Intel is Committed to its Roadmap states Raja Koduri

Nivedita Bangari

Jul 31

Raja Koduri has intervened and denied the veracity of those claims, saying that they are committed to their roadmap and on the path to ramp up four new product lineups later this year. The past two days have been very difficult for Intel, and several rumours have surfaced alleging that Chipzilla might be considering axing its graphics products.

Raja Koduri, vice president of Intel's Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG), posted on Twitter that the company is ramping up Alchemist (the Intel Arc A-Series) and will keep on enhancing the user experience.

By experience, Raja must be referring to the ecosystem of drivers and worldwide availability, both of which have been the main causes of the emergence of such debates. The driver suite is currently being optimised to provide end customers who purchase Intel Arc-powered laptop and desktop solutions with the best possible experience. Intel appears to be moving toward an official launch later this summer.

Thanks Anshel - We are very much committed to our roadmap. We are ramping Alchemist and will continue to improve the experience. You will see more updates from us this quarter.
AXG is also on track to ramp 4 new product lines by the end of the year https://t.co/N6BaVPRT2r

— Raja Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) July 29, 2022

AXG is on schedule to launch four new product ranges by the end of this year, according to Raja. By the end of this quarter, users may expect to receive Ponte Vecchio and Alchemist, and we can anticipate the business to scale up production of the Arc-infused Meteor Lake 14th Gen chips, which Pat Gelsinger predicted will be ready in 2023 on the Q2 2022 earnings call. In 2023, the business will also begin giving consumers samples of its newest Rialto Bridge AI GPU.

After Raja Koduri joined Intel in 2017, the corporation established its brand-new Visual Computing Group, which is currently known as Intel AXG. Since the company's founding, it has been working diligently to offer a completely new and innovative graphics ecosystem under the Arc brand.

The first Arc devices from Intel were introduced for laptops in Q2 2022 and eventually expanded to desktop PCs with limited distribution outside of China.

Early reviews have noted that the Arc discrete GPUs require significant work in the driver suite, and I think Intel doesn't want the larger audience to experience any difficulties while using their newest hardware because consumers always value first impressions. The dependence on the integrated graphics software stack, which has a very different design than Arc GPUs, was the main cause of the majority of these problems. This led to poor performance levels and compatibility with games and APIs.

"Our software release on our discrete graphics was underperforming," said Gelsinger. "We thought that we would be able to leverage the integrated graphics software stack, and it was wholly inadequate for the performance levels, gaming compatibility, etc. that we needed. So we are not hitting our four million unit goal in the discrete graphics space, even as we are now catching up and getting better software releases."

"While we will not hit our GPU unit target, we remain on track to deliver over $1 billion in revenue this year,"

"In Q2, we started to ramp Intel Arc graphics for laptops with OEMs, including Samsung, Lenovo, Acer, HP, and Asus. COVID-related supply chain issues and our software-readiness challenges caused availability delays that we continue to work to overcome. Intel Arc A5 and A7 desktop cards will start to ship in Q3."

Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger

But by delaying the global introduction, Intel Arc will have to compete with the upcoming next-generation solutions from AMD and NVIDIA. So even if the initial Arc lineup might not launch according to plan, we are hopeful that the following generations, including Battlemage and Celestial, will put AXG back on track. In a market dominated by green and red, I want to see Intel live up to its promises and provide us with a potent third player.