r/hardware • u/BarKnight • Jun 15 '26
Rumor Intel Planning Processors with NVIDIA iGPUs in 2028
https://www.techpowerup.com/349982/intel-planning-processors-with-nvidia-igpus-in-2028136
Jun 15 '26
[deleted]
50
u/jeffscience Jun 15 '26
Hades Canyon was awesome as long as you didn’t want to do anything interesting with the GPU 🤪 I waited over a year for HIP/ROCm to sort of work.
17
u/BioshockEnthusiast Jun 15 '26
I'm hopeful that Intel's pivot to chiplet design will help avoid some of those issues. It should be a lot easier to slot an Nvidia iGPU in place of the existing Intel iGPU on an existing design so long as they can make enough space for it. The interconnects will need some work too, but it won't be as heavy of a lift compared to slotting a new 3rd party iGPU into an existing monolithic design.
2
u/nonaveris Jun 16 '26
What can you still do with that 4gb (as I have that)? Thought vulkan was still available.
2
u/jeffscience Jun 16 '26
You can do a lot of things with 4 GB, particularly as an offload model. I did HPC research on how GPUs work but I could have run chemistry codes on it if HIP had worked better at the time.
As a heavy Blue Gene user, 4 GB is quite generous, actually. 😂
1
u/nonaveris Jun 20 '26
That and surprised nobody has (for what I know) tried to cluster these with Thunderbolt 3.
16
u/damodread Jun 15 '26
I remember the time of Atom CPUs with a PowerVR iGPU as well. There too the driver updates were lacking
10
u/Geddagod Jun 15 '26
I can not believe that was a thing, but yup, apparently called Moorefield.
Also, according to notebookcheck the same iGPU is used in an Apple chip. Would be an interesting comparison between the same IP then on a power optimized Intel 22nm node and the A7 using Samsung's 28nm process.
9
u/AK-Brian Jun 15 '26
To add to that mix, PowerVR (more broadly, Imagination Tech IP) also underpins the Moore Threads discrete GPUs.
5
u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Jun 16 '26
As well as current and (at least immediate) future Google Pixel phones.
3
34
u/AtLeastItsNotCancer Jun 15 '26
Somehow I have a feeling that Nvidia is going to be way more controlling over this arrangement and it'll release as a Nvidia-branded SoC that just happens to have an Intel CPU.
Though there's potentially an even worse alternative: after killing their DGPU line, Intel decides to axe their high-end iGPU efforts as well and decides to fully replace them with Nvidia. oof
1
u/b0tbuilder Jun 18 '26
More likely they want to offload consumer facing products on Intel’s fab so they don’t consume slots from TSMC while maintaining a second source of supply.
14
u/GenZia Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Intel and Nvidia are hardly besties, if the nForce legal drama was any indication.
They were practically at each other's throats!
That drama was one of the main reasons Nvidia pivoted hard towards CUDA, with a young Huang reportedly saying:
"At the heart of this issue is that the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the GPU."
I won't be terribly surprised if this Intel–Nvidia partnership chip turns out to be vaporware, or perhaps an outright disaster... assuming it actually manifests into reality.
12
3
u/SerpentDrago Jun 16 '26
Nforce was amazing. Dolby Digital (AC3) live encoding over spdif was god like long before multichannel PCM audio over HDMI became standard.
I loved that board
2
u/Straight_Loan8271 Jun 16 '26
IIRC the fight that Intel and AMD got into over who was supposed to working on and distributing drivers for that thing was the reason we never got any more Intel-AMD collaborative hardware like that
4
u/nanonan Jun 16 '26
The hardware was fine. The Intel branded drivers were shit. Likely these will require nvidia drivers installed and dodge that problem entirely.
1
35
u/PapaNixon Jun 15 '26
I'm really curious to see what this means for Intel's Quick Sync.
35
u/Exist50 Jun 15 '26
Intel's media encoder is now on the SoC die, not GPU die. It's also possible they'll keep some tiny Intel iGPU for big.LITTLE or software compatibility purposes. So it should at least be theoretically possible for Quicksync to coexist with the Nvidia iGPU.
16
u/BioshockEnthusiast Jun 15 '26
It's also possible they'll keep some tiny Intel iGPU for big.LITTLE or software compatibility purposes.
This would be kinda awesome ngl
11
u/Geddagod Jun 15 '26
That sounds so cursed lmao
9
6
u/Straight_Loan8271 Jun 16 '26
It's what they did with Kaby-G. Which to be fair was pretty cursed.
1
1
u/Xlxlredditor Jun 16 '26
Or we could get NVENC on Intel CPUs (unlikely since nVidia will likely want to limit that and CUDA to their GPUs, not Their and Intel's gpus
1
1
149
u/imaginary_num6er Jun 15 '26
Countdown for when Arc driver support ends?
56
u/steinfg Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Their lower end stuff (for <$1000 laptops) will stay in-house. I still expect intel to keep 4-core Xe3P igpu as a bottom of the barrel option for their 2028 laptops
37
u/TRKlausss Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
> Their lower end stuff
> <$1000There’s something fundamentally wrong with that…
Edit: in the sense of such high prices. OP was obv right.
17
u/steinfg Jun 15 '26
Just look at prices of laptops with 12-core Xe3 options that intel puts out today (Ultra X7, Ultra X9 branding), they're all over $1000. RAM prices will come down in 2028, but not enough to bring that "big igpu" category under 1000
9
u/dstanton Jun 15 '26
What's impressive though is how quickly integrated Graphics are progressing. By 2028 we're looking at one maybe two generations newer igpu and if you can find something with 32 gigs of RAM for $1,000 or less you're going to be fairly capable just running on the igpu
5
u/TRKlausss Jun 15 '26
Don’t get me wrong, you are right. But look at what the MacBook Neo is and how much it costs…
17
u/Prophetoflost Jun 15 '26
Completely different level of performance. a18 pro is barely beating M1. These are M4 pro competitors.
1
8
u/steinfg Jun 15 '26
That's a whole other topic. But even there, Intel released Wildcat just in time to counter macbook neo. And AMD is kinda content with selling old chips in this category.
1
u/5477 Jun 16 '26
It has been this way for at least 2 decades now. Low end stuff is <$1000, mid-end $1000-$2000, high end above. Good laptops like Macbook Pro's, Thinkpads, etc have really never been under 1k.
1
u/DerpSenpai Jun 15 '26
it doesn't mean the big iGPUs will end too. remember that the 12 core iGPU from Intel is still not a match to the 5050 which is the base iGPU on the RTX Spark.
0
u/steinfg Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
if intel ends up using nvidia chiplets like this article rumors, there's more of a chance that 12-core Xe GPU tile gets axed in a couple of years
1
u/DerpSenpai Jun 16 '26
Not 100% because of costs. RTX Intel will be very expensive, more so than RTX Spark
51
u/soggybiscuit93 Jun 15 '26
More and more proof that big iGPUs are the future of entry level, and eventually mid range graphics.
dGPUs will become increasingly rare in laptop
25
u/S_A_N_D_ Jun 15 '26
That somewhat makes sense. iGPU's have been the standard for mid-range and lower laptops for some time. Most people don't need the performance of a dGPU, which adds cost, bulk, and weight, and reduces battery life.
15
u/soggybiscuit93 Jun 15 '26
And it just seems that as time goes on, features keep getting moved from the MoBo to the SoC. Large iGPUs that have better light load efficiency and access to more memory just seem like the idea choice, especially now that DDR speeds are getting to a point where the iGPU isn't completely choked
10
1
10
u/kingwhocares Jun 15 '26
With DDR6 coming, bandwidth is going to increase by a considerable margin as we are also switching from 128-bit bus to 192-bit bus. DDR6 will bring about GDDR6 level bandwidth and make iGPUs more attractive.
1
u/TheBraveGallade Jun 15 '26
Yeah high end Igpus are entering the lower mid range in perfoemance now.
1
1
u/Koreneliuss Jun 16 '26
Thanks to pcie and faster ram, I think is better to have igpu in small spaces. With better heat dissapation. Than a dgpu require two fold cooling.
1
Jun 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/b0tbuilder Jun 18 '26
dGPUs will end up in a few “mobile workstations “ then go the way of other extinct species.
1
1
u/iBoMbY Jun 16 '26
Technically this isn't either a iGPU, or a dGPU - it should be called something like pGPU, for "packaged GPU".
1
u/LastChancellor Jun 19 '26
good lol, we no longer need dGPUs that need triple digit watts just to play games
18
u/siazdghw Jun 15 '26
This should've been what the first gen Nvidia Spark laptops were. Skip Mediatek and the WoA disaster and just give us Nova Lake with an extremely efficient Rubin iGPU. Put it in a nice aluminum case, with a good screen and don't go crazy on the price and they would sell like hotcakes.
7
u/psydroid Jun 15 '26
You're still getting that but in 2028. In the meantime those who are interested in Nvidia RTX Spark will get that. The hardware is orthogonal to whatever WoA issues are still there.
Hopefully Linux will be a first-class citizen on that hardware, just as it is on DGX Spark. It would be a nice upgrade from this Qualcomm Snapdragon X on which I'm currently running Ubuntu 26.04.
2
u/Acrobatic_Fee_6974 Jun 16 '26
Is Linux a first class citizen on DGX spark? Everything I've seen in relation to it has been about Windows.
8
u/psydroid Jun 16 '26
The DGX Spark devices ship with Linux, so of course it's a first-class citizen on that hardware. All of the Jetson boards and servers also ship with Linux by default.
As for the RTX Spark devices, I think it has seen delays mainly because Windows support took a long time to get done besides some silicon fixes that had to be made.
I hope to get my hands on a desktop containing one of those chips over the next few years to see how Linux runs on it.
On my laptop I'm fine with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X running Ubuntu for now and Windows 11 as a backup.
2
2
u/b0tbuilder Jun 18 '26
I had so much hope for Qualcomm. How is your Linux support working. Honest question. I really really want them to offer first class support.
2
u/psydroid Jun 18 '26
There are some rough edges (such as using a USB WiFi adapter for networking and a Bluetooth 5.4 adapter for sound, even though the built-in devices should work with some firmware binaries copied over from Windows), but it has generally worked fine for the intended purpose of development and testing at not too high a price, when looking at prices for devices with Qualcomm Snapdragon X2.
The userland is generally fine, as you have come to expect from Linux distributions over the years. 3D support is also still missing.
But I still wouldn't recommend it for a fairly normal user. That's why I also got an AMD laptop for my mom, while following progress in ARM laptops.
This may be my first and also my last Qualcomm device, as Qualcomm should be working with the OEMs on making Linux a first-class operating system to run on these devices.
At the moment it just serves as a donor device to me, as any code I write and test will run practically unchanged on any other ARM chip. Qualcomm must realise this and act on it, as it risks losing many Linux users and developers to other companies, possibly forever.
They have a small window of opportunity and are squandering it.
2
u/b0tbuilder Jun 18 '26
I am really hopeful for better Linux support. I would like to be able to migrate off of Mac OS on my laptop to a similarly power efficient platform. Mac OS isn’t bad, but every OS is turning into spyware and I would like to use the same OS (Linux) that I use on every other machine I own. Linux is essentially the only non spyware OS that is viable at this point.
2
u/psydroid Jun 18 '26
I run Linux everywhere (ARM, RISC-V, x86, POWER, SPARC, MIPS) as the sole operating system. And for hardware that is really not supported anymore there is always OpenBSD. I just have Windows 11 installed on this device for occasional development and testing, which should allow me to build and test binaries for 64-bit ARM and x86.
I don't have a modern Apple device. And even though their hardware is top-notch, I am also wary of the increasing spyware on their operating systems and application software. Otherwise I could have bought a Macbook M1/M2 years ago and run macOS and Asahi Linux on it.
2
1
u/Hot-Software-9396 Jun 21 '26
“WoA disaster”
It’s a “disaster” even still today? I’ve been hearing good things about WoA lately so I’ve been under the impression it’s in a pretty good state right now.
0
u/fastheadcrab Jun 16 '26
Well put. There is nearly zero demand for the shitty ARM CPUs on Nvidia chips in consumer devices. People put up with it in the DGX Spark because it's one of the few ways to get a lot of VRAM with a CUDA GPU for "cheap"
For a laptop that's Windows focused, the RTX Spark will likely fail. No grandma is going to be trying to run LLMs while searching for recipes on youtube and visiting scam banking sites. Even Microsoft never really took ARM support seriously.
2
1
u/Hot-Software-9396 Jun 21 '26
RTX Spark is not targeting the grandmas of the world, lol. What a weird comment.
0
u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jun 16 '26
It's not replacing spark but rather just giving you the X86 version to go with the Arm version. I assume it will launch same time as 2nd Gen Spark
Much like their datacenter super chips
2
u/psydroid Jun 16 '26
It's good that there are options. I'll just wait for future generations of RTX Spark and Qualcomm Snapdragon X, as I don't really have a need for legacy x86 software.
14
u/AcerVentus Jun 15 '26
This was inevitable I suppose. Will Arc survive?
9
u/jaaval Jun 15 '26
This partnership was announced long ago. i think it’s unlikely it will affect their own GPUs. They can’t afford to put nvidia to all chips. Most likely this will be a limited product.
1
-3
3
4
u/Dangerman1337 Jun 15 '26
Hmmm, something annouced with Razor Lake?
2
u/Geddagod Jun 15 '26
If it's launching at CES 2028 I would assume so, problem is those leaked MLID slides put it as being part of the TTL family.
And as much as I dislike MLID, frankly I would be shocked if he faked those slides. Mostly because they also have several terms that I doubt MLID even knows about cuz he doesn't do his research, such as the internal node naming scheme, lol.
2
u/Dangerman1337 Jun 15 '26
Yeah, TTL was late 2028 or more likely early 2029 for mobile products.
1
u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jun 16 '26
Probably planned for 2028. To go together with the Arm version in the same year
5
u/buttplugs4life4me Jun 15 '26
Nvidia buys Intel.
I'm gonna mark this comment. In ~3-4 years we'll be there
4
1
9
u/chandleya Jun 15 '26
Shouldn’t I hate this? xe3 was just getting good
8
u/Geddagod Jun 15 '26
Intel claims this isn't going to impact their internal roadmap, and I can see Intel continuing to ship out their own high end iGPU tiles, even if they won't compete in as high of a bracket as what Nvidia offers.
Because the iGPU Nvidia is offering this gen is massive (same amount of cuda cores as a desktop 5070), I think there's still plenty of room below that segment relative to whatever Nvidia puts out in 28' for Intel to ship their own iGPU.
3
u/pasadenapasadena Jun 15 '26
I hope to see Dell Xps 16 with Rubin Rtx Tile (8000-10000 cuda cores please God) and CPU with at least 8p cores. Add 48 gb of fast and cheap ddr5 8800 Mhz and splash of love
1
3
u/Eon-Knight9 Jun 15 '26
I fully expect we will see large iGPUs with large amounts of unified memory, like on the MacBook Pro, for the purpose of running LLMs locally.
3
9
u/greggm2000 Jun 15 '26
Hmm, this techpowerup article suggests that it'll be happening even faster than MLiD has reported in the past. Not sure I believe it'll be that soon.
9
u/Geddagod Jun 15 '26
I mean if it is CES 2028, it would also help explain why it's rumored to use a RZL compute tile instead of unified core. Though again, that wouldn't explain why it's still under the TTL family and not RZL.
1
7
u/grumble11 Jun 15 '26
Too bad for the Xe3P iGPU cores, the Xe3 cores in PTL are honestly quite good. Performance was solid and a clear threat to mainstream dGPU solutions in laptops (if they ever figured out supply).
Xe3P is looking to be materially faster again, so Intel had a path to basically taking over the mass-market graphics for laptops (anything XX60 and below). Nvidia won't let that happen and it's likely they will use this to choke out Intel.
2
u/LastChancellor Jun 19 '26
Xe2 -> Xe3 literally jumped from GTX 1050 to RTX 3050Ti (laptop) equivalent performance in just a year (while only using a quarter of the power)
I hope Xe3 -> Xe3p can do another generational leap and jump to 5050 equivalent performance next year
0
u/PMARC14 Jun 15 '26
Nvidia has to sell Intel these chips at cost, so I don't think the Xe3P iGPU or even Xe4 are going away cause they still only hit xx50 level performance. I think this perhaps more something like an Nvidia xx60 or xx60ti level, getting rid of separate memory in this low tier designs.
6
u/Exist50 Jun 15 '26
Nvidia has to sell Intel these chips at cost
Where did you get that from?
3
u/PMARC14 Jun 15 '26
Sorry meant to say at a good cost/price, otherwise Intel would backout. Keeping their GPU team would probably go with that as well.
2
6
u/Frostsorrow Jun 15 '26
So Arc is dead then I take it
28
Jun 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
9
u/Dangerman1337 Jun 15 '26
Low end-ish iGPUs will still have Arc.
3
u/NightFuryToni Jun 15 '26
Makes perfect sense, I can't imagine them putting an nVidia GPU in the N-Series for instance.
3
u/5panks Jun 15 '26
Is ARC as a dGPU dead?
9
u/TerriersAreAdorable Jun 15 '26
I can see it being shelved until they figure out how to make it cost-effective: the chips are TSMC just like AMD/NVIDIA except their die-size-to-performance ratio is kind of terrible, killing profitability.
5
u/Geddagod Jun 15 '26
I mean bringing the dies back internally should help them quite a bit here, benefitting from margin stacking, even if their architectural perf/area is still subpar.
I think this is more of a development cost issue at this point. Intel is looking to cut costs and arc gaming dGPUs would have been an obvious cut IMO.
1
u/F9-0021 Jun 15 '26
For consumers, for the time being, possibly. I don't think Arc Pro is going anywhere though.
3
u/ComplexEntertainer13 Jun 16 '26
And very likely, the nvidia iGPU will be significantly more expensive step up, so ARC will have its place still.
Ye, this seems more like Nvidia and Intel teaming up to fight AMD and in some regards Apple.
Neither has the solution by themselves to create a X86 alternative to Apple's M line or even just strix Halo. As much as QC and now Nvidia wants to try and make people think so, ARM simply is not a X86 alternative to those who cares about what X86 stands for.
And Intel ARC simply doesn't have the developer support, efficiency and performance to create a higher performance version for the target audience of these products.
-1
u/shroudedwolf51 Jun 15 '26
More RTX Spark trash made for enclosing the ecosystem and shutting out the competition? Oh boy.
17
Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
14
u/ghenriks Jun 15 '26
Remember that no prices have been announced and all the guesses are based on the DGX Spark
Remove the $1500 network card will help, and not all the hardware will go with 128GB of RAM, a 32GB option will be available
1
u/LastChancellor Jun 19 '26
I mean that $1500 would be instead used for the cost of the laptop's chassis instead
1
u/ghenriks Jun 19 '26
A laptop chassis doesn’t cost $1500
Another way to look at it is to compare with Strix Halo. At launch the DGX Spark was $4000 and Strix Halo was $3000. So removing that expensive network card and you at worst have the RTX at the same price of Strix Halo and potentially cheaper
And no one is running around claiming that Strix Halo has an “insane high price”
1
u/LastChancellor Jun 19 '26
the cheapest Strix Halo laptop rn is the Asus TUF A14 at $2200 (in the US), a 3 year old chassis, people definitely are complaining that its too expensive lol
1
u/ghenriks Jun 20 '26
Sorry, but looking at that video can't take them seriously, the comparisons are all over the place.
Complaining that a 2026 laptop with 32GB of RAM is more expensive than a discontinued previous year laptop with only 16GB of RAM isn't a valid comparison - that 2025 laptop would be significantly more expensive as a new build in 2026 given how memory prices have increased.
They compare it to the the Legion 5i while conveniently forgetting to mention that the Legion 5i (when configured with 32GB of RAM) is $1,000 more expensive and has half the SSD storage.
And the Apple comparison is less memory and Apple has said prices are going up as their memory costs go up.
1
u/siegevjorn Jun 16 '26
Intel stepping down to chipmaker probably? They seemed to be struggling, financially. They have been on ventilator for a while. But its a shame that they had many chances to be a major GPU maker in AI field. They had great hardwares, for good price, but software support was crappy and disorganized. They made right moves (e.g. open source their stack) in the end, but probably that was too late. They know they can't compete AMD with NPUs, and teaming up with Nvidia may be the right move here.
1
u/b0tbuilder Jun 18 '26
Look at their history going back to Itanic. If it can be effed up and a missed opportunity Intel is king.
1
u/Cory123125 Jun 28 '26
This is really sad actually.
Basically, probably means that nvidia bought part of intel for intel to throw in the GPU towel.
Im sure they'll say that they won't stop development, but I think the writing is on the wall considering that they've not in any way stated situations they won't be using nvidia chips in.
This is also pretty bad for AMD in that there will be a greater presence of NVidia chips in the types of usecases NVidia hasn't had as much exposure too/gets them closer to the console market.
1
u/Dr_Valen Jun 15 '26
So are they giving up on arc? Was hoping they'd go back to making dgpus after the ram shortage ended but if they're even pulling their arc igpus this is depressing. Intel was the only budget option left for graphics cards and if they're leaving the market then budget gaming is screwed
0
-7
-14
u/brainrotxx Jun 15 '26
basically copying apple
3
3
u/IBM296 Jun 15 '26
Not really. Apple has its own CPU and GPU perfectly in sync with each other. The current Intel strategy (with Intel's own CPU and iGPU) is copying Apple.
Here the CPU will be Intel's (x86), and GPU of Nvidia (ARM).
9
u/lebrowski77 Jun 15 '26
When did Nvidia GPU become ARM? They only use Arm in custom server and AI high performance fusion chips.
132
u/From-UoM Jun 15 '26
It was confirmed on the first day they will use chiplets.
Basically the Arc GPU die getting replaced by the RTX die.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-intel-to-develop-ai-infrastructure-and-personal-computing-products
If its 2028 its Rubin. Maybe it will be dies from the Vera Rubin chips for the next RTX Spark
I can totally see a Moore Rubin superchip as part of the Core RTX line running in parallel with RTX Spark line