Intel has listed its upcoming Arc Professional A40 graphics playing cards for skilled functions within the South Korean Nationwide Radio Analysis Company (RRA) database. That is a necessary a part of the method that precedes product availability, so Intel look to be prepping to launch this board within the coming months and even weeks. Proper now all now we have is that this itemizing, so add a pinch of salt till we get extra info. The Arc Professional A40 appears to be an entry-level answer aimed toward techniques with gentle workload.
This isn’t the primary time Intel (or one in every of its companions) has listed a workstation-grade discrete GPU. Dell listed its Precision 5470 cell workstation with Intel’s Arc Alchemist A370M Professional (primarily based on the ACM-G11 GPU with 128 EUs) again in April, so Intel seems to be to be getting into the skilled visualization (ProViz) GPU market quickly. Intel renamed the Arc Alchemist A370M Professional to the Arc Professional A40M in April, in keeping with to VideoCardz.
The Dell Precision 5470 included the Arc A370M Professional/Arc Professional A40M alongside Nvidia’s RTX A1000 4GB GDDR6 graphics processor, which is one in every of Nvidia’s most simple professional-grade GPUs.
Assuming Intel follows the identical nomenclature for cell and desktop GPUs, we will fairly assume the Arc Professional A40 graphics card is predicated on the ACM-G11 GPU with as much as 128 EUs (equal to as much as 1,024 stream processors) and is positioned towards entry-level skilled GPUs from AMD and Nvidia.
Talking of entry-level workstation graphics boards for desktops, we should always be aware that Nvidia solely affords Turing-based T600 ($242 (opens in new tab)) and T1000 ($362 (opens in new tab)) graphics boards for this market. Whereas the market of low-end ProViz graphics playing cards is not giant, it undoubtedly exists and there are prospects who demand to have ISV (unbiased software program vendor) certifications for functions resembling AutoCAD and Photoshop.
GPUs resembling this are sometimes pre-installed in machines from distributors resembling Dell, HP, and Lenovo. It is not notably stunning that Intel determined to begin rolling out its skilled Arc Alchemist lineup with entry-level boards fairly than top-of-the-range choices that can inevitably face stronger competitors from Nvidia.
What stays to be seen, after all, is how Intel’s Arc Professional A40 performs and the way the corporate plans to place its product. However from the seems to be of it (or, fairly, from the dearth of higher-performing SKUs within the RRA database), Intel goes after quantity, right here, and can be promoting primarily to OEMs.