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There’s a lot going on in the world of Intel as it reveals secrets surrounding the Xeon Phi, plus Nvidia is apparently turning to the company to produce its GPUs.
First, however, is big news for anyone close to the company as Intel veteran, VP and president in Israel Shmuel “Mooly” Eden has announced his resignation.
Often called the “father” of the original Pentium M and Core 2 Duo (both of which drove the company’s profits between 2003 and 2010) has said he is off to “seek new challenges”.
Eden commented: “I have had the privilege to lead many Intel groups in a long line of jobs. Beyond that I was privileged to work with creative people who over the years became good friends.”
Alongside this, The Platform reported that the chipmaker is to reveal some “secrets” surrounding the upcoming “Knights Landing” Xeon Phi.
The chips will be available as processors as well as coprocessors that hook to CPUs like Intel’s Xeons through PCI-Express 3.0 links.
Intel held an event held at its Hillsboro, Oregon factory, where it discussed the Xeon Phi and the HPC, plus the commercial uses of the Knights Landing variant.
Hugo Saleh, director of marketing and industry development for the Technical Computing Group at the chipmaker, said: “At over eight billion transistors, it is a big honking die.
“This is a full server processor. It is an enterprise-class, performant, reliable processor. Anything that a Xeon can do, a Knights Landing can do.”
Finally, Nvidia may outsource the production of its GPUs to Intel Corp as part of a new strategy, reports KitGuru.
Doug Freedman, analyst with RBC Capital believes that Nvidia could also be manufacturing at Samsung to drive gross margins as Samsung charges less than TSMC, who it currently uses for production.
This however doesn’t explain why Nvidia would use Intel, who Freedman says charges ten to 15 per cent more than the other companies, unless it is to achieve specific goals using Intel’s unique manufacturing capabilities.
In other Intel news: It was recently rumoured that Intel is aiming for an April launch for its Compute Stick mini PC.
Intel also cut $1 billion from its revenue as global demand for desktops declines.
