Intel’s short-lived collaboration with AMD has come to a halt. Intel revealed this week that it is discontinuing its Kaby Lake-G series processors, which saw the company’s Core processors mixed with discrete AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics.
In an alert to PC manufacturers, Intel announced the move, noting that January 31, 2020, will mark the final date they can place orders for chips. Shipments will end on July 31, 2020.
“Market demand for the products listed in the “Products Affected/Intel Ordering Codes” table below have shifted to other Intel products. The products identified in this notification will be discontinued and unavailable for additional orders after the “Last Product Discontinuance Order Date” (see “Key Milestones” above).”
The move isn’t exactly unexpected. Kaby Lake-G was an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” design meant to counter NVIDIA’s laptop graphics by mating an 8th-generation Core processor with an AMD GPU that could outperform Intel’s then-current integrated video. Few PC makers saw fit to use it, though, and follow-ups to those systems that did arrive frequently used the Intel/NVIDIA combo.
There’s less pressure to make strange bedfellows as it is. Intel is planning its own high-performance graphics architecture (Xe), and it’ll be available in everything from basic mobile PCs through to dedicated GPUs for desktops and servers. There won’t be much point to using AMD GPUs when Intel’s in-house hardware should be good enough in the near future. Meanwhile, the Iris Plus graphics in Intel’s Ice Lake processors provides pretty adequate 3D performance as well, so the company has some options until Xe arrives.
