Nvidia and Intel have announced a partnership to develop new products for data centers and personal computers. They plan to create several generations of custom items that speed up applications and heavy workloads in big companies, businesses, and homes. The focus is on linking Nvidia's systems with Intel's using NVLink, a high-speed connection that lets different computer parts share data quickly.
For data centers, Intel will make special x86 CPUs. Nvidia will add these to its AI platforms, which are setups for artificial intelligence tasks like machine learning, and sell them. For personal computers, Intel will produce x86 system-on-chips, or SOCs, which are single chips that combine multiple functions like processing and memory. These will include Nvidia's RTX GPU chiplets, where GPU means graphics processing unit, a chip good at handling images and complex math, and chiplets are small modular pieces of a chip. This will help make PCs better at tasks needing strong CPUs and GPUs together.
Nvidia will also invest five billion dollars in Intel's stock at about twenty-three dollars per share, pending approvals.
A new era in chip integration
“This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem - a fusion of two world-class platforms," said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. "Together, we will expand our ecosystems and lay the foundation for the next era of computing.”
“Intel’s x86 architecture has been foundational to modern computing for decades – and we are innovating across our portfolio to enable the workloads of the future,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. “Intel’s leading data center and client computing platforms, combined with our process technology, manufacturing and advanced packaging capabilities, will complement NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing leadership to enable new breakthroughs for the industry."
Reuters notes that this could help Intel against rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices because its chips will be attached to Nvidia's flagship products.