Decoding Intel's?Strategy - The Four Superpowers

Introduction

Over the last few years, the world has certainly taken a different and unexpected turn with the COVID-19 pandemic coming out of nowhere. While we are on the cusp of the end of the pandemic, market recovery seems to be a distant dream. With rising inflation and supply chain issues, companies have been forced to cut costs, reduce staff and think of ways in which they can stay afloat. Keeping a pulse on markets and companies I am interested in, is something I do often and these are definitely interesting times. Having worked in the semiconductor and manufacturing domains for companies like Intel , I have always been fascinated to see how large-scale organizations keep re-inventing and finding out ways to not just survive but thrive and be market leaders for years!

In this article, we will particularly take a look at Intel’s vision of global problem-solving with Four ‘Superpowers’. Without further ado, let’s dive right in and decode Intel’s Strategy!

Global Problem-Solving with the Four ‘Superpowers’

Over the last few years, Intel, one of the world’s biggest chipmakers, has been transitioning towards a more data-centric approach than being PC-centric. Personally this makes a lot of sense to me, given we have been seeing the rise and adoption of Artificial Intelligence, Edge-computing and the Internet of Things across almost every domain and industry out there. We have also been hearing about the rise of Data-Centric AI especially from Dr. Andrew NG, which talks about a major paradigm shift of building AI systems and programming with a focus on data instead of code.

Data is the main focus for building Intelligence Systems; Source: Landing.AI

Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel talked about the four ‘superpowers’ in his recent keynote at the company’s Vision 2022 event. This event focused on how Intel plans to leverage emerging technology like AI, IoT, Edge-Computing, 5G and more. I would definitely recommend you to check out the Intel Vision 2022 highlights if you have some time and particularly, Gelsinger’s Keynote . If you do not have time, not to worry, I have decoded key insights from this strategy below! The line which really struck out to me was:

“Each of these superpowers is impressive on its own, but when they come together, that’s magic. If you’re not applying AI to every one of your business processes, you’re falling?behind,”?

— Pat Gelsinger, Intel Vision 2022?Keynote

I’m sure you must be wondering, so what are these superpowers he keeps talking about?

The Four Superpowers

Just like superheroes use superpowers to fight crime and save the world, Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel , envisions Intel’s future extensively leveraging four particular superpowers which will help fuel innovation and enable global problem solving. These superpowers are:

• Pervasive Connectivity
• Ubiquitous Compute
• Artificial Intelligence
• Edge-to-Cloud Infrastructure

Pat himself mentions that this is a welcome move, not just for the company but for innovation in technology itself. According to him, the changing times as well as strides in innovation have placed Intel in a position where it can leverage these ‘superpowers’ to make the world of computing more sustainable and far superior compared to the present. Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these four superpowers now.

Pat Gelsinger laying out Intel’s vision at Vision’22; Source: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation

Pervasive Connectivity

5G-empowered pervasive connectivity, often termed as universal connectivity, intends to connect all. This allows customers to gather, store, write, access, and analyze data regardless of device or location. Gelsinger himself mentions that this level of connectivity is essential in creating an improved quality of life. He also mentioned about Intel partnering with Taiwan’s Pegatron to produce 5G networking that could be deployed in extreme conditions. The 5G network is capable of delivering a gigabit per second of throughput. Pegatron developed a portable 5G base station and radio combining 5G with Intel’s full software stack running on an Intel Xeon Scalable platform. This is designed for emergency responders especially to communicate when all communication channels are cut-off in extreme conditions.

“Think of it?… earthquakes, tornadoes, natural disasters, where the communications infrastructure is knocked out. And imagine that you were a first responder. You’re showing up for a disaster relief situation and you have no communications… We’re taking advantage of the advances in 5G availability of wireless spectrum. And you can think about this as a blueprint for next-generation, commercial 5G, the ramp deployments,”?

— Pat Gelsinger, Intel Vision 2022?Keynote

Personally, I believe this is amazing progress and a good strategy, given that we are seeing the rise of 5G networks and are still to realize its full potential. This shows how this technology and strategy could be easily leveraged for bringing connectivity to remote areas, help build smart factories and smart cities.

Ubiquitous Compute

A computer can be literally found everywhere in today’s technology fueled world. From personal computers to phones and smart devices, compute is anywhere and everywhere. Gelsinger himself mentions this in his Vision’22 Keynote.

“Everything has become a computer, essentially any device we touch. Literally compute is now how we experience the?world.”?

— Pat Gelsinger, Intel Vision 2022?Keynote?

This is true given that we started with traditional desktop PCs, moved into Laptops, smartphones and now thanks to the cloud and edge-computing, we can literally work from anywhere thanks to low-latency systems with high-bandwidth and real-time processing capabilities.?

Personally, I feel this strategy to not just be PC-centric but Data-centric is much needed for Intel, where their focus continues on:

• Server and Storage, including CPUs, chipsets, accelerators, memory and storage media in servers and storage systems.
• Networking and Connectivity, including CPUs, chipsets, accelerators, memory and storage media, and connectivity devices in network appliances and network function virtualization (NFV) systems.
• Internet of Things, including addressable logic application-specific integrated circuits and standard products, microprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors, memory and storage media and modems.?

This enables them to collaborate and build products catering to a wide variety of industries including transportation, automated driving, retail, video surveillance, healthcare, public sector, office automation, gaming and smart homes.

Artificial Intelligence and Edge-to-Cloud Infrastructure

These two superpowers definitely go hand-in-hand given one needs the other to succeed and be adopted across the industry. These superpowers enable high performance computing and AI frameworks and tools to be immediately available, which is the backbone of ubiquitous compute. Gelsinger himself elaborates on this in his keynote.

“With the unlimited reach of the intelligent edge, we can have low latency, high bandwidth, and real-time inference capabilities anywhere we want?them”?

— Pat Gelsinger, Intel Vision 2022?Keynote

I personally feel that the Intelligent Edge and software tools like Intel OpenVINO and deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch, could make us build and experience streaming services, cloud gaming, and visual AI workloads in a much better way that what it is today. However, there are hurdles to be still overcome for that. Thinking about training AI models and systems at scale, Intel stands to overcome the challenges of deploying a complete edge-to-cloud infrastructure with the launch of Habana Gaudi2 AI processors .?

This is personally very exciting to me as a data scientist because these new processors address a huge gap by providing us high-performance, high-efficiency deep learning compute choices for both training workloads and inference deployments in data centers. Intel also mentions that Gaudi2 delivers two times better AI training performance compared with current in-market A100-based offerings for key computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) workloads.?

Some of the other product lines which stood out to me include:

• 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, which will support DDR5, PCIe Gen5 and CXL 1.1, and are equipped with new integrated accelerators that deliver up to 30x performance versus the prior generation through software and hardware optimizations for AI workloads.
• Single GPU solution for media transcode, visual graphics and inference in the cloud: Intel’s data center GPU, code-named Arctic Sound-M (ATS-M), is the industry’s first discrete GPU with an AV1 hardware encoder. ATS-M is a versatile GPU targeting 150 trillion operations per second (TOPS). Developers will be able to easily design for ATS-M with an open software stack through oneAPI .
• New 12th Gen Intel Core HX processors for hybrid work: The company completed the 12th Gen family with the launch of the new 12th Gen Intel Core HX processors. Created for professionals who need maximum performance and flexibility to navigate a hybrid environment, and with up to 16 cores and clock speeds up to 5 GHz, enabling studio-level creativity, work productivity and even hardcore gaming. Work and play in the same device!

Intel’s Partner Collaborations

HPC and AI on Aurora; Source: Intel HPC

Intel has not just been focused on releasing products but has also been collaborating with several companies and organizations to solve global complex problems at-scale. I learnt about Intel’s collaboration with Argonne National Laboratories on the Aurora supercomputer initiative which runs on the Intel Xeon processor (code-named Sapphire Rapids) with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), and the Intel data center GPU (code-named Ponte Vecchio), with Intel oneAPI providing developers seamless system integration. This is on track to deliver 2 exaflops of peak performance! This will provide unprecedented capability to integrate data analytics, AI, and simulation for advanced 3D modeling.

Another interesting collaboration was between Bosch and Intel, on a research effort to develop a confidential AI solution, that allows Bosch to train its neural networks confidentially in the public cloud. To help achieve this at scale, Bosch Corporate Research has built a confidential AI platform powered by Intel Software Guard Extensions available with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable platforms .

Intelligent edge solutions powered by AI have the potential to transform areas like agriculture and food. Blue White Robotics developed a new type of autonomous agricultural solution that transforms a grower’s existing equipment into a fleet of autonomous tractors connected to an internet-based management platform. With help from Intel and Federated Wireless, Blue White Robotics made this a scalable solution that leverages Intel Smart Edge and Intel Xeon D processors and employs the power of edge computing and shared spectrum to create a private wireless network on any farm anywhere!

Personal Thoughts

Intel’s strategy based on these four superpowers looks pretty solid. Given that companies which have been there for decades can be resistant to change. It is a welcome change to see Intel move away from just being a PC-centric company and embrace emerging technology like Artificial Intelligence and Edge-Computing to become truly a Data-centric company. Compute is definitely going to evolve more and more to becoming on-demand, always-available on the cloud and Intel’s product line focusing not just on PCs but Data Centers, Connectivity, Storage, Edge Compute and AI systems definitely shows promise for the coming years.

The best part here is that Intel is not just pushing out products for the sake of it but actually making sure companies can leverage them and collaborating with them to solve real problems which can benefit work productivity as well as quality of life improvements which we saw in the previous section. Personally I am excited to see more affordable high-perfomance compute systems being available for AI workloads because without the right compute, deep learning and artificial intelligence would still be in theoretical research papers and practitioners would not be building amazing solutions to transform each and every industry out there.

Conclusion

We have gone over extensive details on Intel’s strategy leveraging the four ‘superpowers’ to fuel innovation and solve global problems. It hasn’t been easy with the pandemic as we all know. Supply chain issues especially in semiconductors have been a huge disruption to any and every technology company out there, because without the right compute, we are powerless. Intel’s four ‘superpowers’ strategy coupled with their manufacturing expansion plans in U.S. and Europe hopes to build the best-in-class supply chain ecosystem delivering these products and solutions to customers across the globe. I am personally hoping to see more amazing things from Intel in the future. If you have read till the end, thanks for staying here till the end and I would like to leave you all with a beautiful quote from Pat Gelsinger himself.

“Transformation is inevitable; it applies to?all”

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Note: As always, all views here are my own, and does not reflect thoughts or opinions of Intel or any of the organizations I work with.

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