Intel this week reiterated its plans to address emerging and niche AI inference use cases with products that offer the best performance efficiency and value. Among the products Intel mentioned is a hybrid solution that combines multiple IPs in a bid to address specific use cases that require an x86 CPU, a fixed-function AI accelerator, and programmable logic.
"Over the last several quarters, we have been developing a broader AI and accelerator strategy that we plan to refine in the coming months," said Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive of Intel, during an earnings call with investors and analysts. "This will include innovative options to integrate our x86 CPUs with fixed-function and programmable accelerator IP."
(Image credit: Intel)
A mysterious hybrid design
Based on the description provided by the head of the company, the hybrid AI solution is set to pack Intel's x86 cores, Intel's fixed-function accelerator IP (which may derive from its Xe GPUs, or from something more compute-oriented), and programmable logic to accelerate emerging workloads (perhaps licensing FPGA IP from Altera, or from QuickLogic, which seems to have hard eFPGA IP implemented on Intel 18A (note that this is speculation, not confirmation). The goal is to produce a hybrid AI accelerator capable of targeting both existing and emerging inference workloads.
"Our focus is on the emerging wave of AI workloads — reasoning models, agentic and physical AI, and inference at scale — where we believe Intel can truly disrupt and differentiate," Tan said.
Building a hybrid processor to address AI workloads is not entirely new. When AMD and Intel developed their product strategies for artificial intelligence and supercomputing early this decade, they envisioned processors combining x86 cores and GPU-based accelerators, perhaps envisioning bursty workloads where control flows will dominate execution.
Over time, it appeared that the compute performance appetites of AI workloads are so high that developers of frontier AI models prefer to use servers featuring one multi-core CPU and up to eight purebred compute GPUs, rather than hybrid processors featuring both x86 and GPU IP (i.e., execution dominating the control flow). As a result, both companies quietly shut down their hybrid projects and focused on AI accelerators based on architectures derived from GPUs.
GPUs are still on the table
When it comes to Intel, it first removed x86 IP from its codenamed Falcon Shores product and converted it into a pureblood AI GPU, then decided against releasing the product commercially, instead using it as a development vehicle for the software stack and rack-scale AI platform. As a result, Intel appears to have two AI accelerators within its AI roadmap (if nothing has changed): Crescent Island, due this year, and Jaguar Shores due in 2027.
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