Hardware and software developers gathered at Intel’s second annual Intel Innovation event to hear about Intel’s latest advancements toward an ecosystem.
In a statement, Intel said the latest innovations are based on the principles of openness, choice, and trust — from driving open standards to make “systems of chips” at the silicon level, to enabling efficient and portable multi-architecture artificial intelligence (AI).
Intel also presented a wide range of new tools, programs, and services to assist its extensive developer community in overcoming obstacles and producing the next wave of innovation.
“In the next decade, we will see the continued digitization of everything. Five foundational technology superpowers — compute, connectivity, infrastructure, AI, and sensing — will profoundly shape how we experience the world,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said.
According to Gelsinger, hardware and software developers will build the future as they advance what’s possible.
“Fostering this open ecosystem is at the center of our transformation, and the developer community is essential to our success,” he added.
Vendor lock-in, access to the newest hardware, productivity and time-to-market, and security were just a few of the difficulties that Gelsinger discussed in his keynote speech. He also introduced several solutions to help developers overcome these difficulties, including:
- New and upcoming technologies a click away in the Intel Developer Cloud: The Intel Developer Cloud, initially launched as a small beta experiment, has grown to provide developers and partners with early and effective access to Intel technologies, from a few months to a full year before the release of a product. Several of Intel’s most recent platforms, including the Habana Gaudi 2 deep learning accelerators, the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Sapphire Rapids), the 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors with high bandwidth memory (HBM), the Intel® Xeon® D processors, the Intel® Data Center GPU (Ponte Vecchio), and the Intel® Data Center GPU Flex Series, will be available for beta testing in the coming weeks.
- Computer vision AI, built faster and easier: Anyone in the organisation can rapidly and easily create powerful AI models thanks to the new and collaborative Intel® Geti computer vision platform. Intel Geti minimises the time, AI skill, and cost required to construct models by providing a single interface for data upload, annotation, model training, and retraining. Teams may implement high-quality computer vision AI within their businesses to promote creativity, automation, and productivity thanks to built-in OpenVINO optimisations.
According to Intel, The Intel Developer Cloud, in conjunction with performance-optimized developer tools and resources such as Intel® oneAPI toolkits and the Intel Geti platform, can assist speed time to market for solutions built on Intel platforms.
Additionally, Gelsinger presented the most recent developments in Intel’s entire product line, including:
- A new standard for desktop processor performance: With up to 15 per cent faster single-threaded performance and up to 41 per cent greater multi-threaded performance gen-over-gen, 13th Gen Intel Core desktop CPUs, headed by the flagship Intel® CoreTM i9-13900K, allow users better gaming, create, and work.
- A big step for Intel GPUs: A crucial area of growth for Intel, Gelsinger delivered updates on all of Intel’s graphics products. Argonne National Laboratory is now receiving server blades with the Ponte Vecchio, for use in the Aurora supercomputer.
- New workloads for Flex Series GPUs: Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series offers users a single GPU solution for various visual cloud workloads. OpenVINO, TensorFlow, and Pytorch, three widely used deep learning and AI frameworks, will run on it. Numenta, an AI neuroscience customer, is claiming incredible performance gains using Inte’s Flex Series GPU for real-world inference workloads on MRI data in partnership with Stanford University.
- Intel Arc GPUs for gamers: Intel said it is dedicated to restoring the balance between price and performance for gamers with the Intel Arc graphics family. The Intel Arc A770 GPU will be available on 12 October, offering compelling content production and 1440p gaming performance.
- A high-fidelity AI boost for games: This year, Intel said over 20 games would use Xe Super Sampling, a gaming performance accelerator that works with both Intel discrete and integrated graphics. XeSS is now rolling out to existing games through updates. Additionally, the software development kit is now accessible via GitHub.
- Many devices, one experience: With functionality including file transfer, text messaging, phone calls, and phone notifications coming to new laptops starting later this year, Intel® Unison is a new software solution that enables seamless connectivity between phones and PCs.
- Data centre acceleration, on demand: Several accelerators for AI, analytics, networking, storage, and other demanding applications are included in 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Customers can activate additional accelerators through the new Intel® On Demand activation approach, beyond the default configuration of the original SKU, providing greater flexibility and choice as needed.
Samsung and TSMC leaders joined Gelsinger to pledge support for the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) consortium, which seeks to establish an open ecosystem for chiplets designed and manufactured on various process technologies by various vendors to collaborate when integrated with advanced packaging technologies.
With the three biggest chipmakers and more than 80 of the top semiconductor firms joining UCIe, Gelsinger declared, “we are now making it a reality.”
Gelsinger stated that “Intel and Intel Foundry Services will usher in the era of the systems foundry,” with four key components: wafer manufacturing, packaging, software, and an open chiplet ecosystem. This platform transformation will enable new customer and partner solutions with chiplets, according to Gelsinger.
“Innovation once thought impossible has opened entirely new possibilities for chipmaking,” Gelsinger said.
Another such invention that Intel is working on is a ground-breaking pluggable co-package photonics system. Optical links in the data centre show promise for enabling unprecedented levels of chip-to-chip bandwidth, but manufacturing challenges make them unaffordably expensive. To solve this problem, Intel researchers created a reliable, high-yielding, glass-based solution with a pluggable connector that makes production easier and less expensive while still providing room for future system and chip package layouts.
According to Intel, building the future requires finance, software, tools, and products. Intel established the $1 billion IFS Innovation Fund at the beginning of the year to aid existing businesses and early-stage startups creating game-changing innovations for the foundry ecosystem. Intel revealed the first round of funded businesses working on innovations throughout the full semiconductor stack, including Astera, Movellus, and SiFive.
