Intel has shared long-term plans to capitalise on transformative growth during an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors.
At Intel’s 2022 Investor Meeting, CEO Pat Gelsinger and Intel’s business leaders outlined key elements of the company’s strategy and path for long-term growth.
Datacentre and AI
Intel’s Datacentre and AI (DCAI) business unveiled its roadmap for next-gen Intel Xeon products from 2022 to 2024. Intel’s software and hardware capabilities will develop a datacentre ecosystem and usher in new progress for AI-driven software and security.
Intel’s datacentre plans will enable the company to capture new share in fast-growing markets like AI, networking, and cryptography, while growing data center revenue with leadership Xeon products.
The company share details of its Intel Xeon Roadmap Update, which includes:
* Sapphire Rapids – Starting in Q1 2022, Intel will deliver Sapphire Rapids on Intel 7, bringing its most feature-rich Xeon to market with significant performance improvements across a range of workloads and targeting up to a 30x performance increase in AI alone.
* Emerald Rapids – Coming in 2023, Intel announced Emerald Rapids, the next-generation Xeon processor on the Intel 7 process node with improved performance and extension of the memory and security benefits from the existing platform.
* New Architecture Strategy – Future generations of Xeon will have a dual-track roadmap of products based on Performance-cores (P-core) and Efficient-cores (E-core), moving from two optimized platforms into one common, industry-defining platform. This new path will maximize performance-per-watt, segment features and Intel’s overall competitiveness within the industry.
* Sierra Forest – Coming in 2024, Intel will introduce a revolutionary new E-core-based Xeon processor, Sierra Forest, as its high-density and ultra-efficient product on Intel 3.
* Granite Rapids – Reinforcing its confidence in the health of the Intel 3 process node, Intel announced that it will be upgrading Granite Rapids from Intel 4 to the Intel 3 process. This next-generation P-core Xeon product comes in 2024 and will solidify Intel’s leadership in the industry.
Client Computing
Intel’s Client Computing Group (CCG) outlined the next few years of client products.
With the PC more essential than ever, Intel expects CCG to continue to be a significant contributor to Intel’s growth. In 2021, global PC shipments were greater than 340-million units, 27% more than 2019. Intel expects this market to remain robust and grow further, particularly from the refresh off a larger installed base and increased density and penetration rates globally.
Intel’s roadmap for next-generation CCG products includes:
* Raptor Lake – Shipping in the second half of 2022, Raptor Lake will deliver up to double-digit performance increases compared with Alder Lake and come with enhanced overclocking features. Raptor Lake features up to 24 cores and 32 threads and is built on the Intel 7 process node with performance hybrid architecture. Raptor Lake will be socket-compatible with Alder Lake systems.
* Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake – Meteor Lake will be built on Intel 4. Arrow Lake will be the first Intel product using Intel 20A tiles, as well as tiles made using an external process. These products will offer a huge step forward on XPU improvement, with integrated AI and tiled GPU architecture that offer discrete graphics-class performance. Meteor Lake will ship in 2023, and Arrow Lake will follow in 2024.
* Lunar Lake and Beyond – Fueled by its IDM 2.0 strategy, Intel will be using both internal and external process nodes to deliver leadership products.
Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics
The Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group (AXG) is on track to ship products across its three segments and deliver more than $1-billion in revenue in 2022. As a growth engine for Intel, AXG’s three segments together will approach $10-billion of revenue for Intel by 2026.
The Visual Compute Roadmap and Strategy includes:
* Intel Arc Graphics Timing and Roadmap Update – AXG expects to ship more than 4-million discrete GPUs in 2022. OEMs are introducing notebooks with Intel Arc graphics, code-named Alchemist, for sale in the first quarter of 2022. Intel will ship add-in cards for desktops in the second quarter and workstations by the third quarter. Architecture work has begun on Celestial, a product that will address the ultra-enthusiast segment.
* Project Endgame – Project Endgame will enable users to access Intel Arc GPUs through a service for an always-accessible, low-latency computing experience. Project Endgame will be available later this year.
More than 85% of the world’s supercomputers run on Intel Xeon processors. Building on this foundation, AXG is extending to higher compute and memory bandwidth and will deliver a leadership CPU and GPU roadmap to power high performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads.
To date, Intel expects more than 35 HPC-AI design wins from top OEMs and CSPs. Additionally, AXG has set a course that paves the way to zetta-scale by 2027.
The Super Compute Roadmap and Strategy includes:
* Sapphire Rapids with High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) – HBM integrated into the package with Sapphire Rapids offers applications up to 4x more memory bandwidth, providing a generational improvement of 2.8x over Intel 3rd Gen Xeon processors. On the same computational fluid dynamics application, Sapphire Rapids with HBM outperforms competing solutions by up to 2.8x.
* Ponte Vecchio – AXG is on track to deliver Ponte Vecchio GPUs for the Aurora supercomputer program later this year. Ponte Vecchio achieved leadership performance results with up to 2.6x more performance compared with the leading market solution on a complex financial services workload.
* Arctic Sound-M – Arctic Sound-M brings the industry’s first hardware-based AV1 encoder into a GPU to provide 30% bandwidth improvement and includes the industry’s only open-sourced media solution. The media and analytics supercomputer enables leadership transcode quality, streaming density and cloud gaming. Arctic-Sound M is sampling to customers and will ship by mid-2022.
* Falcon Shores – Falcon Shores is a new architecture that will bring x86 and Xe GPU together into a single socket. This architecture is targeted for 2024 and projected to deliver benefits of more than 5x performance-per-watt, 5x compute density, 5x memory capacity and bandwidth improvements.1
AXG’s Custom Compute Group will build tailored products for emerging workloads such as blockchain, supercomputing at the edge, premium infotainment for cars, immersive displays and more.
Intel Foundry Services
The automotive industry is undergoing a profound transformation, as vehicles become electric, safer, smarter and more connected. These trends are driving considerable growth, with automotive silicon revenues expected to nearly double to $115-billion by 2030.
The fragmented supply chains and legacy process technologies of today will not be able to support the increasing demand and the transition to more compute-intensive applications.
In response, Intel Foundry Services (IFS) is forming a dedicated automotive group to deliver a complete solution to automakers with three clear priorities:
* Open Central Compute Architecture – IFS will develop a high-performance open auto compute platform that enables automotive OEMs to build next-generation experiences and solutions. This open compute architecture will leverage chiplet-based building blocks, along with Intel’s advanced packaging technologies, providing significant flexibility to build solutions optimized for technology nodes, algorithms, software and applications that address the compute needs of next-generation vehicles.
* Automotive-Grade Foundry Platform – Intel will enable manufacturing technologies that meet the stringent quality requirements of automotive applications and customers. IFS is targeting both leading-edge nodes and technologies optimized for microcontrollers and unique automotive needs, in combination with advanced packaging, to help customers design multiple types of automotive semiconductors. A partnership with Mobileye, a leader in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) solutions with deep experience in automotive-grade products, is enabling IFS to deliver its advanced technology nodes for the automotive segment.
* Enabling Transition to Advanced Technologies – IFS will offer design services and Intel IP to automakers, enabling them to take advantage of Intel’s expertise from silicon to system design. The IFS Accelerator automotive program, announced last year, is designed to help automotive chipmakers transition to advanced process and packaging technologies and innovate with Intel’s custom and industry-standard IP portfolio.
Software and Advanced Technology
Software is a key component of Intel’s competitive advantage that adds value across the stack for Intel’s client, edge, cloud and data center businesses. Intel’s approach to foster an open ecosystem ensures trust, choice and interoperability for our industry and acts as a catalyst for technological adoption and innovation.
Intel’s investments in software also present opportunities for growth that are both disruptive and transformative.
* Cross-Platform, Open Development – Intel oneAPI toolkits deliver a cross-platform, open programming model that unleashes developers to solve unique challenges with optimised performance.
* Solving Challenges with AI – The convergence of security and AI demonstrates the incredible promise of open and collaborative frameworks that help protect data while gathering insights. Intel Core processors and Intel vPRO systems using Intel Threat Detection Technology detect malware behavior below the operating system and feed those insights to endpoint detection and response solutions. For confidential computing in the cloud, 3rd Gen Intel Xeon processors with Intel® Software Guard Extensions protect data and AI models so data can be aggregated and greater insights can be gathered to solve challenging problems, such as identifying brain tumors.
Network and Edge
Networking and edge computing is a quickly growing industry. To accelerate growth in this market and drive the shift toward software-defined and fully programmable infrastructure, Intel created the Network and Edge Group (NEX) in 2021.
Intel expects networking and edge revenue to grow at a faster rate than overall TAM over the next decade and be a significant contributor to the company’s overall growth.
To take advantage of this opportunity, NEX is producing programmable hardware and open software from the cloud through the internet and 5G networks to the intelligent edge.
* Intelligent Fabric – Intel Intelligent Fabric is programmable platform that allows customers to advance business opportunities by programming network behavior from end to end, through the infrastructure within the data center. It puts control in the hands of customers, giving them the means to program the network. This lets customers constantly evolve, improve and differentiate their infrastructure for themselves and creates a future where a new class of computing device, the Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU), can be integrated into data centers, accelerating cloud infrastructure and maximizing performance.
* Mobile Network Transformation – Intel has led the transformation of telecommunications networks for more than a decade, propelling the world’s networks away from legacy, fixed-function hardware and enabling them to be defined by open and interoperable software. Intel’s ambition is to provide its customers with the industry’s absolute best and broadest programmable platforms to advance business opportunities, putting control in the hands of the developers to support the buildout of 5G and beyond.
* Accelerating the Intelligent Edge – Intel offers a diverse portfolio of hardware and software offerings and a vast ecosystem of partners to help customers deliver intelligent edge platforms. Enabling new use cases and workloads across a range of vertical industry markets, NEX is positioned to meet the growing need for compute and analytics at the intelligent edge. AI – specifically inferencing at the edge – provides actionable intelligence where and when the data happens. As such, it is becoming the most prolific use case at the edge, transforming and automating factories, smart cities, hospitals and more.
Technology Development
Intel remains on track to reclaim transistor performance per watt leadership by 2025. Intel’s advanced test and packaging technologies give it unmatched industry leadership that benefits its products and foundry customers and will play a critical part in the pursuit of Moore’s Law.
Continuous innovation is the cornerstone of Moore’s Law, and innovation is very much alive and well at Intel.
* Process – Intel 7 is in production and shipping in volume with the launch of 12th Gen Intel Core processors and additional products coming in 2022. Intel 4, its implementation of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, will be manufacturing-ready in the second half of 2022. It delivers an approximate 20% increase in transistor performance per watt. Intel 3, with additional features, delivers a further 18% performance per watt and will be manufacturing-ready in the second half of 2023. Ushering in the Angstrom Era with RibbonFET and PowerVia, Intel 20A will deliver up to a 15% performance per watt improvement and will be manufacturing-ready in the first half of 2024. Intel 18A delivers an additional 10% improvement and will be manufacturing-ready in the second half of 2024.
* Packaging – Advanced packaging leadership gives designers options across thermals, power, high-speed signaling and interconnect density, to maximize and co-optimise product performance. In 2022, Intel will ship leadership packaging technologies in Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio and start risk production on Meteor Lake. Foveros Omni and Foveros Direct, advanced packaging technologies unveiled at Intel Accelerated in July 2021, will be manufacturing-ready in 2023.
* Innovation – As Intel looks forward to technologies such as High-NA EUV, RibbonFET, PowerVia, and Foveros Omni and Direct, its leaders see no end to innovation and therefore no end to Moore’s Law. Intel remains undeterred in achieving its aspiration of delivering approximately 1-trillion transistors in a single device by the end of the decade.