Intel recruits senior AMD GPU architecture engineer to lead Xe discrete GPU IP roadmap development.

Intel confirmed to CRN that Vineet Goel joined the company in late September as vice president and general manager of the Xe Architecture and IP Engineering Group, which is part of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group that was formed in June. Goel, a former GPU architect at AMD, reports to Raja Koduri, an AMD veteran who leads the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group. In his role, Goel will lead a team of architects and design engineers in "architecting, designing and verifying Intel's Xe IP road map," which includes elements for graphics, media and display that will be used in the company's GPU products.

Goel brings substantial experience in GPU architecture development. At AMD, he served as corporate vice president of GPU architecture, where he managed the company's GPU IP architecture team. "His team delivered from concepts to solid architecture specifications across all GPU product lines," ranging in power envelopes of 1.1 watts to 700 watts, according to Intel. This work spanned multiple segments including mobile, console gaming, PC gaming, high-performance computing, and GPU IP for AMD's APUs. Prior to AMD, Goel was director of GPU architecture at Qualcomm, where he led architecture development on the company's Adreno GPUs. He holds a doctorate in computer science from the University of Central Florida, a Master's of Engineering in system science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and an MBA from Rollins College in Florida. He is the author of 57 granted patents, with an additional nine pending, and has published 15 journal and conference papers on topics in computer graphics.

Intel's hiring of Goel coincides with CEO Pat Gelsinger's effort to challenge Nvidia in the GPU market with a "more ecosystem-friendly" approach. The chipmaker plans to introduce discrete GPUs for the PC gaming market next year, followed by the company's Ponte Vecchio GPU for high-performance computing and AI. Gelsinger emphasized this strategic focus in an exclusive interview with CRN, stating: "The architectural disruption that I'm more concerned about in the data center is the AI one, not the Arm one, and in that sense, hey, [Intel's] products are starting to come forward to put pressure on, I'll say, an uncontested Nvidia. Well, they're going to get contested going forward because we're bringing leadership products into that segment."

Industry observers have cautiously assessed Intel's GPU ambitions. Eliot Eshelman, vice president of strategic accounts and HPC initiatives at Microway, a Plymouth, Mass.-based Intel HPC partner, told CRN that Intel's Ponte Vecchio GPU will likely have feature parity with Nvidia and AMD's GPUs for the HPC space based on disclosures he has seen. However, the critical question remains whether Intel can overcome the challenges it encountered with the now-discontinued Xeon Phi, which will require the chipmaker to succeed in software and user enablement—an area Gelsinger has identified as a major priority as part of his "software-first" approach. "Getting the hardware into customers' hands and then seeing if it works for them the way that they're hoping, we're all waiting for that because there have been false starts where Intel tried something and it didn't quite land the way that [Intel] hoped that it had," Eshelman said.