Following the launch of the Radeon Vega, a series of events took place with the former head of the Radeon Technologies Group, Raja Koduri. He first took a sabbatical year, which led to his leaving the company. He then moved to Intel to lead the Santa Clara team responsible for developing Intel’s first discrete GPUs. But what made this transition happen? In a recent interview with Barron’s, Raja Koduri said. Basically, he wondered how he saw the next decade of his life and where his skills fit best:
“When I took this break at AMD, I thought, “What do I want to do in the next 10 years, what is the statement about the problem for the world in the next 10 years? I came to the conclusion that we were in a data explosion. The amount of data generated in the world is greater than our ability to analyze, understand and process it,” says Koduri. “To think about them and the necessary elements and technologies, which company the materials, the professionals, the resources… the only one that fulfilled everything was… Intel.
It is an interesting answer; vague and not very direct, but interesting. Koduri skipped the part where Intel put a number on the table and a list of conditions they couldn’t meet at AMD, where he drove the development of Vega and laid a new groundwork for Radeon’s graphics. But the most important thing now is that he “sent Intel on an odyssey” that puts the entire industry on the ice, especially when he says he has a state-of-the-art design team on the market. 2020, ladies and gentlemen, let’s wait until 2020 to see what Intel can offer in the dedicated graphics market.