Intel is Gunning for NVIDIA

Intel recently announced its plans to compete with NVIDIA in the AI market by unveiling new AI accelerators and CPUs, challenging NVIDIA’s dominance. They highlighted their software stack, initiatives like Rag for data retrieval, and emphasized open platforms to position themselves as a strong competitor in the rapidly evolving AI compute market.

Intel recently held its Vision 2024 event where they announced their plans to compete with NVIDIA in the AI market. Intel and Google are both developing AI accelerators to challenge NVIDIA’s dominance in the field. Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, directly targeted NVIDIA’s CUDA model in his keynote speech, suggesting that it may have a limited lifespan. The competition in the AI market is heating up, with Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA all vying for a piece of the pie.

At the event, Intel unveiled its Gaudi 3 accelerator, which is designed for AI tasks and is claimed to outperform NVIDIA’s H100 in certain scenarios. The Gaudi 3 features a multi-die approach with impressive performance metrics and aims to compete with NVIDIA’s offerings. Intel also introduced new Zeon 6 CPUs, code-named Sierra Forest, and discussed upcoming CPU designs like Granite Rapids and Panther Lake, focusing on AI performance improvements.

In addition to hardware announcements, Intel highlighted its software stack and initiatives like Rag, which allows for data retrieval and generation without the need to train models with sensitive data. The company emphasized the importance of open platforms like PyTorch and highlighted the lower total cost of ownership of its solutions compared to competitors like NVIDIA. Intel’s push for more openness and non-proprietary solutions aligns with AMD’s marketing strategy in the GPU space.

Overall, Intel’s event showcased its efforts to challenge NVIDIA in the AI market and establish itself as a strong competitor. The company is positioning itself for a fight for second place behind NVIDIA, acknowledging that catching up will take time. The event signaled a shift in Intel’s approach, showing more humility compared to past events, and highlighting the company’s determination to succeed in the rapidly evolving AI compute market.