Intel will challenge NVIDIA with better and more open products. And he wants the Mac business back

Intel is ready to take the challenge to NVIDIA. CEO Pat Gelsinger, in an interview with the sieve CRN, explained that one of the ways in which he intends to interrupt the rival’s dominance in the AI ​​sector (and not only) is to be “much friendlier towards the ecosystem“.

Intel’s entry into the dedicated GPU sector will also cover the client segment, therefore also gaming, but there is no doubt that Intel’s billionaire commitment is born above all to fill a void in the field of accelerators for theartificial intelligence and the HPC area, where NVIDIA has been the dominant powerhouse for years.

Pat Gelsinger with a Ponte Vecchio GPU

The US company’s strategy to find space and become a driving force on the scene is centered on both on the hardware, therefore designing better products than the competition, both on the software part with oneAPI, a set of toolkits that allow developers to use a single programming model for different types of architectures, be it your own CPU, GPU, FPGA or even competing products.

To steal market share from NVIDIA, the CEO believes that there are not many alternatives other than that of “making great products. NVIDIA has essentially enjoyed 10x or better performance leadership for a decade. If you have that, which is 10 times the leadership for 10 years, you take advantage of it. And then they were really lucky: artificial intelligence arrived. At that point they benefited really well. So they worked hard, they harvested and then they got lucky. “

“What do we have to do? Offer great products in those segments. [Devono avere] convincing features, performance and consumption at the right price with the appropriate software capabilities to accompany them. The market is hungry for an alternative. We must therefore provide it with a unique and differentiated added value “.

An example of this added value could be the possibility, for example, to run the integrated GPUs in the CPUs and the dedicated GPUs together, allowing customers to obtain more power at a lower price than the competition.

Jensen Huang

“Nvidia has become too proprietary, and this is largely visible in the industry, then we’ll fill that scope with oneAPI, but we will do it in a great way more favorable and open to the industry and their innovations“said the CEO, admitting that creating an alternative to NVIDIA is his personal mission.

Gelsinger does indeed see the domination of the company led by Jensen Huang in artificial intelligence as a threat even greater than that represented by the Arm CPUs in the server environment. “What I’m most concerned about in datacenters is the artificial intelligence industry, not the advancement of Arm, and in that sense Intel’s products are starting to come forward to put pressure on an NVIDIA that I believe is unchallenged. Well, in the future they will be hindered, because in that segment we are about to bring products capable of achieving leadership “.

Gelsinger explained that Intel does not intend to compete with OEMs and other partners by marketing pre-assembled systems as NVIDIA does with its DGX line, although it has not ruled out the option of creating reference designs to power a larger and more vibrant ecosystem.

Finally, as well as with CRN, Gelsinger also spoke with Axios and in particular he focused onApple’s goodbye to Intel chips. The CEO has understood Tim Cook’s move, admitting it is the result of Intel’s past problems, but still doesn’t want to give in to the idea that he has lost Apple forever.

“I never give up on the idea that something is wrong with Intel chips. Because of our stumbles, Apple decided they could make a better chip than ours. They did a great job. What I have to do is to make a better chip than theirs. I hope to win back this part of their business, as well as many other businesses, over time. And in the meantime, I need to make sure our products are better than theirs, that my ecosystem is more open and vibrant than theirs, and that we create more compelling reasons for developers and users to choose Intel products. Therefore, I will fight hard to win back Tim’s business in this area“.

Read also: AMD leadership is over, Intel is back: Pat Gelsinger bets on Alder Lake and Sapphire Rapids