Intel positions new discrete GPU products to compete with and reduce Nvidia dominance in data center GPU market.

Intel unveiled Rialto Bridge and Falcon Shores, new GPU platforms announced during the ISC 2022 event in Germany to address high performance computing needs in the data center market. Rialto Bridge is aimed at artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance compute (HPC) workloads, promising significantly increased density, performance, and efficiency over Ponte Vecchio, the company's first data center GPU effort, with a mid-2023 release planned.

Falcon Shores, targeted for a 2024 release, represents Intel's strategy to mash x86 with GPU technology into a single socket. According to Jeff McVeigh, vice president and general manager of the Super Compute Group, the architecture will allow multiple tiles to be used on a single socket, enabling customers to "pick and place different tiles and interfaces – so you can adapt over time." McVeigh called this "a revolutionary change" and said it could deliver performance improvements of five times over current GPU platforms.

GPUs have become indispensable for supercomputing tasks involving AI training, drug research, financial modeling, and medical imaging. The market has been heavily dominated by Nvidia with AMD following closely behind, while CPU-driven tasks remain driven by x86 technology and Intel's Xeon chips. In the teraflop speed race, Ponte Vecchio was positioned at 45TFLOPS. Intel also introduced oneAPI, unifying developer software designed to automatically select appropriate Intel silicon for a given task. Kent Tibbils, vice president of marketing for Intel distributor ASI Corp. in Fremont, Calif., observed that "the industry always benefits when competitive forces are chasing each other," and believed Intel's move "looks to put Intel on a level playing field for GPUs." Yet Tibbils also acknowledged significant barriers: "CUDA has been in the market for decades." While seeing potential in "new use cases – something where someone is doing something new that requires this level of computing," Tibbils stressed that Intel "can be a little slow to react on the pricing side" and "they are going to need to get in there and be really competitive on price."

Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Nor-Tech in Burnsville, Minn., expressed deep skepticism about Intel's prospects: "I do think Intel will have a real challenge to displace Nvidia in much of the GPU accelerator market due to the fact that Nvidia has such a head start with CUDA. We have a lot of customers that have a ton of work invested in CUDA and most are reluctant to move to something else." Technology analyst Roger Kay, founder of Endpoint Technologies Associates, characterized Intel's challenge as a years-long undertaking. "In this game, Intel is playing catch-up ball. This transition is probably going to be more like a ten-year period," Kay said. However, he offered an optimistic note: "Intel doesn't have to win every battle. It just has to win some."