Speculation: Intel EMIB, Intel/AMD Graphics, and 10nm Troubles

[Bit_Guardian]

Much as I have found AdoredTV's channel to be grossly biased and misrepresentative, I came across a rare gem today, and it got the gears in my head spinning. 

In summation, Adored thinks Intel is positioning itself mostly to damage Nvidia in mobile and reap more profits from the sector along the way, and he believes Nvidia has focused on datacenter so much in recent years BECAUSE it saw the long-term trend of the industry with integration and already had terrible relationships with Intel, Apple, and OEMs.

 

I'm in agreement with all of this, but I thought a little bit farther outside this microcosm, and I'd like some feedback and discussion.

 

To start, Intel EMIB (Other Parts Incoming Post-Discussion)

 

EMIB allows Intel to connect any harmonious group of IC dies, including CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, FPGAs, DRAM, and Non-Volatile Memory in a manner far more compact, more scalable, and cheaper manner than using interposers. We've already seen how Intel intends to leverage this by directly linking AMD Polaris and Vega GPU dies to HBM2 alongside Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake CPUs in a custom compact AIO setup for Apple and likely other laptop OEMs as highlighted here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12003/intel-to-create-new-8th-generation-cpus-with-amd-radeon-graphics-with-hbm2-using-emib

 

As Adored points out, this serves to undercut Nvidia's dGPU pricing and cut them out of the mid-high and down mobile range; and he does point out Intel could easily play AMD and Nvidia against each other to compete on pricing, but I disagree with his stance that Nvidia would refuse to take the loss on selling more cheaply to Intel. It's better to lose a little than lose it all, tactically and strategically speaking. I think Nvidia will compete for scraps even as it pivots more and more to Datacenter and AI.

 

However, this DOES also represent a serious problem for AMD. While it is still significantly cash-strapped and lacks the mindshare both in PC and mobile to puts its graphics tech back on the map in the minds of consumers, Intel still has the IPC lead in CPUs as well as the overall cheaper manufacturing purely given its merit of operational size. If AMD can't get Raven Ridge and Zen or Polaris and Vega into high-end mobile, this represents a better-than-nothing deal.

 

Adored also thinks AMD is shooting themselves in the foot somewhat since they could turn around and do exactly this with interposers, especially since Zen seems to have the power and clocks advantage in mobile. However, the fact they entered into this deal suggests mindshare IS the blocker here. With Intel's endorsement, perhaps this partnership will only last a year or two before AMD can deliver an all-AMD AIO solution with mass appeal outside enthusiast circles. However, there is still the problem of price. Interposers are NOT cheap. They are strictly bigger than the sum total of areas for each die in the package. They are also thicker than EMIB-based solutions, where the interconnect is literally embedded in the substrate of the daughter board or mainboard. And while some remain hopeful EMIB can be opened up as prior art via a patent dispute lawsuit, my learned opinion is not optimistic for that.

 

What do you think?

Will Nvidia compete for space in the new Intel AIO package era, or simply give away midrange mobile?

Will thin and light dominate so much that interposer solutions are unappealing long-term?

Will Intel be able to guard its embedded bridge designs from competitors? 

What are your thoughts on Intel leveraging EMIB tech in its custom foundry to possibly get a piece of the ultra mobile pie (phones and phablets getting even thinner and lower power)?

Do you see Intel's "CPU/APU" strategy in the next 3-5 years manifesting to include non-volatile storage (Optane/NAND) and HBM/HMC caches in packages which themselves drop into consumer boards?

What interesting applications do you see for EMIB outside the "APU" sphere?

 

 

 

Part 2: Intel/AMD Graphics

 

We know Intel has access to all the Maxwell and previous IP from Nvidia until the end of time thanks to its patent deal, for which all of the payments have been made. We also know Raja Koduri was poached by Intel and will be heading up a discrete graphics division for the company. We also know Raja was responsible for Vega and Navi pretty much start to finish. And we know AMD's graphics division actually has not been doing so well in recent years (see Adored's videos concerning the GPU wars and AMD's semi-custom strategy for details, taking careful note of AMD's bare 1 million USD profit on the graphics division in 2014/15).

 

With this information added to the semi-custom graphics chip deal being supplied for this EMIB package and unknown specifics regarding Intel's access to the driver stack, are we potentially looking at the early stages of a deal between AMD and Intel to hand over or spin off Radeon back into its own company for the two to share and help resource? Is there an additional IP deal between Intel and AMD which is aiding them in their work to create their own dGPUs?

 

With Raja having left after taking a sabbatical and an internet beating by fans for Vega's disastrous delays and launch and incomplete driver support to this day for tiled rendering and other features, could there have been an agreement between AMD and Intel to begin a transition over with investor politics wanting to cut its losses/dead weight with graphics? If a handover were going to happen, who better to manage it than the man who headed the division under AMD?

 

Perhaps the timing is coincidental, but in this industry, that's rarely the case. It seems strange to me that this all strategically aligns for Intel and also seems to alleviate a black eye that AMD has been suffering since it bought ATI in 2005 and has only just finished fiscally paying for. What's more is AMD's driver team is known to be quite small. Intel has an army of programmers at its disposal and is very active in its open source Linux driver development.

 

What are your thoughts on this? Extremely convenient coincidence? Perhaps there's another angle being played where AMD retains full control of Radeon moving forward, but it seems like it would be unpopular with the Board of Directors at best.

[samcool55]

The thing most people forget is that Nvidia is no longer mainly focusing on the GPU market.

Stuff like Ai and self-driving cars has been a massive focus from nvidia recently and where potentially a lot of money can be earned.

AMD doesn't really have an answer for this. Just look at their last presentations.

AMD is all about gaming and GPU in servers and whatever when Nvidia barely talks about that...

 

And then again Nvidia has a big advantage in GPU power consumption (vega might change it for notebooks but right now who knows) and could easily sell their stuff for cheaper and still have a massive profit. If AMD and intel want to bring down nvidia (which they actually don't want to do because competition is important) they'll have to fight for years and win a lot of battles. It's unlikely both of them are capable of keeping up like, they are now behind, once they gain some momentum and start catching up only then we'll see a war starting but for now not much will happen.

[Bit_Guardian]

4 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

The thing most people forget is that Nvidia is no longer mainly focusing on the GPU market.

Stuff like Ai and self-driving cars has been a massive focus from nvidia recently and where potentially a lot of money can be earned.

AMD doesn't really have an answer for this. Just look at their last presentations.

AMD is all about gaming and GPU in servers and whatever when Nvidia barely talks about that...

 

And then again Nvidia has a big advantage in GPU power consumption (vega might change it for notebooks but right now who knows) and could easily sell their stuff for cheaper and still have a massive profit. If AMD and intel want to bring down nvidia (which they actually don't want to do because competition is important) they'll have to fight for years and win a lot of battles. It's unlikely both of them are capable of keeping up like, they are now behind, once they gain some momentum and start catching up only then we'll see a war starting but for now not much will happen.

I address some of this in part 2 with Raja Koduri going to Intel and their big announcement about making discrete graphics. And Intel has the Nervana tech, so I see the AI front addressed from Intel's perspective. I know AMD has their Instinct product line incoming too. If Intel gets access to the Radeon driver stack and can contribute to it, I see the gap closing easily on performance/watt. And I'll get more into this weird Radeon foot-shooting position they seem to be in given Intel's recent announcement. AMD and Intel could very well be making their own pivots and AMD wants to sell off Radeon, these being the first steps in a transitional phase.

[Bit_Guardian]

Part 2 posted.