Published in Graphics

Intel announces it will use Vega for notebooks

by on06 November 2017


Fudzilla told you so in May 2017

Back in May, Fudzilla wrote about the fact Intel will work with AMD on graphics and guess what? We were right.

To stand corrected  - it is not a licensing deal but it is a very close cooperation, as we originally wrote earlier this year. The collaboration starts with the integration of AMD's Vega based GPU with an Intel CPU for powered gaming/professional notebooks. It was also spotted in the wild in June too and we suggested that Apple might be a highly likely customer. 

Intel 8th Gen CPU discrete graphics 2

We heard a lot of hateful talks when we reported this,  but Mark Hibben from Seeking Alpha went so far as to call us Fake news. Well Mark, we have been waiting for this day for a few months, and guess what, the cooperation is real. I personally have been covering the IT market with special focus on ATI, Nvidia, later AMD and Intel for 18 years and we have veterans who have been following up this market for more than four decades, and staff at Fudzilla and previously The Inquirer exclusively broke hundreds of stories.

8 Gen Core H with Vega

To stand corrected, the deal includes Intel buying Vega chips and implementing them on notebook PCB, and according to our industry sources, Intel will buy HBM 2 memory. Intel PR made a video of why and how.

Chris Walker, who is vice president of the Client Computing Group and general manager of the Mobile Client Platform at Intel Corporation, has taken the time to write a blog (news) as, apparently, if you want to lead a PC chip division, you need to be a good journalist too.

Mr Walker said that the new platform will enable the board footprint to shrink by as much as 50 percent and yes, this will include putting Vega based AMD graphics card and the HBM 2 memory on the same board with Intel Core H, the eight generation, of course.

Putting an AMD chip on an Intel inside notebook on the same PCB would enable intel to have a system with much smaller height, while packing a discrete graphics solution. Intel is using a technology called Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) a fast interconnection that sounds a lot like Coherent Interconnect Fabric Bus but we won't stir the pot.

Save space while tackling Nvidia

To people who have been following AMD and Intel for a while, this seemed as unlikely as a cold day in Hell, but the real enemy here is Nvidia, a company which already makes quite a great GPU that fits in really tiny notebooks that pack a lot of GPU performance. We had a good laugh seeing that Intel’s PR is quoting AMD’s Scott Herkelman, an ex-Nvidia Geforce guy. Well, as we suggested earlier this year, anything can happen.

Scott Herkelman, vice president and general manager, AMD Radeon Technologies Group

Our collaboration with Intel expands the installed base for AMD Radeon GPUs and brings to market a differentiated solution for high-performance graphics. Together we are offering gamers and content creators the opportunity to have a thinner-and-lighter PC capable of delivering discrete performance-tier graphics experiences in AAA games and content creation applications. This new semi-custom GPU puts the performance and capabilities of Radeon graphics into the hands of an expanded set of enthusiasts who want the best visual experience possible.”

Since AMD’s Lisa Su really likes the semi-custom business, the fact that Intel calls this solution a semi-custom GPU, speaks for itself. This cooperation was a long shot, but hey it happened, probably thanks to the combined efforts of Raja Koduri and Lisa Su.

Intel 8th Gen CPU discrete graphics

Last modified on 06 November 2017
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