Intel Unveils New GPU, Seeking Korean AI Deals - Businesskorea

While Nvidia's dominance faces challenges, Intel is making a strategic push into the Korean AI market with its new graphics processing unit (GPU) 'Crescent Island.' The company highlighted its design capabilities at the AI Summit held at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul on November 12, as it seeks to expand its artificial intelligence infrastructure product line in a market currently dominated by Nvidia.

Crescent Island specifications

The mock-up of Crescent Island was unveiled for the first time in Korea, following last year's development announcements. This GPU is designed to enable high-capacity, low-power AI computing without requiring expensive high bandwidth memory (HBM). Intel plans to launch the product next year, targeting a market increasingly focused on AI infrastructure.

Crescent Island supports up to 480GB of memory capacity using 'LPDDR5X' low-power DRAM, which is up to five times larger than Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000 GPU. The power consumption is 350W, slightly over half of the RTX Pro 6000's 600W requirement. This combination of capacity and efficiency positions Intel as a serious competitor in the AI hardware space.

Korean partnerships strategy

Intel is proposing cooperation with Korean companies through its 'turnkey' capabilities that span from chip design to production. With Korea's significant investments in AI chip development and numerous fabless companies competing in the market, Intel sees substantial opportunities for collaboration.

Marcus Lawrence, Head of Custom Silicon Market Strategy at Intel, emphasized the company's ability to integrate processors of different architectures with advanced packaging, offering design and foundry services from concept to product. This approach allows Intel to collaborate with Korean companies starting from AI chip design.

To solidify these partnerships, Intel announced the formation of the 'K-AI Full Stack Alliance,' a cooperative system covering hardware to industry-specific services. The alliance includes 23 Korean companies, with notable participants being AI developer Upstage, NPU companies FuriosaAI and DeepX, and service development company Hancom.