As Intel has been looking to cut costs as part of its “next phase of transformation,” its Falcon Shores datacenter GPU looked to be in danger of getting the axe. But a recent statement from the manufacturer brings about surprising news.
An Intel spokesperson confirmed that Falcon Shores will survive and will still be released, with additional plans to integrate it with Gaudi AI processors. According to the spokesperson (and reported on by HPC Wire), “Our AI investments will complement and leverage our x86 franchise — with a focus on enterprise, cost-efficient inferencing. Our roadmap for Falcon Shores remains.”
The statement coincides with an official blog post that not only reiterated the integration of Gaudi AI IP into Falcon Shores, but that the latter is still set for a 2025 release date. The post then continued to explain that the hybrid architecture would “offer an even more powerful platform for deep learning,” providing an alternative to traditional GPU-heavy platforms.
Merging x86 CPU cores with Xe-HPC GPU cores into an Xeon socket was something Intel has been planned for years, first introducing the concept back in 2022, and it now looks like it will come to fruition with Falcon Shores.
Intel’s future with graphics cards
Given that Intel’s consumer GPU division is still under threat by the company’s cost-cutting, I genuinely hope that the good news for Falcon Shores isn’t the end of the story.
Intel’s few offerings on the consumer graphics side have easily been some of the best cheap graphics cards on the market, balancing solid performance with great pricing. And honestly Team Red and Team Green could use the competition in that field considering how recent generations have seen little to no true budget cards.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that consumer graphics cards like the Intel Arc Battlemage won’t get canceled. But hopefully, they’ll be safe alongside Falcon Shores since we need more competition in the consumer card space.