Intel unveiled a discrete GPU called Arc Graphics for Automotive at an event in China on Thursday. It is designed to boost and personalize in-vehicle consumer experiences for multiple screens and graphics that are also enabled with AI.
Intel said it would be commercially deployed in vehicles as early as 2025.
What makes the dGPU attractive to automakers, Intel hopes, is an open, flexible and scalable platform that fits into the software-defined vehicle concept that can adapt to vehicles as user needs advance.
“Intel’s strategy is to bring the power of AI into devices of every size and shape,” said Jack Weast, general manager of Intel Automotive.
The introduction event for Arc Graphics included a demo by OS-maker Thundersoft of a cockpit user interface with seven high-def screens rendering 3D graphics and six in-vehicle cameras with interactive features. The UI can run games simultaneously while running an AI PC application.
Another demo by Zhipu showed large language models running on Intel’s compute platform to highlight the ability to make vehicle control commands using natural language processing and answer vehicle information or even chat with users. Zhipu has developed a Chinese chatbot designed to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Arc Graphics offers carmakers the ability to make their vehicles more adaptable to different customer needs and future tech.
“It enables car companies to build out a car platform that runs a lot of potentially already existing code and enable a lot of developer tools already available,” said Jack Gold, founder of J. Gold Associates. “The typical car will have dozens of sensors and will need some local compute but there will be three or four server-like components to do higher level processing and tie all the functionality together.”
Intel has presence in the automotive market, but as cars gain more higher processor functions, the market will be even more attractive, Gold added. “Of course, everyone is going after this market,” which includes Qualcomm, MediaTek, AMD and Nvidia.
With such competition, Intel will need to provide better capabilities, price-performance and overall functionality at a competitive price, he added, “which they can probably do.” But Intel can already make auto-grade chips that other newcomers may not be good at.
The Arc Graphics dGPU has 28 XE cores and 448 matrix engines for AI. It supports 16GB of memory with a capacity of 16 GDDR6 and 225 watts. There are four display ports.