Cats and dogs living together. A man eating his own head. Intel and Nvidia teaming up to make APUs. I have now, officially, seen everything.
That’s right, peeps, Intel and Nvidia have released a joint statement revealing plans to work together to build new computing products based on Intel’s x86 CPUs and Nvidia’s GPUs. Oh, and Nvidia is investing $5 billion in Intel. Hold that thought.
The announcement says the partnership will span both enterprise-class AI products and consumer PCs. It’s the latter we’re most interested in, of course, so here’s what the statement has to say about that specifically:
“For personal computing, Intel will build and offer to the market x86 system-on-chips (SOCs) that integrate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets. These new x86 RTX SOCs will power a wide range of PCs that demand integration of world-class CPUs and GPUs.”
And that really is it, barring some platitudes rolled out by Intel and Nvidia’s CEOs, Lip Bu Tan and Jensen Huang respectively. So, what are we to make of it all?
It’s a pretty extraordinary announcement and it almost certainly wouldn’t be happening if Intel wasn’t in such deep trouble of late. The $5 billion Nvidia is injecting into Intel in the form of a common stock at a purchase price of $23.28 per share speaks, no shouts, to that.
So, the first observation to note is that whatever the CEOs say, this is not a partnership of equals. Intel needs cash and it needs customers. This deal gives them both. The customer bit comes in the form of building “NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs that NVIDIA will integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms” on the enterprise side of the equation.
You can see how that makes sense for both parties. The consumer PC bit is a little harder to gauge. One obvious target is laptops. CPU-GPU products with an Intel SoC packaged with an Nvidia GPU die definitely makes sense for laptops.
Actually, Intel has done that before but with AMD, even if Kaby Lake-G, as it was known, made little impact on the market, and never actually appeared in laptops themselves. This announcement also hardly seems like a vote of confidence for Intel’s own Arc graphics, though explicit mention of “Nvidia chiplets” seems to imply fairly high performance graphics as opposed to basic integrated GPUs, which Intel will still need for its CPUs. So, perhaps Arc will live on in that form.
Beyond that, it gets a little speculative. Speaking of AMD, there are parallels with AMD’s partnership with Microsoft on a family of SoCs for Xbox, handheld gaming PCs and beyond.
An Intel-Nvidia alliance could certainly come up with something to take on AMD’s plans there head on. Were I to speculate, I’d say this feels like a hedge against both excessive AMD dominance in the traditional PC and gaming console space, plus some forward thinking from Nvidia should the AI boom dampen down.
Nvidia certainly wouldn’t want to be left just selling a few GPUs to gamers should AI GPU sales nosedive. Being much more instrumental to the broader PC platform would make a lot of sense and a partnership with Intel that also includes an equity stake is a clear step in that direction.
One of the complications here involves the arcane licensing stipulations around the x86 ISA. As things stand and as we understand it, the cross licensing arrangement with AMD re x86 means that it wouldn’t be possible for Nvidia to simply buy Intel and then make x86 CPUs. Intel has to remain an ostensibly independent entity to maintain its x86 license, as does AMD.
No doubt there are financial engineers at investment banks who would relish the opportunity to structure a deal where Intel remains notionally independent but in practice under Nvidia’s control. And this announcement could be a step in that direction.
On the other hand, it could just be that Nvidia sees it as in their interest to keep Intel alive. Microsoft took a similar view many years ago when it chucked Apple some cash to keep it afloat with a view to avoiding regulators viewing Microsoft as a monopoly. Nvidia might like to see Intel survive for similar reasons, especially in the current geopolitical environment where two US giants teaming up like this would presumably be looked upon favourably by the current White House administration.
Of course, maybe Nvidia just wants to ensure a counterbalance against AMD. If Intel were to die, AMD wold dominate x86 and the PC. Nvidia surely doesn’t want that eventuality, so keeping Intel afloat definitely has at least some advantages for Nvidia.
Anywho, this is all very early days for this announcement. There’s a press conference with CEOs Lip Bu Tan and Jensen Huang later today which we’ll be watching very carefully indeed.
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