Intel Isn’t Giving Up on its Arc GPUs Despite Nvidia Partnership

Intel and Nvidia made a surprise announcement yesterday with a new collaboration on custom x86 chips with integrated Nvidia RTX GPUs. Despite Intel joining forces with one of its main rivals in the GPU space, the company has now clarified that it’s not giving up on its own Arc GPUs.

“We’re not discussing specific roadmaps at this time, but the collaboration is complementary to Intel’s roadmap and Intel will continue to have GPU product offerings,” an Intel spokesman told PCWorld.

Intel currently makes both dedicated Arc GPUs and CPUs with integrated Arc graphics cores. The company also developed its own alternative to Nvidia’s DLSS AI upscaling technology named XeSS, and the latest version released earlier this year added support for frame generation.

Yesterday, Intel and Nvidia announced that they’re developing new x86 chips with Nvidia RTX GPUs that will “power a wide range of PCs that demand integration of world-class CPUs and GPUs.” The two companies will also be working on custom x86 CPUs for data centers.

Intel went through several reorgs and mass layoffs in recent years, and it’s not exactly clear if Arc GPUs will ever become a critical asset for the company. While this new partnership with Nvidia on custom x86 chips is exciting, Nvidia is also expected to compete with Intel with its own ARM-based chips for Windows PCs.