Intel Responds To Questions On Future Of Arc Graphics Following NVIDIA Collaboration Announcement
Earlier today, Intel and NVIDIA announced the two tech giants are planning to co-develop several generations of data center and PC products, with the latter also investing $5 billion into the former's common stock. Hours later, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and NVIDiA CEO Jensen Huang hosted a webcast to discuss the announcement followed by a Q&A session, but surprisingly, nobody thought to ask what implications the deal has on the future of Intel's Arc graphics. So, we reached out to Intel for clarification.
We asked Intel point-blank if it plans to continue developing Arc, both in discrete and integrated form, and specifically if Celestial is still on the roadmap. The last we heard, Intel's third-generation Xe3-based Celestial GPUs would soon hit the tape-out stage.
Intel's response? It's all in the interpretation.
"We’re not discussing specific roadmaps at this time, but the collaboration is complementary to Intel’s roadmap and Intel will continue to have GPU product offerings," Intel said in an emailed statement to HotHardware.
As expected, Intel didn't get into specifics, but classifying the collaboration with NVIDIA as "complementary" to its roadmap and saying it will continue to offer GPU products suggests to us that Arc, at least for now, is still in Intel's plans.
Of course, you could also interpret that statement to mean that whatever graphics designs NVIDIA brings to the collaborative table constitute "GPU product offerings." As it pertains to PC products, all we know at the moment is that Intel will make x86-based system-on-chips (SoCs) that implement NVIDIA's RTX GPU chiplets. The rest is speculation—these could span gaming laptops, game consoles, embedded designs, and, well, you name it.
From that perspective, Intel in theory could cancel Arc at any time and its above statement would still ring true. That's not how we read it, though, given that it made a point of saying the partnership with NVIDIA is complementary to its own roadmap.
It's also worth pointing out that Intel's Arc Pro B50 is currently the best-selling workstation GPU on Newegg. We also reached out to Newegg to see if it would share exactly how many units it sold, and unsurprisingly, it wasn't willing to divulge that information. Still, the Arc Pro B50 is currently on backorder at Newegg, suggesting that there is decent demand.
In any event, we have no reason to believe that Intel plans to pivot away from its development of Arc until further notice. That's a wise decision from our vantage point, as even though Intel and NVIDIA are planning several generations of products, the partnership may eventually end.
