During Intel’s 2019 Investor Meeting, Intel has announced numerous updates to their product roadmap, but in the process of doing so, Intel’s Raja Koduri bashed the competition.
Intel Versus Competitors
Raja Koduri, Intel’s Systems and Graphics Architect and Senior VP, analyzed what Intel’s competition is doing for the future of computing. Koduri referred to both AMD and NVIDIA, though in a manner that was not direct, but rather a type of graphic with two red and green circles representing AMD and NVIDIA. According to Koduri, AMD has ‘no ecosystem that’s meaningful’.
This graphic essentially shows Intel, as a whole, a massive monopoly, with NVIDIA and AMD nothing more than small, nearly worthless competitors. Judging by this graphic, Intel claims to be active in nine markets:
- CPU
- GPU
- AI
- FPGA
- Interconnect
- Memory
- PC
- Network
- Datacenter
Intel’s Competitors’ Markets
Intel compares these nine markets to a fraction of what AMD and NVIDIA are active in, listing the following:
- Cloud (AMD & NVIDIA)
- PC (AMD & NVIDIA)
- GPU (AMD & NVIDIA)
- CPU (AMD)
Intel fails to recognize the presence of other competitors in the same markets, as well as alternate markets:
- Datacenter (AMD & NVIDIA)
- FPGA (Xilinx)
- AI (AMD & NVIDIA)
- Interconnect (AMD & NVIDIA)
- Memory (AMD)
- Semi-Custom Solutions (AMD)
- Embedded Solutions (AMD)
Intel represents AMD’s CPU threat as a small dot on the map, but when analyzing the current market conditions of both companies, AMD is outselling Intel by two-fold in the CPU market. Not only is Intel’s market share slowly shrinking, but manufacturing delays and a short supply of processors, as well as AMD’s imminent launch of Zen 2 CPUs, doesn’t do Intel any good.
Artificial Intelligence
Second, Intel shows AI solutions to be one of their four core markets, yet Intel’s only products in that field include Nervana and the Intel Neural Compute Stick, with Intel cancelling production of first-generation Neural Compute Sticks. Both of these products cannot compete with alternate FPGA solutions, let alone NVIDIA’s Tesla V100 or AMD’s Radeon Instinct MI60.
Current High-Speed Interconnect Solutions
Another section Intel claims to have dominance in is the Interconnect market. Intel has only recently begun to invest in interconnect technologies, a type of technology where AMD and NVIDIA have long been active developing. NVIDIA designed NVLink, a high-speed interconnect designed for GPU-to-GPU, GPU-to-CPU, and CPU-to-CPU communication, though GPU-to-CPU and CPU-to-CPU is currently supported only by IBM’s POWER9. AMD founded the HyperTransport Consortium and has designed HyperTransport, a point-to-point interconnect since HyperTransport 1.0’s release in 2001. HyperTransport has undergone multiple updates:
- HyperTransport 1.1 (2002)
- HyperTransport 2.0 (2004)
- HyperTransport 3.0 (2006)
- HyperTransport 3.1 (2008)
Despite HyperTransport 3.0’s release in 2006, HyperTransport 3.0 manages to overtake Intel’s fastest QuickPath Interconnect variant. (332.8Gb/s versus 307.2Gb/s)
AMD’s Infinity Fabric is a superset of HyperTransport and is supported by Zen-based CPUs and Radeon GPUs with a maximum bandwidth of 4096Gb/s, making it the fastest interconnect available.
Memory Development
As far as memory development goes, AMD and Intel are the dominant players. AMD designed HBM, designed Athlon, the first CPU to integrate the memory controller onto the CPU, and was a major entity in the development of DDR3, therefore allowing Phenom II CPUs to be utilized in AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+ and utilize both DDR2 and DDR3 memory variants. Intel’s most recent memory product comes from a collaboration with Micron and is known as 3D XPoint Memory, a type of non-volatile flash memory.
Semi-Custom & Embedded Markets
Two markets where AMD is dominant in are Semi-Custom Solutions and Embedded Solutions. AMD designed custom processors for the Wii U, Xbox One, PS4, and future consoles such as the Atari VCS, and Smach Z. AMD has created an entire lineup of embedded processors:
- EPYC
- Ryzen
- G Series
- R Series
- ASIC
Intel’s graphic fails to recognize AMD and NVIDIA’s presence in the datacenter. NVIDIA and AMD are leaders in GPU compute workloads, with most compute tasks being handled completely by GPUs and CPUs are used to execute commands to the GPUs. AMD has also established a presence with EPYC. EPYC has exceeded all expectations bringing to the table great value, massive amounts of PCIe lanes, high core counts, insane memory bandwidth and capacities, and great performance. Multiple entities have pledged support for EPYC. These entities include Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, Google, and others.
Infinity Fabric – AMD’s Interconnect Solution
Koduri seems to have forgotten about his previous statement on Infinity Fabric as pointed out by PCGamesN:
‘Infinity Fabric allows us to join different engines together on a die much easier than before,” he once said. “As well it enables some really low latency and high-bandwidth interconnects. This is important to tie together our different IPs together efficiently and quickly. If forms the basis of all of our future ASIC designs.’
Koduri’s most recent statement claims:
‘[AMD] has no memory or interconnect strategy that I know of, and the size of the developer ecosystem is tiny’
Developers Backing AMD
AMD’s developer ecosystem has support from entities such Microsoft, and The Khronos Group, both of which have developed low-level APIs, DirectX 12 and Vulkan, based off of AMD’s Mantle. Crytek has already begun to implement DirectX 12 and Vulkan into CRYENGINE 5.7 and EA has partnered with The Khronos Group.
How Will AMD Compete with Intel?
AMD is already in a great position to compete with Intel. AMD will have Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Navi GPUs on shelves in the next few months. 2018 was AMD’s first profitable year in quite a few years, and revenues will only grow from this current point in time. AMD has already stated Zen 2 has a yield of 70%, twice of Intel’s top server chips, which is quite impressive.
The post Raja Koduri Bashes AMD & Competitors at Intel’s 2019 Investor Meeting by Alexander Buck appeared first on Wccftech.
Refference- https://wccftech.com
0 Comments