Raja Koduri leaves Intel to start generative AI gaming software company

midian182

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What just happened? Raja Koduri, the man who left AMD five years ago to become Intel's Chief Architect, is leaving the company to launch his own generative AI software startup. Team blue boss Pat Gelsinger made the announcement on Twitter, thanking Koduri for his help with Intel's high-performance graphics endevors.

Having taken a leave of absence from his role as head of the Radeon Technologies Group at AMD in September 2017, Koduri a month later announced he was leaving the company, noting that he felt the urge to pursue his passion beyond hardware and explore broader solutions. Just 24 hours later, he joined Intel to become its Chief Architect, helping Chipzilla build its discreet Arc graphics cards. Koduri was promoted to Executive Vice President in April 2022.

"Thank you @RajaXg for your many contributions to Intel tech & architecture-especially w/high-performance graphics that helped bring 3 new product lines to market in '22. Wishing you success as you create a new software co. around generative AI for gaming, media & entertainment," Gelsinger tweeted.

The Arc graphics card series, which arrived later than planned to middling reviews, haven't challenged Nvidia or AMD in the way Intel hoped. But the company has recently been slashing their prices and introducing new drivers that have improved performance.

Koduri was also responsible for other Intel projects, including its first blockchain accelerator.

Following his departure from Intel, Koduri will be joining the generative artificial intelligence revolution by starting his own software company focusing on this field. He told Reuters that the as-yet-unnamed organization will build a new wave of generative AI tools that work on Intel, AMD, and Apple chips, or even future chips based on RISC-V.

Koduri said AIs that can generate images from text, such as Midjourney 5, have great potential when it comes to video games and visual effects. He explained that his company's first product will be a service that lets artists easily use generative image AI tools no matter what device or platform they may be working on, without having to delve into the code. Those artists "are not technical. They just get baffled by all this stuff," Koduri said.

Dr. Randhir Thakur, who previously headed Intel's manufacturing arm, is also leaving the company. He is being replaced by Stuart Pann, who will take over as senior vice president and general manager of Intel Foundry Services.

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Koduri gets a lot of flack at times, but the so-so performance of the Xe-HPG architecture isn't entirely his fault. Intel had one of two routes for entering the discrete GPU market -- spend hundreds of millions of dollars designing an entirely new design from scratch or take the iGPU structure that had been developed for years and expand upon that. One doesn't need to be a master in business to recognize the second route was the sensible option.

What he can be blamed for, though, was giving Xe-HPG a heavy compute/AI focus, hence why the ACM-G10 is such a big chip. At 406 mm2, it's absolutely huge compared to the Navi 23 and GA106 (237 and 276 mm2). I can't image Intel makes much money off the likes of the A750/A770.
 
Corporations and big manager leave... seen this a few dozen times. Behind doors agreements and in public only milk and honey. It was clear from the first inside relocation that this will happen to Raja.

What I'm never going to see now is Raja dropping on the floor a new released card, like that time with the Rx480.

 
Plz Nvidia, hire him ... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Yep, Raja 'please, please, please, go to Nvidia next'.
Or should I say 'after' Nvidia?
Joking aside, Nvidia is doing great, I just read (check Nvidia GTC) what they are doing in AI industry (including ChatGPT), and it is very promising and lucrative for them.
Also, Nvidia just launched their new Grace Hopper CPU-GPU combo for accelerated computing and artificial intelligence applications based on ARM processors, so now they are capable to offer a full solution GPU-CPU to server customers.
Only AMD having CPU and GPU solutions may compete with them.
Intel is in deeper water even more than before, failing on GPU so spectacularly.
 
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Raja has done his role.. don't blame him for anything.. he just doing his role.. just like the others..
 
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