Intel's bid to break into the graphics card market has been apparent for a while. But in order to ensure their efforts won't be in vain, they needed to hire some top talent-and it looks like they got one recently.
SANTA CLARA, CA - JANUARY 16: The Intel logo is displayed outside of the Intel headquarters on January 16, 2014 in Santa Clara, California. Intel will report fourth quarter earnings after the closing bell.
According to DotESports, Team Blue has managed to hire Rohit Verma, who used to be the lead discrete graphics architect for AMD Radeon, as their new lead product architect. This hiring proves to be very much in line with the imminent release of Intel's Arc Alchemist graphics cards later this year.
During his time as the lead guy for AMD's Radeon graphics department, Verma held two major positions. But he wasn't a Team Red lifer, as he also worked at Intel for 14 years as the company's lead architect for SoC (system on a chip) products.
While at AMD, Verma was instrumental in overseeing the launch of multiple successful Ryzen CPUs, as well as the SoCs that power the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X and Series S.
His 14-year tenure at Intel actually overlapped that of current CEO Pat Gelsinger's by several years, according to Tom's Hardware. Verma joined the company in 1999, while Gelsinger has already been there for two decades. One can now consider Verma's re-hiring as Gelsinger's way of recruiting the "old team" to help the company through its next phase.
With this hiring, Intel has significantly improved their chances of breaking big in the discrete graphics card market, wherein they're relative newcomers. It's a market that has been dominated by both AMD and NVIDIA for so long, with Team Blue only being limited to making sub-par integrated graphics.
But despite his hiring, Verma would likely not have a major impact on the upcoming release of Arc graphics cards. These cards have been in the works for a while and have even experienced multiple delays already. For now, it looks like the former AMD graphics chief's entrance is more geared to preparing towards Team Blue's future in the discrete GPU market.
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Updates On The Intel Arc GPUs
Since first announcing their line of discrete graphics cards last year, Intel has been quite mum in terms of when exactly the GPUs will start shipping. Furthermore, the release has been met with multiple delays as well, to the frustration of PC gamers who just want to play games.
The latest delay to hit the Arc GPU line has them shipping by Spring, as reported by Engadget. Originally, they were set to arrive by Q1, but any and all mentions of the quarter were scrubbed by Intel on every Arc GPU page early last month. Q2 usually means around April or later.
Intel Arc is bringing a gaming graphics brand for Intel, and the company promises its release by the first quarter of 2022.
For now, their plans seem to involve launching a purported streaming service called "Project Endgame," which will reportedly allow people to access Arc graphics cards and use them via the cloud.
But despite the apparent unannounced delay, some sources speaking to YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead are saying that there could be a so-called "paper launch" for Arc in March, as reported by DotESports.
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Written by RJ Pierce
