News Intel GPUs - Intel launches A580

[Grabo]

We know it is going to be delayed, but the article surely made it sound like whole Desktop Arc will be China exclusive at launch when it is only A3 Arc being China exclusive initially.

I agree but the whole staggered approach order isn't much better:

We will release our entry-level Intel Arc A-series products for desktops (A3) first in China through system builders and OEMs in Q2. Etail and retail component sales will follow shortly in China as well.
Roll-out of Intel Arc A5 and A7 desktop cards will start worldwide with OEMs and system integrators later this summer, followed by component sales in worldwide channels.

China oem then china component, then wordwide oem and after that worldwide component. I totally agree that they shouldn't release something that isn't ready but this "shareholder launch" aka "we launched desktop products in q2.." is a bit of a letdown. Maybe Battlemage will be their Alder Lake..

 

[mikk]

The driver can't be worse than the iGPU drivers, even though I understand it's more problematic for a dGPU. They should have launched the low end DG2-128 if it's really only a software problem. I think Intel might consider cancelling retails cards entirely by the end of this year from the first generation. Because I don't think this is the last delay and it will be much harder when ADM+Nvidia comes with their 5nm generation.

And sorry to say it's once again Lisa Pearce who failed. Not that he is writing the drivers but he is responsible for the communication of his group. The late April driver had been delayed and once again she did not communicate with the public. It's the same over and over again. Delaying a driver is one thing, not telling us is another thing. Same for the poor launch communication, they are fooling us. Late drivers, late communication, late hardware.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Engineering Arc - 5/9/2022

by Lisa Pearce, Vice President and General Manager for the Visual Compute Group As with my previous blog posts, I’d like to address the top questions we’ve received from the community over the last few weeks. Question #1: Can you update us on the status of your Intel® Arc™ graphics mobile...

community.intel.com

Question #3: In an earlier blog you mentioned a driver toggle for certain benchmark specific optimizations. What is the status of that?

During our evaluation of this feature, we decided to go a step further and implement a system to allow users to control collections of our driver-based optimizations, including memory management options, constant folding, and others. We will collect related toggles into groups to allow end user customization. This has required additional development time, but we believe this will be the best solution for our Intel Arc graphics customers, and we’ll circle back in the next few weeks on when we expect to post the first driver with this capability.

Interesting. More customization is always welcome but I hope this doesn't require people to spend half an hour customizing before they can launch a game and have it work the way it should have worked without the customization.

 

[moinmoin]

Intel confirms desktop Arc will be China exclusive at launch - VideoCardz.com

Intel admits Arc GPUs are delayed and encountered software problems Lisa Pearce, VP and GM for Intel Visual Compute Group, explained the reasons behind the delays of the Arc hardware and software. If you were considering buying Intel Arc GPU, it is probably time to think about their competitors...

videocardz.com

I wanted to write something here, but frankly I'm cracking up so hard at this whole ordeal. Such a joke.

Intel showcasing its confidence:

"This staggered approach gives us confidence at each step that we can effectively serve our customer base."

So very confident indeed. Please effectively serve me, Intel!

 

[JasonLD]

Delay and more and reviews won't be focusing on poor drivers but poor perf/$ AND drivers as RDNA2 and Ampere edge closer to MSRP and even drop below, and poor performance as next gen starts launching.

Lets be real, the drivers aren't going to be perfect by the end of Q3. They probably won't be perfect on game compatibility by the time Battlemage launches. And... well lets just say there are other surprises coming (eventually).

The way I see it, this is a huge mistake on Intel's part.

Well, it is unfortunate but hopefully they get better by the time Battlemage launches. We do need a third player on GPU market badly when AMD is just taking cues from Nvidia’s playbook these days looking at their underwhelming RDNA2 refresh.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Intel may behave in the beginning but they are no angel. I think we may never see a 3070 level card at the $500 price point ever again. Damn the bastard who dreamed up the very idea of blockchain based currency.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Intel may behave in the beginning but they are no angel. I think we may never see a 3070 level card at the $500 price point ever again. Damn the bastard who dreamed up the very idea of blockchain based currency.

... because FIAT currency is inflating? As opposed to certain crypto-currencies that literally can't? LOL ROFTL at the ignorance.

 

[PingSpike]

This is honestly worse than I thought it would go and I'm an Intel GPU bear. It's like canonlake 2 now, load new product into a canon, launch into a lake never to be seen again.

 

[Aapje]

Delay and more and reviews won't be focusing on poor drivers but poor perf/$ AND drivers as RDNA2 and Ampere edge closer to MSRP and even drop below, and poor performance as next gen starts launching.

They can decide to lower the price at any point though and they can talk down the product on launch, as they already did before launch.

They can't just make the drivers acceptable that easily.

 

[NTMBK]

... because FIAT currency is inflating? As opposed to certain crypto-currencies that literally can't? LOL ROFTL at the ignorance.

*taps thread title pointedly*

 

[IntelUser2000]

And sorry to say it's once again Lisa Pearce who failed.

Yea it's starting to look like her fault if it's really a driver issue.

Then again maybe it would have been better being launched early and take the flak as @uzzi38 says.

... because FIAT currency is inflating? As opposed to certain crypto-currencies that literally can't? LOL ROFTL at the ignorance.

I wholeheartedly agree. Cryptocurrencies didn't emerge to "oppress the gamers" as people like to think. It's because the current approach, especially at the government level and centralized systems are an issue. Never in the history of humanity the entire globe gathered together to become increasingly authoritarian(hint: 2020+).

 

[linkgoron]

Intel confirms desktop Arc will be China exclusive at launch - VideoCardz.com

Intel admits Arc GPUs are delayed and encountered software problems Lisa Pearce, VP and GM for Intel Visual Compute Group, explained the reasons behind the delays of the Arc hardware and software. If you were considering buying Intel Arc GPU, it is probably time to think about their competitors...

videocardz.com

I wanted to write something here, but frankly I'm cracking up so hard at this whole ordeal. Such a joke.

They've missed Q1 and now they're missing Q2. I wonder if it's really the drivers that are bad or something else. At this rate they're going to face Radeon 7k and RTX 4K...
At least Raja got a promotion, so he's doing something right.

 

[IntelUser2000]

They've missed Q1 and now they're missing Q2. I wonder if it's really the drivers that are bad or something else. At this rate they're going to face Radeon 7k and RTX 4K...
At least Raja got a promotion, so he's doing something right.

Maybe it really is Lisa's fault, but if she's below Raja then it does come back to him.

I think promoting employees, only to sack them later because they underperformed their new position is a bad, bad idea, and they should just be put into lower ranks. Is that possibly what's required for some?

Is the graphics issue surface deep, or deeper like culture of the company that they need to fix?

 

[IntelUser2000]

They are not wrong about the covid-lockdowns affecting supply chains. Shanghai, the largest port city in the world, is under a severe lockdown, so much that citizens are rationing food.

I myself had electronic component orders from China delayed by 2-3 weeks. These were used to repair GPUs.

Sony just announced 19.3 million units of Playstation 5 consoles were shipped, which is 3.3 million less than last year. And they said it was due to component shortages.

Lisa also mentions "software issues" affecting initial ARC launch. Considering how badly it was doing for the Korean systems, it may be serious enough to warrant a delay. A discrete GPU with potentially 2x the performance compared to an iGPU was having 1% frametime problems to a point where it was worse at playability - that's a recipe for disaster. You don't want that on a dGPU.

Keeping quiet until now is very much her fault. She should have said it earlier.

They are between a rock and a hard place where if you launch it now, driver issues might be serious enough to review bomb. If they launch it later, it starts to run into a point of irrelevance.

 

[igor_kavinski]

There have to be driver superstars out there. Like the John Carmacks/Tim Sweeneys of the driver world. Intel should have hired them, instead of relying on their in-house team who clearly aren't up to the task. Heck, even open sourcing their driver could have sped up its development.

 

[moinmoin]

Maybe it really is Lisa's fault, but if she's below Raja then it does come back to him.

I think the assumption was that before Raja wasn't above her, but with this promotion he now is? Not really familiar with Intel's hierarchy.

 

[NTMBK]

There have to be driver superstars out there. Like the John Carmacks/Tim Sweeneys of the driver world. Intel should have hired them, instead of relying on their in-house team who clearly aren't up to the task. Heck, even open sourcing their driver could have sped up its development.

Software complexity is way past the point where one rockstar programmer can make a big difference. You need an entire team of great engineers, but more importantly, you need good structure and process around those engineers to make sure their efforts go to good use.

 

[Aapje]

I think the assumption was that before Raja wasn't above her, but with this promotion he now is? Not really familiar with Intel's hierarchy.

Yes, Raja has only recently been promoted to be above Lisa. So you can't blame him yet for the software issues.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Yes, Raja has only recently been promoted to be above Lisa.

Any source for that if you don't mind please? Like an organizational chart?

 

[linkgoron]

Yes, Raja has only recently been promoted to be above Lisa. So you can't blame him yet for the software issues.

Obviously the person that supposedly was one of the main architects and the head of the whole ARC project has "no blame" on the software issues . Even if he was not directly managing the software side (don't know if that's true, but IMO it doesn't really matter), he has responsibility for ARC as one of the main architects, and software is known to "make or break" even the best GPUs and it should have been their top priority. Having said that, there's probably enough "blame" to go around, in a project so big.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Obviously the person that supposedly was one of the main architects and the head of the whole ARC project has "no blame" on the software issues .

To date, I have not seen any evidence that Raja has done anything technical. His interviews certainly don't paint him as a technical person. He has the ability to throw technical terms around and talk about the next big thing (like right now, it's the metaverse and how 1000 times more computing power is needed to bring that dream into reality).

How did Raja Koduri became the chief arc.?

He is an Electronic and communications Engineer just like me. Except I'm not a graduate yet. He's not even a computer engineer, yet he is the lead architecture of radeon tech. group. AFAIK students are not taught about microprocessor architecture in Electronic and comms. enginnering. So how does ...

linustechtips.com

Can someone with knowledge about that shed some light on how he gets to lead a team of engineers if he doesn't possess the requisite technical expertise? Is he having trouble with his engineers because they resent him for being so much in the limelight?

 

[mikk]

Lisa ist the one who is running the software department of the graphics and he does it for many years and of course from the beginning of the dGPU project in 2017 or 2018. Even if Raja is now above here he had no real involvement up to now. Driver status updates should come from the leader of the software side which is Lisa Pearce. Of course Gelsinger/Koduri maybe should consider a new software group leader, I think they need a change. It's clearly not good enough what they are doing, they need different people and approaches.

 

[beginner99]

Yes, Raja has only recently been promoted to be above Lisa. So you can't blame him yet for the software issues.

You can if he focuses on playing power games distracting everyone from real work.

 

[igor_kavinski]

My suspicion is that Lisa Pearce underestimated the amount of work involved to get drivers game ready (especially for the top 100 titles). Then the hardware team also contributed to the delays by delivering working bug-free DG2 silicon very late. It seems like a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

The software team may have worked really hard, only to have their work discarded due to changes late in the game (new driver features that management thinks should be available at launch to give them an edge over the competition).

 

[DrMrLordX]

You can if he focuses on playing power games distracting everyone from real work.

He's too busy getting down and getting funky!