Announcement At Cisco Event And Leadership Team
Intel said it will begin producing graphics processing units, marking a shift beyond its traditional focus on central processing units, as the company works to change its business and address areas dominated by rivals.
At the Cisco AI Summit on Tuesday, Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan said the company will build GPUs, processors that are widely used in gaming and in tasks such as training artificial intelligence models. The chips are more specialized than the CPUs Intel is best known for, and they have become a central product for Nvidia.
According to Reuters, the project will be overseen by Kevork Kechichian, Intel’s executive vice president and general manager of its data center group, who joined the company in September as part of a wave of engineering hires. Intel also brought in Eric Demers in January for the effort. Demers previously spent more than 13 years at Qualcomm, most recently as a senior vice president of engineering.
TechCrunch said it contacted Intel for more details.
Strategy, Market Context, And Timing
Tan said the plan is still at an early stage and that Intel will shape its approach based on customer demand and needs. Nvidia did not create the GPU, but its versions for AI systems are widely used, and the company holds a strong position in that market.
The move comes after Tan said when he became chief executive last March that Intel would consolidate and focus on its core businesses. GPUs remain semiconductors, but the decision places the company into a segment where Nvidia has built a large lead.
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