Yesterday, I reported on claims that Intel’s hotly anticipated Arc B770 gaming graphics card is toast. Now comes news direct from Intel’s CEO that the company is committed to building future GPUs and has just hired a new Chief Architect to lead the charge.
If that’s all a bit bewildering, there is, of course, a catch. It seems that those GPUs are for AI, not gaming. At least, that’s the implication.
Let’s start off with what Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan actually said. In response to the pretty unambiguous query, “does Intel build GPUs in the future?”, Tan said this:
“Yes. And I just hired the Chief GPU architect. And then so he’s very good. I’m very delighted he joined me. And it takes some persuasions. And then I told him that not just CPU, GPU is also very important, different or different application workloads.”
As far as we are aware, it’s the first time Tan has made such a clear and unambiguous commitment to making GPUs since he arrived as CEO of Intel in March of 2025.
The catch is the context. Tan was speaking at the Second Annual AI Summit, and pretty much all of the interview was about just that: AI, servers, enterprise and so on. In other words, not the PC, not gaming.
Tan didn’t identify the new Chief Architect for Intel’s graphics push, but Reuters says it is Eric Demers, formerly of Qualcomm and indeed, Demers’ LinkedIn page has been updated with his new position.
To say that Demers has an impressive CV would be an understatement. After early work at both Matrox and Silicon Graphics, he moved to AMD or ATI as it was then and is said to have been responsible for killer GPU architectures, including R300 and R600. Since then, Demers has been leading Qualcomm’s Adreno graphics development.
Safe to say, then, that he knows a thing or two about developing GPUs. Inevitably, reports say Demers will have a “focus on AI.” But we are surely allowed to hope that this clear commitment to make future GPUs and the hiring of one of the leading figures in GPU development over recent decades also puts Intel in a good position to develop gaming GPUs, too.
If there is a follow up to Intel’s Arc B580, it could be an awfully long time coming… (Image credit: Future)
It’s worth noting that Intel already has an AI GPU roadmap. The status of such Intel GPUs as Gaudi 3, Falcon Shores, Jaguar Shores and Crescent Island has been a bit hit and miss to say the least. It’s hard to keep up with what Intel is actually selling, planning to sell or has been relegated to history before it’s even launched. But Demers won’t be setting things up from scratch.
That said, it will be many years before we see a new GPU from Intel that has been fully developed under Demers. Realistically, we’re talking end of the decade, that kind of time frame.
Put another way, even if Lip-Bu Tan’s newly stated commitment to GPUs and the arrival of Demers to lead the push do result in new gaming GPUs, don’t hold your breath for anything soon. Neither of these developments does anything to change the reality around the ongoing memory crisis and difficulties that poses in launching pretty much any new gaming GPU right now.
All in all, it feels like we’ve been waiting for years for Intel to make a real impact in the graphics card market. And it seems like that wait will carry on for several years to come.
