Intel has finally got around to launching a new GPU - except it's a reskin of a graphics processor already on the market, and this time targeted at the automotive industry.

Termed the A760A, the discrete or dedicated graphics chip is the first the x86 giant has ever-launched for cars, at least in recent memory. Intel announced the silicon today at its AI Cockpit Innovation Experience event.

The chipmaker claims the new GPU will deliver "next-level, high-fidelity experiences" for vehicles, thanks to the A760A's higher performance compared to integrated graphics on other Intel processors made for vehicles, called SDV SoCs.

Intel says the A760A is an easy drop-in upgrade for car manufacturers that already use an SDV processor, and allows for a big boost in performance without changing platforms.

The extra horsepower on the A760A is apparently useful for 3D graphics, including gaming, and of course for AI software and large language models (LLMs). AI for cars seems like a stretch, though Intel claims automakers and their customers might find an LLM on the road useful for processing complex vehicle control requests, answering questions about cars, and having a conversation with your car - yes, really.

Although Intel talks a big game, we can actually be reasonably confident the A760A could deliver those things, and that's because the A760A is just a reskin of one of its existing Arc Alchemist desktop graphics cards.

Essentially, Intel took its mid-range A750 and added an extra 8 GB of GDDR6 RAM for a total of 16 GB. Ta-da: A new GPU.

Although Chipzilla's new GPU isn't exactly new, it is decently competitive. With up to 14 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 229 INT8 TOPS, it's actually beefier by those metrics than Nvidia's Orin offering, an SoC with a dozen Arm cores and an Ampere-based GPU that has up to 5.3 TFLOPS and 170 TOPS to its name.

That said, though the A760A may best Orin on paper, Nvidia's next-generation Thor chips are on the horizon and boast 2,000 TOPS.

The dynamic against AMD is clearer, since the CPUs and GPUs that it uses for cars are the same as what it uses for PC chips. The A760A is definitely faster than the integrated Vega graphics AMD pairs with its Ryzen V2000A APUs, which are based on the same Renoir silicon used in 2020's Ryzen 4000 series.

However, AMD also provides its discrete graphics uniquely to Tesla's Model S and Model X vehicles, which use the same Navi 23 chip that midrange RX 6000 graphics cards utilize. The A750 goes toe-to-toe with those GPUs, so the A760A might be able to claim the performance crown in cars, at least until AMD and Nvidia launch newer models. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/08/intel_a760a_gpu/