Intel Buys Indian Startup To Gain Discrete GPU Tech Expertise
Intel has acquired part of the India-based start-up Ineda Systems. The Hyderabad-based company develops technology for autonomous driving, but the acquisition would actually have an emphasis on the GPU-related skills of about a hundred technicians.
A spokesperson for Intel tells the newspaper that his company has taken over the engineering resources of Ineda Systems, giving Intel an "experienced team in the field of socs to help build a business unit for loose GPUs."
Intel acquired engineering resources from Ineda Systems, a silicon and platform services provider based in Hyderabad. This transaction provides Intel with an experienced SOC (system on chip) team to help build a world-class discrete GPU business,” an Intel spokesperson told TOI. Ineda Systems, which was set up in 2010-11 by Hyderabad based serial entrepreneur Dasaradha Gude, operates in the sphere of autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and IoT.
The startup hit the headlines in 2013-14 for its design and development of low-power Dhanush chips for wearable devices and had raised over $60 million from big-ticket investors, including Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures, Walden-Riverwood Ventures, Imagination Technologies, among others, but ran into rough weather after it shifted gears to automotive technologies. Gude, who founded Ineda after he quit as AMD India managing director, remained an investor in Ineda though he went on to set up Invecas in 2014 and regained 100% stake in Ineda in Nov 2018. Intel, which has a few hundred engineers engaged in software development in Hyderabad, is also planning to set up a global technology centre in Hyderabad housing around 1,500 engineers initially, which may be ramped up to 5,000 people, as per an announcement made by then IT minister KT Rama Rao’s office in Nov 2018.
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To achieve it they need vertical and horizontal investement, it's a good point to have lot of money to do it, and intel have quite some
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You know, its easier and a lot CHEAPER to buy current (and very underpay) worker contracts in the form of a "company/startup" than to hire them directly. Seen this pattern happen a lot even here in south america. Hell, some people just make startups to get a bunch of talented people on board and then sell the company before even having a product, IP or copyrights.
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Does anyone remember the last time Intel decided to do a discrete GPU product line, and what happened to it? IIRC, long ago and many moons past, a company called "Real3d" partnered with Intel to form a GPU chip company, which Intel later bought out to produce the "i740"--a discrete but not really discrete GPU--and doing this back when 3dfx and nVidia were shipping products with 16mb's of local onboard vram--and doing all of their texturing out of local ram--but not the i740 Intel series--oh, no. Intel decided to market a discrete GPU with only 4-8mb's of onboard vram, so that the GPU would be forced to do AGP texturing from *system ram*--yes, dog-slow system ram.. i7xx was designed that way! Long story made short: 3dfx's and nVidia's 16mb local bus vram GPUs literally ran circles around Intel's GPU because they did not rely on the much, much slower AGP texturing with which Intel hobbled its own GPU right out of the gate. (nVidia advertising at the time claimed their TNT GPUs were using AGP texturing for gaming--that's yet *another* story about nVidia's penchant for misleading and/or false advertising, for another time!) The pundit web sites like Sharky Extreme and Anandtech went *nuts* over AGP texturing, even as dog-slow as it was/is compared to texturing from onboard Vram running some 20x faster than AGP system ram even then! (That's why 3d cards even today sport massive amounts of Vram--it's still many times faster than PCIe3/16 access to system ram.) Wasn't even a contest. And so, Intel gathered up all its marbles and went home--ceasing production of the i7xx series and closing down the company for good. Until now...or, until sometime in the indeterminate future, that is...

I remember a lot of this because I bought and tested, and returned, every i7xx GPU Intel marketed. I forget how many different models there were--2 or 3--but I owned 'em all. And as I say, I returned them all--the 3d performance was just terrible, and AGP texturing was the reason why. Intel hobbled its own GPU on the drawing board. I always give this stuff the benefit of the doubt--especially I did in those days when 3d was brand new. We were practically just out of the Matrox Millennium era (fantastic 2d card that tried, and failed, at 3d, too--Matrox Mystique also graced my GPU graveyard--ugh.) IIRC, 3dfx was the only 3d-card OEM at the time who was honest about AGP texturing--saying they weren't interested in it because texturing out of their local vram was ~20x faster--and, man, I still remember how these supposedly knowledgeable Internet pundits *turned on* 3dfx with a passion (I recall nothing of the sort from HH in those days!)! Because AGP texturing was new and gimmicky, and it was an Intel tech, so *of course* it had to be *great*...so many of them made fools of themselves about that--and nary a one ever retracted the falsehoods and garbage they'd plastered all over the Internet. Ah, it was sort of like Larrabee--the same know-nothing people were accusing Larrabee of all kinds of super-human 3d feats of daring, including *cough* real-time ray tracing--right up until Intel cancelled Larrabee without ever putting it into production. When money changes hands--beware of over-the-top marketing! Chances are good it's totally false. Really, though, I doubt Intel paid them anything to hype Larrabee as they did--it was just a sort of *page hits* kind of thing, if you get my drift. Yours truly was on those forums trying valiantly to explain why 3dfx had an excellent point--but it was like being a reed, crying in the wilderness--they did not care for the facts. I'm glad those days are *gone*--the people left standing like HH *know* what's what and are perfectly happy sticking with the facts!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel740
*weird about Wikipedia: I first looked up "real3d" and their article said nothing about the company being bought by Intel, but when I looked at the link above, the write-up on the i7xx does mention it, indeed...I'm not terribly a Wiki fan as it is hit and miss.
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Holy wall of text batman.
I feel like i just read a book.
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I'm not sure I understand what Intel is getting out of this. Isn't it a bit late for them to be looking for something like this now? Also, it doesn't seem like they provide GPUs that would be much more powerful than Intel's current offerings. So, unless they have some patented tech that Intel wants/needs, I just can't seem to find why they'd do this.