In a recent interview, Raja Koduri, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Accelerated Computing and Graphics Systems Division, and Roger Chandler, vice president, and general manager of Intel’s Client Graphics Products and Solutions Division, talked about the blue company’s upcoming Arc Alchemist graphics cards, revealing new details about their availability, custom models, and implementation of cryptocurrency locks similar to Nvidia’s LHR system.
Arc Alchemist GPUs will not have mining locks
One of the main topics raised during the interview was the implementation of mining locks, like Nvidia’s LHR GPUs. This was Intel’s response when asked about this topic:
Roger Chandler: That’s a hard question to answer, but what I can say is that we’re designing Intel Arc and the Alchemist family of products to put the player and the creator first. All the optimizations, the features, everything we do is to solve problems and add value to the players and developers. As far as software lockdowns and things like that, we don’t develop this product or build features that specifically target miners. In terms of what we do to prevent them or keep them out, it’s going to be a product that’s on the market and that people can buy. That’s not a priority for us.
Raja Koduri: Yes, we are not doing any additional work.
So Intel will not take any special measures to prevent minors from buying its cards but will allow the market to regulate itself, similar to what AMD has done.
Intel is not sure if the inventory will be enough to meet the demand, as this problem affects all companies.
When asked about Arc Alchemist’s inventory on launch day, Raja Koduri responded as follows:
Raja Koduri: The response to our Architecture Day announcements from our OEM buyers and end-users has been phenomenal. Everyone is welcoming us, and that is excellent news. We will participate as the third player. I will always be careful when the demand is so high and the market is so complicated.
We can always use a bigger supply. So I wouldn’t say that the supply will be enough for this market with high demand. I think any of my competitors would give you the same answer at this moment.
Basically, Raja is saying that the inventory may be large, but it will never be enough under the current market conditions, because any inventory that comes in will be sold, whether it’s too much or too little. So it’s impossible to have enough stock no matter how many graphics cards you have.
Of course, we don’t want to deprive you of the full interview with Gadgets360, so we invite you to read it on their website by clicking here. There is more information about custom models, availability in pre-assembled PCs, technologies available on Intel CPUs and GPUs, and also about XeSS, the AI rescaling technology from the Blues, so we recommend you read the full interview.