Intel CEO Confirms Ongoing Product Collaboration with NVIDIA

Intel’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has confirmed that the collaboration with NVIDIA is ongoing, and we are about to see the results of the partnership announced late last year. Yesterday, Carnegie Mellon University awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Science and Technology to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang for his outstanding contributions to the fields of accelerated computing and AI. Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan had the honor of placing the doctoral hood on him. In a post on X, the Intel CEO confirmed that Intel and NVIDIA are still working together to “develop exciting new products,” indicating that the long-promised integration of NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs within Intel SoCs is still in progress. What began as an initial investment from NVIDIA into Intel and an announcement of product collaboration is evolving into a much deeper integration of both companies into a unified ecosystem.

First, we look forward to seeing Intel chips that integrate third-party GPU IP, this time from NVIDIA, with its GeForce RTX graphics embedded in an Intel-branded package. Similar to the now almost forgotten “Kaby Lake G” collaboration with AMD, Intel plans to integrate third-party graphics into its x86 SoC, codenamed “Serpent Lake,” which is scheduled to be the first joint collaboration between NVIDIA and Intel in a single chip package. Second, we anticipate customized x86 Xeon server processors for NVIDIA, which Intel has been producing for large hyperscalers like Amazon for years. NVIDIA is also integrating Intel Xeon processors alongside its custom “Grace” and “Vera” CPUs, with designs customized by Intel for their HGX AI server nodes.

For example, Intel’s server CPU designs, such as the “Clearwater Forest” Xeons, feature up to 288 “Darkmont” E-cores on a massive chiplet package using the 18A node. Alternatively, they will come with up to 192 P-Cores in the upcoming “Diamond Rapids” Xeons, which will integrate NVLink technology, making them an ideal companion for NVIDIA’s accelerators. We might even see customized versions with lower core counts but higher frequencies, all within NVIDIA’s SuperPODs, which house hundreds of GPUs. Whether it will be “Diamond Rapids” or another variant, we eagerly await what will be released.