Semiconductor manufacturer Intel’s chief architect Raja Koduri is leaving the company to start his own business that will be a rival to Nvidia’s position in the video game and movie industry.
Key Details
- Koduri’s planned company does not have a name yet, but the former Intel executive tells Reuters that the company will work to develop new generative artificial intelligence (AI) that function with chips from Intel, Advanced Micro, Apple, and others.
- Current software tools can create images from text prompts alone, an exciting possibility for special effects in movies and video games.
- However, these tools are often only compatible with Nvidia chips. Koduri aims to change that.
Why it’s news
New generative AI technology opens a world of possibilities, particularly for those who develop special effects or design characters in movies and video games. Accessibility to these tools, however, can sometimes stand in the way of developers taking full advantage of the benefits.
Koduri’s first step in his unnamed company will be to create a tool that will make these devices compatible with multiple devices, whether it be a PC, Mac, or iPad. Artists creating these images often have difficulty looking deeper into the software code, Koduri explains.
The artists, he explains, “are not technical. They just get baffled by all this stuff.”
Koduri has helped develop around two dozen generations of computer graphics chips, Reuters reports. Though Koduri’s career has focused on chip development, he has long been interested in movies, especially special effects.
Already, Koduri has raised the first round of seed funding for the new business, though he has not shared how much has been raised. The company will have a presence in Singapore, India, and the U.S.
His company’s software will support chips manufactured with open-source technology like RISC-V.
“Any RISC-V based or open architecture based hardware that’s available, we will be the first user to give them feedback and encourage them,” he says. “Because to truly democratize AI computing for everybody, we have got to get the cost down dramatically.”