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Intel Says Its First Discrete Graphics Chips Will Be Available in 2020 (marketwatch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the coming-up-next dept.

Ryan Shrout, reporting for MarketWatch: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich disclosed during an analyst event last week that it will have its first discrete graphics chips available in 2020. This will mark the beginning of the chip giant's journey toward a portfolio of high-performance graphics products for various markets including gaming, data center and artificial intelligence (AI). Some previous rumors suggested a launch at CES 2019 this coming January might be where Intel makes its graphics reveal, but that timeline was never adopted by the company. It would have been overly aggressive and in no way reasonable with the development process of a new silicon design. In November 2017 Intel brought on board Raja Koduri to lead the graphics and compute initiatives inside the company. Koduri was previously in charge of the graphics division at AMD helping to develop and grow the Radeon brand, and his departure to Intel was thought to have significant impact on the industry.

50 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. i741 by mandark1967 · · Score: 5, Funny

    liquid cooled and running at 50Mhz with an overdrive chip

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    1. Re:i741 by kelemvor4 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      liquid cooled and running at 50Mhz with an overdrive chip

      Or any of the many many others they made after that.

      It's pretty obvious that Ryan Shrout just doesn't know what he's writing about.

    2. Re:i741 by ChatHuant · · Score: 2

      liquid cooled and running at 50Mhz

      Sorry, but you can't really push the 741 far above maybe 10 kHz...

  2. First discrete graphics? by slew · · Score: 4, Informative

    What about this one?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:First discrete graphics? by kriston · · Score: 1

      I came here to mention this. The article is wrong, though the i740 came about when Intel licensed the technology from the Real3D division of Lockheed Martin. Intel later purchased the intellectual property after Real3D was closed.

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      Kriston

    2. Re:First discrete graphics? by Type44Q · · Score: 2

      They're trying to pretend they didn't, since Starfighter was a P.O.S.

    3. Re:First discrete graphics? by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

      In modern terminology, the difference between "discrete" and "integrated" graphics is not whether it's a standalone plug-in card. It's the presence of VRAM - high-speed, high-bandwidth RAM dedicated for use by the video card for 3D rendering. Discrete GPUs come with their own VRAM. Integrated GPUs use system RAM (though they're increasingly showing up with their own small buffer of high-speed RAM that acts more like a cache), with a much smaller amount of dedicated RAM for framebuffers.

      The video cards from the era you've linked either used system RAM, or only did 2D graphics using a few MB of onboard RAM for the framebuffer. So they are analogous to today's integrated graphics. The need for the GPU to have gobs of its own high-speed VRAM didn't arise until 3D graphics began pushing frames faster than you could transfer needed data across the bus from system RAM to the video card. Most of that VRAM is taken up by textures used for 3D graphics, so only 3D graphics cards have large amounts of it. A framebuffer, found on both 3D and 2D graphics cards, is only 8 MB for 1080p 32-bit color. So there's no need for large amounts of VRAM in an integrated video card.

      Back then, we called them a 3D video card vs a 2D video card. That nomenclature was abandoned once even low-end 2D video cards became capable of rudimentary 3D graphics. The distinction then shifted to whether it was a "serious" 3D graphics card with its own dedicated VRAM, or whether it was a 2D video card (commonly integrated into the motherboard) which could do 3D graphics in a pinch by borrowing system RAM to use as VRAM.

    4. Re:First discrete graphics? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      When you're doing a half-ass attempt, you can at worst expect half-shit results.

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    5. Re:First discrete graphics? by kriston · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, the i740 had its own, dedicated VRAM. Therefore, this is not Intel's first discrete graphics chipset.

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      Kriston

    6. Re:First discrete graphics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Uh, all graphics cards whether 2D or 3D had their own RAM, and even integrated graphics card (e.g. ATI Rage Pro, or even ISA graphics in old OEM PCs) had their own RAM soldered to the motherboard.

      Even if you only had 4MB on a graphics card that did both 2D and 3D, well you had 4MB for everything, framebuffer (double-buffered + Z buffer) and textures.
      The original 3dfx Voodoo did only 3D but had its own framebuffer : 2MB framebuffer memory and separate 2MB for textures.
      So that was not much but you'd run something like Quake 2, or ports of Playstation 1 games, and you marveled at the 640x480 resolution and filtered textures with perspective correction.

      The i740 was unique in that it did what you describe. It had some 4MB RAM on the graphics card, used for the framebuffer. It borrowed system RAM, over AGP 2X, to access textures. It was not a 2D video card but a 2D/3D one.
      The problem is that reading textures over AGP 2X was too slow (and might gobble up your CPU's RAM bandwith if you only have a 66 MHz FSB)
      Intel developed an AGP 4X version, but that didn't really get released. Instead they used that tech and turned it into the i810 chipset, which used only the system RAM, and it was very successful if infamously slow. It was still a good feature to have a game run at all.

    7. Re:First discrete graphics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      From the very wiki article you seem to have skipped over:

        A unique characteristic, which set the AGP version of the card apart from other similar devices on the market, was the use of on-board memory exclusively for the display frame buffer, with all textures being kept in the computer system's main RAM.

      As he said, there is a minimal framebuffer on the card, the rest being in system memory. Hence, integrated.

    8. Re:First discrete graphics? by John+Napkintosh · · Score: 1

      They even have a more modern attempt based on many cores with an onboard OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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    9. Re:First discrete graphics? by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      That was normal for AGP. In fact, it's called the "AGP aperture". In BIOS, you could allocate 4MB to 256MB of system RAM to the card. So it's not like Intel was being cheap with their implementation of an AGP video card. It's just that the GPU was...well...crap compared to the rest of the competition.

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    10. Re: First discrete graphics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Stop it!
      The fact that they relied on AGP for making pretend video memory for texture doesn't make it "integrated". Call it "lousy execution of a card", " worst 3D video card ever made" or "Intel's ugliest 3D child" if you will... But integrated it isn't.

      The 740 had a successor. The 810 if I remember right. This one was integrated.

    11. Re: First discrete graphics? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      half-ass vs full-ass

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    12. Re:First discrete graphics? by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

      Here's what John Carmack had to say about the i740..

      Good throughput, good fillrate, good quality, good features.
      A very competent chip. I wish intel great success with the 740. I think that it firmly establishes the baseline that other companies (especially the ones that didn't even make this list) will be forced to come up to.
      Voodoo rendering quality, better than voodoo1 performance, good 3D on a desktop integration, and all textures come from AGP memory so there is no texture swapping at all.
      Lack of 24 bit rendering is the only negative of any kind I can think of.
      Their current MCD OpenGL on NT runs quake 2 pretty well. I have seen their ICD driver on '95 running quake 2, and it seems to be progressing well. The chip has the potential to outperform voodoo 1 across the board, but 3DFX has more highly tuned drivers right now, giving it a performance edge. I expect intel will get the performance up before releasing the ICD.
      It is worth mentioning that of all the drivers we have tested, intel's MCD was the only driver that did absolutely everything flawlessly. I hope that their ICD has a similar level of quality (it's a MUCH bigger job).
      An 8mb i740 will be a very good setup for 3D development work.

      IIRC, the "integrated vs discrete" distinction came about because intel's integrated chipsets were so very slow, didn't support the ATI/NVIDIA extensions to OpenGL, and the developers didn't want to spend time optimizing non ATI/nVidia codepaths.

    13. Re:First discrete graphics? by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      The key is "the *growing* use of textures". (emphasis mine)

      Intel loves deep pipelines and caching. The latter plays to their self-image as a manufacturing company first and a design company second; and the former looks good in the presence of the former and cooperative workloads. In this case, the workloads changed faster than their GPU design.

    14. Re:First discrete graphics? by samwichse · · Score: 1

      "Intel also sold the i740 to 3rd party companies, and some PCI versions of the accelerator also were made. They used an AGP-to-PCI bridge chip and had more on-board memory for storing textures locally on the card, and were actually faster than their AGP counterparts in some performance tests."

      Seems totally discrete to me.

      Probably most of the uses of this new chip will be similar... sold to OEMs to integrate as they will.

  3. nvidia on suicide watch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    fuck you geforce i dont want to update driver right now

  4. Ok... by beheaderaswp · · Score: 1

    Since I use GPUs a lot for non gaming applications this is interesting.

    Normally I'd not be interested because it's Intel who will have to play catch up. But with Raja involved this might actually have life.

    Wait and see....

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    1. Re:Ok... by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      You might be interesting to watch the review of an old Intel prototype GPU card, and the history of it from Linux Tech Tips. It truly is interesting and a review of history done justice. I know my PC hardware, but wow, this was very interesting and a bit of trivia I wasn't aware of. Highly recommend watching it.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      What I got out of that review was that Intel's card was less ASIC and more programmable. It was more of a cross between a CPU and GPU, but with lots of cores. Unfortunately, it never performed as well as a DirectX specific card, and was very power hungry. It was however far more flexible and adaptable to whatever you can program it to do. For it's time, it probably would have been the Bit Coin miner to have at the time.

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  5. So same year as the new XBOX? by Kenja · · Score: 1

    Coincidence? Yeah, probably...

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  6. I'd love something to drive down by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    video chip prices. It's been 2 years and a 1060 is still selling over MSRP.

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  7. Diversification by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Funny

    Intel is making graphics chips, and IHOP is making hamburgers.

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    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re:Diversification by jwhyche · · Score: 3

      I had a IHOP hamburger a few days ago. It was pretty good. Not sure I can say the same about intel graphics chips.

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    2. Re:Diversification by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      Back in the desktop era, PC manufacturers didn't want Intel to have good graphics. Graphics card upgrades had much higher margins than the base PC. So, you can consider that Intel graphics have been deliberately handicapped.

      I've been in this long enough to remember when the big graphics company was Silicon Graphics, and before that Evans and Sutherland. Intel just needs to hire good people.

      Let's hope this try goes better than Intel's last attempt at making better graphics chips (which seemed to fizzle out), and better than things like Xscale which Intel discontinued before the market was really ready for it. Qualcomm would probably not be at the top of wireless handset chips now now, if Intel had kept Xscale going.

      --
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    3. Re:Diversification by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      let's also hope they don't intentionally cripple thunderbolt to bolster their graphics cards.

      An nvidia card over a TB3 is still light years better than anything intel has produced -- and will likely stay that way for several years.

    4. Re:Diversification by Snotnose · · Score: 1

      IHOP is cooking their hamburgers on Intel chips.

  8. XBOX is AMD maybe PS5? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    XBOX is AMD maybe PS5?

    1. Re:XBOX is AMD maybe PS5? by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      I don't see either moving away from AMD for Intel unless Intel gives the chips away at a loss. Even then...

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  9. Wiat a min... I thought Intel was done... by bobbied · · Score: 1

    Didn't we have a story last week about how Intel was on death's door because they couldn't get their yield on the new chips high enough? Wasn't AMD ready to pounce? Now this?

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    1. Re:Wiat a min... I thought Intel was done... by epine · · Score: 1

      Didn't we have a story last week about how Intel was on death's door because they couldn't get their yield on the new chips high enough?

      10 nanometer

      Currently Intel's 10 nm process is denser than TSMC's 7 nm process and available in limited quantities, but volume production is delayed until 2019. However, TSMC's 7 nm process [in name only] is planned to be soon available in high volume shipments or mass produced devices.

      After you've been the 800-lb gorilla for four decades, death's door is merely running abreast, because gorilla's don't historically adapt well to sustained sprints.

      But in this case, everyone on the track must soon round the corner onto the EUV obstacle course.

      This 10 nm design rule is considered likely to be realized by multiple patterning, given the difficulty of implementing EUV lithography.

      TSMC is surely feeling their oats these days, but tackling EUV from the vanguard position has to practically scare them pantsless, if they've got any sense; they'll probably concede half a step to the once-tireless vanguard gorilla.

      I imagine this will only be temporary, though. EUV from the vanguard might just be Intel's last gorilla glory. But it buys them time, so they're definitely not 800-lb shaggy deadman running abreast, just yet.

    2. Re:Wiat a min... I thought Intel was done... by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Good luck to Intel with their GPUs. Intel won't be getting me back from the forseeable future. Threadripper 2 for me this fall. Btw, it is said that losing Raja Koduri will actually speed up AMDs GPU evolution, because he changed direction too often.

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    3. Re:Wiat a min... I thought Intel was done... by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Selling a lot of old CPUs on a card as a new expensive GPU product line will help with that.

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  10. Remember "FUD" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow. Intel has fallen back on its old tricks. Announce a product that is going to be "so aweseome" way out in the future. I'm telling you, this news from Intel is going to make me put my graphics card purchases on hold! Gotta get me some of that "Intel Inside"!!

  11. The best I can hope for out of this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The best I can hope for out of this is that intel will do ok, adopt freesync, and force Nvidia to get with the program and drop the stupid proprietary gsync.

  12. Re:As reliable as a pentium 60! by AvitarX · · Score: 1

    That doesn't look like floating point to me.

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  13. Make it bad at mining please by xack · · Score: 1

    A GPU good at graphics but bad at mining is needed so people can start gaming and designing again. I hope Intel cripples mining capabilities in their card.

    1. Re:Make it bad at mining please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Gaming and mining involve the same kind of math. Your suggestion is impossible. Government (over)regulation of cryptocurrency will be what does it in, not graphics card manufacturers cutting their own throats by intentionally gimping their products.

  14. Competition by Only+Time+Will+Tell · · Score: 1

    It will be interesting to see what this does to the duopoly enjoyed right now between Nvidia and AMD. It would be nice to see some price pressure on the market and new tech coming out. We've been in this two-horse race pretty much since the late 90s/early 00s.

  15. Discrete graphics? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

    So it's a GPU that won't tell anyone about the kind of porn you watch?

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    1. Re:Discrete graphics? by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      Either that, or it's huge and power-hungry because of all those separately packaged transistors. (Like Honest Bender's Dating Service, some things can be both discrete and discreet.)

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    2. Re:Discrete graphics? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      So NVIDIA doesn't have discrete graphics cards? https://www.neowin.net/news/nv...

  16. Re: As Intel could never compete... by Type44Q · · Score: 1

    Fuck 90; 240hz.

  17. Way, way behind. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    Back in the day, Motorola had the 6845 in their 6800 processor family. I think even Zilog has a CRT controller of some kind. Intel has waited until now? Really?!?

  18. If unlike nVidia, they provide open source drivers by ffkom · · Score: 2

    ... and unlike AMD, they provide _stable_ open source drivers, then I'm all ears. At this point in time, the Intel iGPU drivers are the only ones I can trust to run 365/24 in a Linux system.

  19. It will do ray tracing for free by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    That will be the limits of the free software spread over many Intel CPU's sold as a new GPU.
    Want more? The app creator will have to tell the all the CPU's on the Intel GPU what to do for their app.

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  20. Re:If unlike nVidia, they provide open source driv by samwichse · · Score: 1

    I don't know man, I've got a system with a Radeon HD 3450 in it (crappy base discrete card Dell put in everything a while back) and it is absolutely rock stable, the uptime is... well, I did a kernel update last week so it's a week, but this has never crashed once except some weird condition where accessing a file on a mounted SMB caused a GPF once and left the system in a weird state.

    The older Radeon cards are extremely well supported and stable, although I sure wouldn't want to game on one...

  21. cheap GPU ? by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

    I'm a dev who knows nothing about HW.

    I came to this article thinking, "Ooh, maybe I don't have to pay an extra $400 for a GPU on a new computer!"

    Is that wishful thinking?

    Does this announcement make any handwavey motions in that directions or am I waay off course.

  22. Re:If unlike nVidia, they provide open source driv by ffkom · · Score: 1

    I could live with the lesser 3d power of old ATI cards - but not without 4k 60Hz displays, which only the newer ones support.