A year ago, Intel's coffin was being carried and many were already in tears. Intel's failure to provide competition in launching powerful GPUs compared to AMD and NVIDIA led to CEO Pat Gelsinger being forced to answer before being replaced by Lip Bu Tan. This week, Eric Demers, a former Qualcomm employee, confirmed that he had joined Intel as a senior vice president to lead the GPU architecture team with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI).
Demers' name may not be as well-known as Gates, Jobs and Huang, but while at ATI he was involved in the development of the R300 and R600 GPUs that gave birth to the legendary Radeon 9700 and 9500 series graphics cards. After ATI was acquired by AMD, Demers moved to Qualcomm in 2012 where he was also involved in the development of the Adreno GPU, which is currently the most powerful GPU for smartphones. His status as an experienced engineer was further strengthened by his involvement at Silicon Graphics and Matrox.
His expertise in developing powerful but low-power GPUs is much needed by Intel, especially to compete with AMD. The Panther Lake series just launched at CES shows Intel is on the right track to return to its glory days.
