only 2 (well technically 3) companies in the world that actually makes CPUs with the architectures X86 and X86-64...

[patrickjp93]

5 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Yep but AMD owns the IPs for X86-64 so...ya know  

There's a reason why there's only 2 (well technically 3) companies in the world that actually makes CPUs with the architectures X86 and X86-64...

Does VIA actually have an x64 license?

[Mr.Meerkat]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

Does VIA actually have an x64 license?

I'm not actually sure...I do know however that VIA has actually released chips based on the X86-64 arch/instruction set...

[AnonymousGuy]

Probably a fuck you to nvidia.  In order of who is competition right now, AMD is a distant second to NV in the eyes of Intel.  Enemy of your enemy = friend.

[SilicateWielder]

On 2/4/2017 at 10:08 AM, Mr.Meerkat said:

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...

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Back in the i386 days Intel was the one sharing patents with AMD, and today it's the other way around. I wonder how this will play out for the two companies?

[Mr.Meerkat]

32 minutes ago, UnbrokenMotion said:

Back in the i386 days Intel was the one sharing patents with AMD

Intel is still sharing the IP for X86 with AMD so...it's only a cross-licence  

 

AMD gets to use X86, Intel gets to use X86-64...

[dalekphalm]

This entire thread is based off of a rumour, and you're all just eating it up like candy.

 

@Trixanity is the only one I've really seen look at this objectively... And @patrickjp93 and @zMeul too, ironically enough

 

AT BEST, Intel and AMD have come to an IP Licensing Agreement about basic GPU IP. Basically, rather than license NVIDIA IP, they're switching to AMD IP.

 

Nothing will change. Intel IRIS Pro or whatever, iGPU's will still be used. Intel isn't going to put Radeon Graphics into their CPU's. AMD would be goddamn stupid to do that, especially with Ryzen and Vega so close to launch. This would be the ultimate "I have no faith in our products", for AMD to actually integrate Radeon GPU's into an Intel CPU.

 

Let's be clear, licensing AMD IP does NOT mean the same thing as putting a Radeon GPU inside an Intel CPU. If you think the latter is happening, you're being naive, or you know something the rest of us don't.

[patrickjp93]

16 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

This entire thread is based off of a rumour, and you're all just eating it up like candy.

 

@Trixanity is the only one I've really seen look at this objectively... And @patrickjp93 and @zMeul too, ironically enough

 

AT BEST, Intel and AMD have come to an IP Licensing Agreement about basic GPU IP. Basically, rather than license NVIDIA IP, they're switching to AMD IP.

 

Nothing will change. Intel IRIS Pro or whatever, iGPU's will still be used. Intel isn't going to put Radeon Graphics into their CPU's. AMD would be goddamn stupid to do that, especially with Ryzen and Vega so close to launch. This would be the ultimate "I have no faith in our products", for AMD to actually integrate Radeon GPU's into an Intel CPU.

 

Let's be clear, licensing AMD IP does NOT mean the same thing as putting a Radeon GPU inside an Intel CPU. If you think the latter is happening, you're being naive, or you know something the rest of us don't.

There is one reason it wouldn't be stupid, and I can't believe "I" am the one saying it... If Intel's graphics can become Radeon-compliant, and if eDRAM on desktop becomes a thing (or HBM/HMC), then hybrid XFire out of the box is not a low-value proposition. It would make AMD cards more powerful on both AMD and Intel platforms.

[Funtoink63]

17 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

There is one reason it wouldn't be stupid, and I can't believe "I" am the one saying it... If Intel's graphics can become Radeon-compliant, and if eDRAM on desktop becomes a thing (or HBM/HMC), then hybrid XFire out of the box is not a low-value proposition. It would make AMD cards more powerful on both AMD and Intel platforms.

If I remember correctly, AMD did something like that. Crossfire between their APU and GPU. However, it was limited to like 1 or 3 (low end) cards or something like that.

Besides that, wasn't there a DX12 demo showing difference between benchmark running on dGPU only and dGPU+iGPU?

[dalekphalm]

27 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

There is one reason it wouldn't be stupid, and I can't believe "I" am the one saying it... If Intel's graphics can become Radeon-compliant, and if eDRAM on desktop becomes a thing (or HBM/HMC), then hybrid XFire out of the box is not a low-value proposition. It would make AMD cards more powerful on both AMD and Intel platforms.

Interesting concept, I must admit. But, even if that might eventually happen, I don't see that happening now. If Ryzen flops, then I bet AMD would be much more enthusiastic about your idea though.

 

But I suppose any reason for AMD to snub NVIDIA (by allowing Hybrid Crossfire with all Intel iGPU's) would be worth their time considering, even if they ultimately decide to go another direction.

[patrickjp93]

14 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Interesting concept, I must admit. But, even if that might eventually happen, I don't see that happening now. If Ryzen flops, then I bet AMD would be much more enthusiastic about your idea though.

 

But I suppose any reason for AMD to snub NVIDIA (by allowing Hybrid Crossfire with all Intel iGPU's) would be worth their time considering, even if they ultimately decide to go another direction.

75/25 market share in discrete graphics makes me think they'd be enthused either way.

[patrickjp93]

20 minutes ago, Funtoink63 said:

If I remember correctly, AMD did something like that. Crossfire between their APU and GPU. However, it was limited to like 1 or 3 (low end) cards or something like that.

Besides that, wasn't there a DX12 demo showing difference between benchmark running on dGPU only and dGPU+iGPU?

Yes and yes. The problem is AMD didn't have a GCN 1.1/1.2 iGPU until Carrizo, so it wasn't possible to do hybrid on anything more powerful. It was another stupid move by management.