Intel CEO says Nvidia was "extremely lucky" to become the dominant force in AI

nanoguy

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In context: It's no secret that Nvidia is dominating in the AI space, with companies big and small using its GPUs as well as the CUDA software stack to power their machine-learning projects. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says Team Green's success is partly the result of luck, as the latter company enjoyed 15 years of Intel being inactive in the discrete GPU space. Whether Intel can get lucky in the coming years now that Gelsinger is back at the helm

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger believes Nvidia's dominance in AI is more the result of luck and not necessarily the software and hardware that Team Green has been developing over the past several years. As you'd expect, it didn't take long for someone from Nvidia's machine learning group to fire back at his remark, though Gelsinger did explain how Intel might also get lucky in the coming decades.

During an interview hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Team Blue's chief was asked about Intel's AI hardware efforts and whether he believes they represent a competitive advantage. Gelsinger began by lamenting Intel's past mistakes, noting that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang "got extraordinarily lucky" with his bet on AI and Intel could have been just as lucky had the company not given up on the Larrabee discrete GPU project.

Gelsinger went on to explain how his departure from Intel 13 years ago set the company on a bad trajectory where projects like Larrabee that "would have changed the shape of AI" got canceled, allowing Nvidia to thrive with very little competition in the high-performance computing space. Then he characterized Jensen Huang as a hard worker who was initially laser-focused on graphics technology but then was lucky enough to branch out into AI accelerators when the industry started moving in that direction.

Related reading: The Last Time Intel Tried to Make a Graphics Card

Now that he's at the helm of Intel, Gelsinger is determined to course-correct with a strategy of "democratizing" AI. To that end, Intel is looking to bake a neural processing unit (NPU) into every machine and we can already see that with the launch of the Meteor Lake CPU lineup. Another area where Intel will focus is software, with a lot of work being put into developing open-source software libraries to eliminate the need for proprietary technologies like CUDA.

Moving forward, Gelsinger says we can expect at least two decades of innovations in the AI space. He believes that since AI today is mostly used to tap into simple data sets like text to create services like ChatGPT, there's a lot of room for advancements in training AI models for a variety of other applications using more complex data sets.

Demand for AI hardware is growing rapidly, so Intel's investments into new chip factories could also pay off in spades in the coming years. Even Nvidia is contemplating using Intel as a manufacturing partner, and it will be interesting to see if the latter company can use that interest to help its foundry business succeed in the long-term.

Gelsinger's remarks look more like an admission that Intel made a big mistake in giving up on its discrete GPU ambitions for over a decade, but they still invited a response from Nvidia's VP of Applied Deep Learning Research, Bryan Catanzaro. Catanzaro explains that he was part of the Larrabee project at Intel before moving on to work at Nvidia and, from his point of view, Nvidia's dominance came from executing a vision that Intel simply lacked.

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"Extremely" is rather over blown given nVidia had been curating CUDA for how long exactly? The only lucky part is how rapidly a market bubble formed around their already well established product.
 
I can't feel sorry for Intel here, they missed the boat because like all monopolies, they got too comfortable and got complacent shoving the same warmed over garbage. nVidia is kicking their asses and we have AMD with Ryzen.

Nope, can't shed a tear for them. Sorry, but not sorry.
 
I can't feel sorry for Intel here, they missed the boat because like all monopolies, they got too comfortable and got complacent shoving the same warmed over garbage. nVidia is kicking their asses and we have AMD with Ryzen.

Nope, can't shed a tear for them. Sorry, but not sorry.
They only have themselves to blame. Now with them losing the pc gaming cpu crown and rebranding the i9 13900K to i9 14900k they are getting double the negative press. What do you call that AMD is lucky 😂?
It just shows how they are top heavy on brand recognition than actually competing imo. Hopefully they can turn things around and be competitive again.
 
Ah yes, when someone beats Intel to the punch it's because they were extremely lucky, but when Intel does it it's because they're a visionary company. Makes sense.

Remember when Intel had to pay AMD over a billion dollars in their anti-trust suit? Back in the 90's Intel used to pay off vendors like Dell to stick with Intel chips and shun AMD. So I'll take "extremely lucky" over "extremely shady" any day of the week, thank you.
 
Pat's always been a blowhard, full of hot air and noxious fumes. He was an ardent defender of Netburst back in the day.

Money walks and BS talks Pat. At some point Intel will need to start printing cash again. You can only coast for so long, and the longer you do the harder it will be to recapture the market. Zen has a major foothold in desktop now. Threadripper is gaining in the workstation world. EPYC is squeezing the server market. How long will it be before you actually compete again? 3 years? 5?
 
I believe him, Nvidia slipped, fell and became the dominant force in AI... This guy says something funny every week.
 
Luck is the wrong word but there's certainly something to having a product that is extremely good at one task and just so happens to do very well at something else that comes along.

The first step in correcting mistakes is identifying and naming what went wrong. Then starting on the steps to rectify it. I think Gelsinger is on the right track with his push to bring cutting edge manufacturing back to the US and Europe from the two conflict zones in southeast asia that are currently dominant. And for a first step in the GPU market, Arc could've been a lot worse. We'll see how it goes.
 
Ah yes, when someone beats Intel to the punch it's because they were extremely lucky, but when Intel does it it's because they're a visionary company. Makes sense.

Remember when Intel had to pay AMD over a billion dollars in their anti-trust suit? Back in the 90's Intel used to pay off vendors like Dell to stick with Intel chips and shun AMD. So I'll take "extremely lucky" over "extremely shady" any day of the week, thank you.


It's normal for people to blame externalities for their failures and claim they were 100% responsible for their successes

But a huge corp ???

ignoring the funny - the harder I work the luckier I get

Industry is littered with failed projects , even great ideas have failed , wrongly timed - etc The iPhone is presented as a not new idea timed and sold right

Sony has had a lot of failures or so-so - But the walkman in hindsight was a certified winner done right

AI, EVs, etc takes a lot of capital time and commitment.
What is more interesting is what completely new products will hit and flood the market - like the smart phone , walkmans, zip ,the wheel etc
I'm always surprised when a new song comes along and will be a forever song - you think most of the catchy stuff - ode to joy etc have already been taken

What is even more surprising is when something new comes along - and everyone says - why didn't I think of that , I could have done that , that is so obvious ( but no one had up to this point )
 
Luck is part of life..
So, yes, Nvidia was lucky and that luck led them to become one of the biggest technology companies..
 
Reminds me of that old saying; "the more I practice, the luckier I get" ..... take the hint!
 
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