Intel Shows No Signs of Abandoning GPU Business, as CEO Lip-Bu Tan Reaffirms Commitment, Says Future Lineup Will Be Built Internally

Intel’s GPU business has always been a mystery, not only in the consumer sector, but also in the data center segment, but it seems Tan has a plan in mind.

Intel CEO Reveals Latest Effort to Hire Qualcomm Executives is Part of GPU Business Strategy

Intel has been in a tough spot since Lip-Bu Tan took over, considering the company still hasn’t set out a clear roadmap for where it wants to go with AI. If you look at the Blue Team’s accelerator plans, the only thing we know about is ‘inference-focused’ Crescent Island, as progress around Jaguar Shores is still uncertain. On the consumer side, the company is launching a Battlemage SKU in late 2024, and a Pro variant in the second half of 2025, but those launches are an indicator of Intel’s potential, not its commitment.

Speaking at the Cisco AI conference, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is still working on GPUs internally, and when asked about involving the foundry division to produce the upcoming product lineup “at scale”, Tan reiterated this point of view. He also revealed that the company’s newest executive from Qualcomm, Eric Demers, is part of a broader strategy to return to the GPU segment, indicating that Team Blue is not abandoning the consumer/AI market.’

Question: So Intel will build GPUs, CPUs, have its own foundries to build them, and will build foundries on a large scale for other manufacturers, and will make sure you partner with other GPU providers.

Intel CEO: Right. I just hired a chief GPU architect, and he’s ⁠really good. I was thrilled to have him join me, and it took some persuasion

At the Intel Tech Tour, Intel announced that it is adopting an annual product cadence, revealing development on the Crescent Island and next-generation Jaguar Shores lineups, indicating that the company is looking at TAM AI accelerators. However, given how fierce competition is in a segment dominated by NVIDIA/AMD and Intel, Intel’s re-entry requires precise execution across TCO, scale, and infrastructure offerings. Once again, Intel’s next step is to develop a well-defined roadmap for both gamers and enterprises.

On the consumer side, we saw Intel achieve great success with the launch of its Xe3 ‘Celestial’ iGPU with Panther Lake, with the Arc B390 showing performance levels that rival AMD’s Strix Halo in many cases. As far as the discrete GPU segment is concerned, we still expect the Battlemage model, the Arc B770, to be introduced at Computex this year. Overall, it can be said that Intel’s GPU business is still alive, but whether it can survive is something that future releases will determine.

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