Intel and AMD work together to develop thin, light laptops with good graphics capabilities
There’s no doubt the big news in tech this week was Intel announcing that it would incorporate AMD graphics technology in its processors. The two companies have had a fierce rivalry that goes back decades, so this week’s announcement came as a bit of a surprise. Intel has worked closely with Nvidia in the past, especially since AMD bought Nvidia’s rival ATI in 2006.
The announcement said that Intel will use AMD technology to provide better graphics for lower end laptops. The new IC will not compete with AMD’s Ryzen chip, which is targetted at higher end gaming laptops. This sounds like really good news for casual gamers, like myself, who need a thin and light portable device and enjoy playing games, but don’t need ultra-high graphics resolution.
The new chip will will be the first to use Intel’s Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technology to connect an 8th generation Intel CPU to an AMD Radeon graphics unit and High-bandwidth memory (HBM2). EMIB is an in-package high density interconnect of heterogeneous chips. EMIB uses a very small bridge die, with multiple routing layers, often referred to as 2.5D package integration. The technology combination should make sure that getting data around the package is not a roadblock for performance.
Graphics technology wasn’t the only thing that Intel got from AMD this week. The company also poached AMD’s graphics guru, Raja Koduri, to be head of Intel’s new graphics division, the Core and Visual Computing Group. The recruitment of Koduri will see Intel developing its own graphics capabilities.
Graphics technology is growing in importance, and not just for visual applications. The technology is also used heavily in AI and machine learning because of its huge data throughput capabilities. At the moment, Intel is licensing a lot of Nvidia technology for these applications, so it makes sense to bring someone in-house to lead the company’s own technology development. The market agreed with Intel’s decision, with shares in both AMD and Nvidia dropping at the news.
