News Raja Koduri Leaves Intel to Found Software Start-Up

[Admin]

Intel Chief Architect Raja Koduri is leaving the company to start his own company.

Raja Koduri Leaves Intel to Found Software Start-Up : Read more

 

[Darkbreeze]

Probably more like "Raja Koduri leaves Intel because Intel, much like AMD, realizes he ran their program into the ground."

 

[Howardohyea]

this is surprising and definitely breaking, I’m curious on what would Intel achieve without him, and they better fix most, if not all, bugs by Battlemage or this is really going to turn into a billion dollar sinkhole.

Same applies to their CPU division, if nothing good comes out of it the whole company is going to have a rough journey.

 

[Darkbreeze]

No. It's probably the best move Intel could make. AMD learned their lesson a long time ago. His input and guidance have never resulted in either of these companies being successful in any department in which he was a part of.

 

[renz496]

so intel are preparing to fully pull away from discrete GPU market.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

so intel are preparing to fully pull away from discrete GPU market.

I doubt it. Well, that still could happen, but Arc was late, Ponte Vecchio is late, Intel 7nm (aka Intel 4) is late. Raja isn't to blame for the process delays, but the execution of the graphics portfolio was lacking. How much of it was he directly responsible for, and how much of it was done by other people under his direction? There's very little that couldn't be done with other people in place instead of Raja. One man's vision doesn't a success make, but if it's the wrong vision it can certainly result in failure.

 

[RichardtST]

AMD has gone on to prosper without him. Perhaps now Intel will too.

I wouldn't worry about the GPU market. Intel has that locked down now since NGreedia will not stoop so low as the <$500 GPU market. Intel has a chance to make some money here. I think this is them jumping on that chance.

 

[renz496]

I doubt it. Well, that still could happen, but Arc was late, Ponte Vecchio is late, Intel 7nm (aka Intel 4) is late. Raja isn't to blame for the process delays, but the execution of the graphics portfolio was lacking. How much of it was he directly responsible for, and how much of it was done by other people under his direction? There's very little that couldn't be done with other people in place instead of Raja. One man's vision doesn't a success make, but if it's the wrong vision it can certainly result in failure.

i think battlemage will be the indicator intel will look at if they want to continue in consumer discrete GPU venture or not. if Arc still not making profit with battlemage then bye bye discrete Arc.

 

[renz496]

AMD has gone on to prosper without him. Perhaps now Intel will too.

I wouldn't worry about the GPU market. Intel has that locked down now since NGreedia will not stoop so low as the <$500 GPU market. Intel has a chance to make some money here. I think this is them jumping on that chance.

i don't think so. even with current Arc intel already admit that they are not making money. and that is by using TSMC 6nm process which is cheaper version of TSMC 7nm. the only way you can make money by selling your hardware with cheaper price is if you able to sell them in very large volume to counter that small margin on each unit. component and wafer are getting more and more expensive. many people said AMD letting go the chance to gain market share with RX7000 series by not going with cheaper aggressive price since the very beginning. maybe AMD really want to do that but cost wise it might be not realistic for them to do it.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I wish him all the luck with his new business and hopefully it’s successful and employees lots of people while paying good wages

 

[Avro Arrow]

I sometimes don't know how he got the positions that he did. Maybe the companies that hired him were desperate and he knew how to tell them what they wanted to hear. I know that Intel was desperate in the GPU sector but I don't remember ATi being overly desperate.

Regardless, his portfolio will now have two GPU types in it, one of which was a failure and both of whom have ridiculous nomenclature. I mean, seriously, who thought that "Vega" was a good name for a video card? I thought that it was hokey as hell and who is going to take a card called "Battlemage" seriously? Arc wasn't a great name but it was sure as hell better than Battlemage.

When I think of the name Battlemage, I think of some annoying troll in WoW, not a potent video card.

 

[btmedic04]

The best thing to happen to AMDs Radeon group was Raja leaving. Here's to hoping the same for AXG

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I sometimes don't know how he got the positions that he did. Maybe the companies that hired him were desperate and he knew how to tell them what they wanted to hear. I know that Intel was desperate in the GPU sector but I don't remember ATi being overly desperate.

Regardless, his portfolio will now have two GPU types in it, one of which was a failure and both of whom have ridiculous nomenclature. I mean, seriously, who thought that "Vega" was a good name for a video card? I thought that it was hokey as hell and who is going to take a card called "Battlemage" seriously? Arc wasn't a great name but it was sure as hell better than Battlemage.

When I think of the name Battlemage, I think of some annoying troll in WoW, not a potent video card.

Vega came from AMD's "stars" series of GPU codenames, the other being Polaris. Prior to that, AMD used the "Arctic Islands," "Volcanic Islands," "Sea Islands," "Southern Islands," and "Northern Islands" as codenames. Things had gotten a bit screwy near the end (the "Arctic Islands" which later became Polaris) and so AMD was looking elsewhere, and with Vega they changed the codenames to "stars." But apparently the fans liked Vega enough that it became the actual product name.

Battlemage, like Alchemist, is just a codename. We don't call the Arc A770 an Alchemist, unless we're talking about the architecture, and we won't call the Arc B770 a "Battlemage" unless we're talking about the architecture.

 

[bigdragon]

Generative AI gaming? So, the kind of AI designed to replace character artists, environment artists, level designers, quest designers, and so on. Sure, let's make the lives of people, who are already suffering under terrible management and abusive hours, even more stressful. This kind of AI is usually focused on displacing people rather than augmenting their workflows by tackling things nobody wants to do (e.g.: UV unwrapping and networking).

I don't have any ill will towards Raja. I wish him well. I think he's laid some successful foundations at hardware companies. But, he's going into a space that threatens a lot of my friends who don't have something to fall back on.

 

[waltc3]

Completely unsurprising. I always thought him overrated at AMD, and his parting remarks to AMD when he left included an exhortation to do better at execution, which is ironic considering that Koduri had to move to Intel to truly appreciate what failure to execute looks like. Ironically, as well, AMD is where it is today chiefly because of its superior execution! I note as well that AMD's GPU designs and products went straight through the roof after he left--some huge improvements. Also, it's customary to name the company you are moving to, which he didn't do, so I imagine the start-up hasn't actually started up as of now.

I think that Intel will withdraw from the GPU market as it is not something that you can get in cheaply and make a lot of profit from without a substantial investment. Intel last dropped out of the discrete 3D GPU business back in the 90's, after purchasing Real3d and shipping a few products (I owned three of the i7xx GPUs myself--returned all three as they weren't competitive with either 3dfx or nVidia at the time--it wasn't even close.) I won't be surprised when Intel folds up Arc, either. When Intel started with Raja and the GPU endeavor, the company had a wholly different idea as to how the next five years would play out, and it didn't anticipate AMD being so difficult to catch, much less to exceed. Whatever Intel does with the GPU space, it will not involve Raja, of course.

AI is a big fad, a buzzword we will all hear about so much we'll be sick of hearing it, if we already aren't. AI is just like any other programming--it must be programmed by humans and overseen by humans, or it comes to naught. It's still garbage-in, garbage-out, 100%. Raja is already milking the buzzword "AI" for whatever he can get out of it, and he's not the only one by any means! Beware the AI marketers, who will attempt to sell exaggerations and falsehoods, for as long as the fad has legs.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Generative AI gaming? So, the kind of AI designed to replace character artists, environment artists, level designers, quest designers, and so on. Sure, let's make the lives of people, who are already suffering under terrible management and abusive hours, even more stressful. This kind of AI is usually focused on displacing people rather than augmenting their workflows by tackling things nobody wants to do (e.g.: UV unwrapping and networking).

I don't have any ill will towards Raja. I wish him well. I think he's laid some successful foundations at hardware companies. But, he's going into a space that threatens a lot of my friends who don't have something to fall back on.

Don’t worry if his past performance has anything to do with it, it won’t be successful 🤣

 

[Papusan]

The first nail in the farewell coffin for Intel ARC graphics cards for gamers. Raja Koduri jump the ship. Or kicked out by Gelsinger (the best or easiest way without much fuzz/fuss or speculations). Yep, Pat Gelsinger will finally have the chance to get rid of this loss project.

 

[Giroro]

I don't know what Koduri's AI company is going to do, specifically. Based on his legacy, I'm 100% certain their core business model will be to sell rebranded GPUs with embarrassingly broken drivers.

 

[Giroro]

The first nail in the farewell coffin for Intel ARC graphics cards for gamers. Raja Koduri jump the ship. Or kicked out by Gelsinger (the best or easiest way without much fuzz/fuss or speculations). Yep, Pat Gelsinger will finally have the chance to get rid of this loss project.

The first nail was when Intel inexplicably hired Koduri in the first place.
This is a good sign that Pat is serious about building Intel's GPU brand into something worth saving.

 

[Giroro]

Generative AI gaming? So, the kind of AI designed to replace character artists, environment artists, level designers, quest designers, and so on. Sure, let's make the lives of people, who are already suffering under terrible management and abusive hours, even more stressful. This kind of AI is usually focused on displacing people rather than augmenting their workflows by tackling things nobody wants to do (e.g.: UV unwrapping and networking).

I don't have any ill will towards Raja. I wish him well. I think he's laid some successful foundations at hardware companies. But, he's going into a space that threatens a lot of my friends who don't have something to fall back on.

Don't worry, I don't think Raja Koduri knows what "Generative AI gaming" means. I bet he just opened up chat GPT and typed "In your opinion, what trending keywords should Raja Koduri use to start a business to trick people into investing billion dollars?".
To which the response was "As an unbiased generative language model, I am not able to express an opinion, nor can I predict what will make a billion dollars. In my opinion It's not a nice thing to trick people and it's anti-social behavior...." Followed eventually by "I do not specifically know which Raja Koduri you mean; one Raja Koduri is an executive in the tech industry who oversaw several GPU products ..." Then there was 5 more paragraphs wasted on contradicting disclaimers, finally ending in "Here are some keywords relating to GPUs: Graphics, Processing, Unit, Integrated, Dedicated, Nvidia, AMD, Content Generation, Generative, AI, Gaming

And he just read the last 3 words and said, "Write a Press release to announce the start of this business".

 

[Amdlova]

People rage about the raja this guy go where don't have none, build something and moves along.
Best wishes to raja.

 

[DaveLTX]

People rage about the raja this guy go where don't have none, build something and moves along.
Best wishes to raja.

So AMD (ATI) didn't have anything before raja came along? Cool.

 

[RedBear87]

So AMD (ATI) didn't have anything before raja came along? Cool.

It's not like they had nothing, but admittedly AMD is still using Vega in their current generation laptop APUs (courtesy of Barcelo R, which is technically the refresh of a refresh actually). I've always been a little amazed at how this man can be divisive (and with divisive I mean most people, especially AMD enthusiasts, hating his guts).

 

[renz496]

The first nail was when Intel inexplicably hired Koduri in the first place.
This is a good sign that Pat is serious about building Intel's GPU brand into something worth saving.

Or it could be the other way around. Consumer discrete gpu market is very expensive market due to certain factor. That's why some legit gpu maker that still exist today does not want to involved themselves with the market. If they need "gpu" for the accelerator market then they did not need to waste their effort and resource trying to compete on consumer gpu market. Even nvidia and AMD compute accelerator are now no longer use the same design as GPU. AMD have CDNA for that and nvidia we can see Hopper. In fact even with Ampere A100 nvidia already ditching the gpu part that is unnecessary for it's compute task making the first nvidia accelerator chip that cannot be used for rendering 3d graphic at all.

 

[Amdlova]

I have build pcs with ATI rage 9xxx 1xxx 2xxx 3xxx 4xxx 5xxx 6xxx 7xxx. Moved to nvidia come back with the 5xx series. Can't buy a Vega because the price and power. But even today can't find a cheap used Vega, before raja and after ATI (AMD) still suck.