Nvidia’s future GPUs, which are certain to play key roles in how our future games would look, could well be manufactured by a company that almost qualifies as an industry rival – Intel. The first words about this were revealed by Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, as part of an interview hosted on Wednesday, March 23. Since then, Intel chief Pat Gelsinger has also echoed Huang’s statement – suggesting that the two companies are most likely at an advanced stage of collaboration.
Nvidia’s Future GPUs May Also Rival Intel’s Own
Here’s where things get quite interesting, though. Intel itself is expected to bring consumer GPUs to the market in the coming years, and has been at work to build this for a while. Nvidia, on the other hand, is one of the biggest names in the GPU industry, which means that its technologies and future roadmaps would be fiercely protected corporate secrets. Yet, if Nvidia’s future GPUs are to be built by Intel, this would mean a fair amount of exchange of notes between the two companies.
Answering these questions, Nvidia’s Huang said, “We have been working closely with Intel, sharing with them our roadmap long before we share it with the public, for years. Intel has known our secrets for years. AMD has known our secrets for years. We are sophisticated and mature enough to realise that we have to collaborate.”
The statement highlights the levels of non-disclosure arguments and fine lines that are toed among these companies, but for essential reason. While each of them, such as Nvidia, Intel or even AMD, would want their own hardware to succeed over the others’ – the usage experience for consumers need to be uniform. As a result, most tech majors have a fair amount of collaboration between each other to build products according to common industry-wide standards.
Such a collaboration between Nvidia and Intel could be similar in nature to what Apple and Samsung have often had. Samsung, for instance, has long been Apple’s biggest rival in the global smartphone market. However, Samsung’s manufacturing division has also produced displays and other technologies for Apple’s iPhones as contracted manufacturers. The Intel-Nvidia saga could have a similar story – with Intel Foundries working as a separate company from the main Intel arm.
