While the industry anticipates the launch of its next-gen dedicated Gaudi 3 ASICs followed by Falcon Shores, both pushed into 2025; Intel has already revealed Jaguar Shores as the next successor in this lineup, per HPCwire. However, we aren't sure if Jaguar Shores will combine the CPU and GPU into a single platform, as was initially planned with Falcon Shores.
, The report says that Intel's Habana Labs division - probably unintentionally - revealed this codename during a technical workshop at the SC2024 conference. When I inquired for more details, Intel refused to comment, but that's expected since most specifications are likely not finalized by now.
For the uninitiated, Intel's current lineup includes dedicated ASICs termed "Gaudi," whose third iteration - Gaudi 3 - has been pushed back to 2025 and competes against Nvidia's last-gen Hopper-based H100. Intel's HPC and AI GPUs are side by side, and Ponte Vecchio currently sits in the world's third-fastest supercomputer, Aurora.
Intel merged these two families into a disaggregated XPU (CPU+GPU) codenamed "Falcon Shores" to further streamline its AI offerings. However, those plans have been axed, and Falcon Shores will arrive in a GPU-only configuration by late 2025. With that context in mind, we cannot say much about the design choices behind the upcoming Jaguar Shores.
Jaguar Shores is likely a GPGPU (General-Purpose GPU)—akin to Nvidia's B100, B200, and B300 chips—fabbed using an Angstrom-grade node (Intel 18A/14A). HPCwire suggests that Intel teased a Falcon Shores successor last year, slated for a 2026 launch. But will it be able to compete against Nvidia's Rubin chips by then?
Admittedly, Intel's AI accelerators pale in contrast to AMD and Nvidia, and the future of AI in the company still looks bleak. The data center is the bread and butter of Intel's financials. This likely influenced its decision to reserve an X3D-esque server cache even though Intel Foundry is more than capable of manufacturing it for the mainstream market. But not all is doom and gloom since the latest Granite Rapids CPUs with upwards of 128-core signal a potential resurgence for Intel, at least in servers and workstations.
