The Six Five team discusses Intel launching its Arc A-Series.
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Transcript:
Patrick Moorhead: So Daniel to jump right in here, Intel Arc GPU launch. So Intel is market leader in what’s called integrated graphics and that’s graphics that are integrated into the SOC in notebooks or desktop. It’s really been AMD and Nvidia who have been pushing discrete graphics forever, but black and white Intel is now in the discrete graphics market. This week it announced Arc 3, 5, and 7 for mobile. That’s not for smartphones mobile, that’s for notebook.
So, I think it’s been since 1998, I’m going to have to go double check, with the i740, they brought out their last discrete, but instead of getting into the nuts and the bolts of the technology, because what I’ve seen is at least for Arc 3, which announces today and then Arc 5 and 7, available early summer of this year, which I believe is a push out of that. I thought they were all coming out here. There’s no other way to look at this other than positive, right? There’s very few black and whites that us analysts can put our hats on, or for that matter even retail investors or people like that. But this is a black and white. One day, Intel isn’t in the discrete graphics market and now it is. I think that’s the thing that should be focused on. And the 3, 5, 7 is exactly what you would expect, different tiers of performance and power draw. Intel is calling Arc 3 enhanced gaming, Arc 5 advanced gaming, not to be confused with enhanced gaming, and then Arc 7 for high performance gaming.
We really don’t have any of the deets on 5 or 7, looks like OEM support is pretty strong. At least the one that we were briefed under NDA, it looks like what I’ll call the leader SKU, is a design from Samsung that was announced at CES 2022, it’s called the Galaxy Book2 Pro.
The final thing that I want to talk about is looking at the future. There are a lot of interesting things you can do when you have access to the CPU and the GPU and you fund most of these notebook designs, which unlike AMD, Intel does more than anybody. There are some interesting things you can do with power. There are some interesting things you can do with actually sharing performance between the IGPU and the discrete Arc GPU. So, you know, I think that’s really what I’m looking at is can Intel do what AMD can’t by integrating the CPU and the GPU?
Daniel Newman: Yeah, first of all, this was a big announcement. We’ve all been waiting on the edge of our seats to see, can Intel come into this space? Can they not only enter it, can they be good at it? Intel’s been under a lot of pressure across the business to grow, to diversify. We heard an investor day. Pat seemed, Pat Gelsinger not Pat Moorhead, although both of you are semi-conductor bulls, seemed very optimistic that the Arc business would be important and meaningful and somewhat a quick trajectory to get into the billions of dollars of revenue for Intel. Of course, gaming is an opportunity. I do think Intel’s always had, on the desktop side, some pretty strong support in specific areas related to GPUs, but sorry, on the PC, on the laptops, it’s been slow, and this is what we’ve been waiting for.
So, the gaming is going to be an area that we’re going to have to watch closely to see if they can enter, if they can compete, if they can be successful, of course, with their relationships and the OEMs. They will get SKUs that will be inclusive of their new Arc TPUs and that will be a great way to get into it. We’ve already seen Samsung, Acer, Dell, Lenovo all are making commitments to play in this space. As they go up the stream with Arc 5 and Arc 7 will those provide more of a strength and competition to the AMD and NVIDIA SKUs?
Remember, those companies, it’s not just about the technology, it’s like a religion. So, that’s going to be the real question, is will Intel be able to find religion within that gaming community? Another couple interesting things though, Pat, that is probably worth mentioning is there is an opportunity for growth in this space that isn’t just related to gaming, growth related to data and analytics. In Mike Diamond’s research note from our team, he put it out, he basically talked about the mathematicians, statisticians and how fast that business is growing. 3D sensing technologies for LIDAR, for instance, and how much that is growing.
All of these are going to be key areas for GPUs and their markets where Intel could potentially use its strength to enter, to sell more volume. So, it’s early days Pat, but I think it’s said that the company’s aiming to ship like about four million discrete GPUs in February alone. So, there’s an opportunity to move. It’s going to be competitive. This is one that we’re going to have to come back to and say, “Did the company execute?” I’m more confident than I’ve been in a long time in Intel, under Pat Gelsinger’s leadership, but it’s going to be very, very tough sledding, but I’m optimistic. So, I’ll leave it there.
Patrick Moorhead: No, those were good adders. I think people too quickly forget the new businesses that Intel is getting into. Now, quite frankly, with the supply at the level they’re at, they’re going to sell every one that they can make. It’s key for them to stick their positioning though, in gaming.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
