Intel Investor Meeting 2022: Arc GPUs, Server CPUs, Project Endgame, and More

Intel’s long-awaited Arc GPUs for laptops are finally here and expected to ship out to customers in Q1 2022, the company said at the annual Intel Investor Meeting 2022. The company also discussed how far it has come and where it plans to go under CEO Pat Gelsinger’s leadership.

On February 15, Pat Gelsinger completed a year as Intel’s CEO. He took the reins from Bob Swan when the silicon giant was steadily losing its lead in the semiconductor industry for at least a couple of decades. Gelsinger, an Intel veteran of 30 years who served in several senior leadership roles during his previous stint, was brought in to revitalize the waning fortunes of the company anchored in a tech limbo.

And it seems to be working. Gelsinger is proving to be a breath of fresh air in overturning Intel’s struggle against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) domestically, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), Samsung and others globally.

After Gelsinger took over, the company announced a new roadmap to reclaim the top spot as the premier global chipmaker at the Intel Accelerated webcast in July 2021. The company was lagging behind TSMC, NVIDIA, AMD, and even TSML in terms of market capitalization in 2021.

Besides a new, more appropriate way of naming chips, the ambitious plan included efforts to address the technological and supply chain woes affecting the development and production of advanced process nodes. Intel’s difficult transition to the 10 nm node, when its competitors began mass-producing the 7 nm node, reflected the lousy shape the company was in.

Since then, the company announced Intel 7, 4 (7 nm), 3 (5 nm), and 20A (Angstrom; 1 nm = 10 Ã…) and also forayed into the graphics (GPU) space for the first time. It is now investing heavily in manufacturing through the Intel Foundry Services under the Integrated Device Manufacturer or IDM 2.0 program. It is worth mentioning that Intel’s emphasis is also on chip packaging (RibbonFET replacing FinFET) and not just process nodes.

The chipmaker has doubled down on these announcements by investing $20 billion each in the Arizona Ocotillo campus and two new greenfield units in Ohio. It is also investing $3.5 billion in the New MexicoOpens a new window semiconductor manufacturing facility and has acquired Israeli company Tower Semiconductors, a provider of custom foundry services.

Pat Gelsinger Presents the Intel Roadmap at the Intel Investor Meeting 2022

Of course, none of this will materialize in the next two or even three years. Intel expects the tide to turn from 2025 onwards. But Bob O’Donnell, an analyst at TECHnalysis Research, is unconvinced about Intel’s â€œability to execute.â€

â€œI think the vision and strategy are strong, but there are still questions about their ability to execute,â€ O’Donnell told Reuters. â€œThe progress and time lines they laid out do seem reasonable.â€

O’Donnell’s doubts possibly stem from how Intel outsources its advanced node manufacturing (7 nm and lower) to the likes of TSMC, which currently produces 54%Opens a new window of all semiconductors globally. But Gelsinger is confident that Intel will double its revenue and quadruple the shareholder value before this decade ends.

This week at the Intel Investor Meeting, Intel provided an update on its progress to climb back to the top, a major part of which is the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group (AXG). The company plans to leverage the unprecedented demand for semiconductors for IoT devices, cloud computing & data centers, electric vehicles, and mobile devices to dominate the space by the end of the decade.Â

What is @intelOpens a new window up to over the next few years? @PGelsingerOpens a new window giving a road map of the strategy. He believes they are ahead of where he thought they’d be now that he’s been at the helm one year #IntelinvestordayOpens a new window pic.twitter.com/SgvKmjTESdOpens a new window

â€” Jack Gold (@jckgld) February 17, 2022Opens a new window

Let us take a closer look at what’s cooking at Intel.

Intel Arc GPU

Intel’s Arc GPUs, the first discrete graphics cards by the company in a long time, are ready and expected to ship this quarter. These GPUs will support high-performance computing and offer more choice to users who have to steer through the NVIDIA-AMD duopoly when it comes to discrete GPUs.

You’ve all been patient, and the first wave of #IntelArcOpens a new window GPUs are launching soon for notebooks. Desktops and workstations will soon follow! pic.twitter.com/F6ubSUzSHMOpens a new window

â€” Intel Graphics (@IntelGraphics) February 17, 2022Opens a new window

However, as mentioned earlier, it will be a long road for Intel because the upcoming Arc graphics cards, i.e., Alchemist, are still in the first generation of its kind. BattleImage, the second-generation Arc GPU is slated for a 2023-24 release, while Celestial, the third-gen Arc GPU, would take another two years to appear.

Intel says it will ship more than 4 million discrete Arc GPUs in 2022. Alchemist and BattleImage are positioned as lower-to-mid-level alternatives to NVIDIA’s GTX/RTX series and AMD’s Radeon series. On the other hand, Celestial is designed for the â€œultra-enthusiast segment.â€

Intel Arc GPU Roadmap

Considering Intel’s 12th gen Alder Lake H- and KS series are scheduled for a March 2022 rollout, the company could pair it with Alchemist GPU. Intel announced the 12th gen Alder Lake KS series at CES 2022 in January. Clocking at a record 5.5 GHz, it is Intel’s answer to Apple’s M1 chip.

However, only Arc GPUs for laptops are ready, and thus desktop users may have to wait a little longer until the second quarter of 2022 because of unforeseen delays. Intel didn’t mention the cause of the delay but chipmakers face a semiconductor supply crunch all around due to overwhelming demand. Arc GPUs are being fabricated on TSMC’s N6 node.

Interestingly, Intel is gobbling up TSMC capacity even as it scales up its own. This is a far cry from the days when it kept its foundries shut for chip fabrication for others.

Intel has partnered with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as HP, ASUS, Dell, Alienware, MSI, Samsung, Gigabyte, NEC, Lenovo, etc., for add-in board designs. The company said that fifty such designs are ready and that software partners are currently integrating their applications and games for Arc compatibility. Intel expects AXG to generate $1 billion in 2022 and $10 billion by 2026.

Good overview of the expected market sizes and growth rates that @intelOpens a new window expects for each of its six business segments by 2026. #IntelInvestorDayOpens a new window pic.twitter.com/sWpbnKjyWrOpens a new window

â€” Bob O’Donnell (@bobodtech) February 17, 2022Opens a new window

Supercomputing

Besides GPUs, AXG is targeting the supercomputing space. It will integrate Xeon-based CPUs with its new GPUs to power high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads. These are:

Sapphire Rapids with High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM): Intel claims the Integrated offering provides 4x more memory bandwidth and 2.8x performance improvement than previous generation CPUs.
Arctic Sound-M: A GPU for supercomputers. Intel said it features a hardware-based AV1 encoder, an industry first for a GPU. For an idea of the sheer scale of transcoding capability it presents, consider this: it can enable 30 1080p streams or eight 8K streams simultaneously. Will be available by mid-2022.
Falcon Shores: A new product that will be available after the company’s Angstrom chips are ready. It combines a CPU and Intel Xe GPU. Estimated to deliver 5x performance-per-watt, 5x compute density, 5x memory capacity and bandwidth improvements over current platforms.

Blockchain, supercomputing at the edge, premium infotainment for cars, immersive displays, etc., will be served by AXG’s Custom Compute Group.

Project Endgame

Yet another ambitious undertaking by AXG is Project Endgame, which the company teased at the investor meeting. From what we could understand by the limited information available on Project Endgame, it looks like it is a cloud service, possibly based on a subscription model, for users to access Arc GPUs.

â€œProject Endgame will enable users to access Intel Arc GPUs through a service for an always-accessible, low-latency computing experience,â€ Intel said.

Server CPUs (Datacenter and AI)

Intel’s third-gen Xeon processors, dubbed Ice Lake (10 nm) and Sapphire Rapids (Intel 7), are scheduled for release later in 2022. The company will launch Emerald Rapids in 2023 (Intel 7), and Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids in 2024 (both based on Intel 3).

Intel is also developing a dual-track roadmap of products based on Performance-cores (P-core) and Efficient-cores (E-core). Sierra Forest is based on this new unnamed design.

Other Ventures

Intel will continue to push its client computing side of the business with Raptor Lake (Intel 7; H2 2022), Meteor Lake (Intel 4; 2023), Arrow Lake (Intel 20A; 2024), Lunar Lake, etc.

Intel Foundry Services is also focusing on the automotive sector, currently reeling from chip shortages.

To bring interoperability for rapid adoption, performance optimization, cross-platform and open development for a familiar developer experience, Intel is pushing for oneAPI toolkits. Variations include:

Intel oneAPI Base Toolkit: Application development for Intel CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs
Intel oneAPI HPC Toolkit: Building, analyzing, and scaling applications across shared- and distributed-memory computing systems.
Intel oneAPI AI Analytics Toolkit: For data science and machine learning pipelines using Python tools and frameworks.
Intel oneAPI Rendering Toolkit: For visual creators.
Intel oneAPI IoT Toolkit: Development of applications for the edge, and others.

Closing Thoughts

Intel’s shares fell over approximately 0.55% until the closing bell on Thursday, but losses continued to extend even further in after-hours trade. By the time the after-hours session was over, the company’s shares had lost just over 1.7% value from the day’s start and nearly 1.2% from the closing bell, thus indicating short-term shareholders selling their positions.

For long-term investors, competitors, and most importantly, customers, Gelsinger’s message is this: â€œThe Intel turnaround train is leaving the station, and I hope you all get on board. It’s an ambitious goal, but I am confident Intel’s best days are in front of us.â€

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