Adds details about GPU business, adds comments about China's progress in chips
Intel hires Qualcomm's Eric Demmers for GPU development
Intel's GPU effort targets data centers, competing with Nvidia
Intel CEO highlights potential competition from Huawei in chip design
By Jeffrey Dastin
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Intel INTC.O CEO Lip-Bu Tan on Tuesday said the company plans to build graphics processing units (GPUs), the category of chip popularized by Nvidia NVDA.O.
"I just hired the chief GPU architect, and he's very good. I'm very delighted he joined me," Tan said, claiming that it took some persuading.
Qualcomm executive Eric Demmers last month went to Intel, a move first reported by industry publication CRN and later confirmed by Demmers on LinkedIn.
In an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the Cisco AI Summit, Tan said the GPU effort will target data centers, where Nvidia has built a massive business in recent years, and that Demmers will report to Intel's data center chip chief Kevork Kechichian.
"It's tied in with the data center," Tan told Reuters. "We're working with customers, and will then define what the customer needs."
Tan said from the stage that "a couple of customers are engaging heavily" with Intel's chip contract manufacturing operation, called Intel Foundry. In the interview with Reuters, he said that the interest was around Intel's 14A manufacturing technology and that volume manufacturing would likely ramp up later this year.
"In order to have a customer ... they have to let us know what is the volume and which product, so that we can plan and take time to build the capacity," Tan told Reuters.
Tan also said that during a recent hiring drive for chip designers, he was "shocked" to find that Huawei Technologies Co had hired about 100 "top notch" designers, despite the fact that the U.S. has restricted its access to chip industry software and tools.
Tan said that when he asked Huawei designers why they had joined the Chinese firm when it does not have access to U.S. tools, "they said, 'Even though we don't have access to the best tools, like (electronic design automation) tools from Cadence and Synopsys, we have the poor man way to do it, and we can do it,'" Tan said.
"To me, they are just shortly behind us, and if you're not careful, they will just leap forward ahead of us."
(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco,; Writing by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Mark Porter and Nick Zieminski)
((stephen.nellis@thomsonreuters.com))