Intel is announcing on Wednesday a new push to win over software developers as it fights to grow its hardware ecosystem amid competition from rivals like Nvidia, even as it staves off slowed growth.
"Intel is an iconic hardware company of the last 50 to 60 years," Intel CTO Greg Lavender told Insider. "Software makes the hardware sing. Without software, the hardware doesn't sing."
Key to this initiative, Lavender says, is a renewed commitment to open source software, with Intel providing and maintaining toolkits that help developers build programs that can tap into advanced hardware capabilities for graphics, edge computing, and other processor-heavy applications.
Notably, since those toolkits are open source, developers have their choice of where and how to run it: While Intel is only taking responsibility for ensuring the toolkits are compatible with its own processors, Lavender says that developers will have the choice of using them to build software for other hardware platforms — including those based around processors from Nvidia, AMD, or other Intel competitors.
"Customers win because they get choice, and they get the best open source software, and everyone contributes to and gets amplification of all open source communities," Lavender said.
Lavender says that this approach is crucial to help Intel win over the loyalty and trust of developers, which he says is necessary to help close the competitive gap. Intel is focused on building hardware that helps PC manufacturers, data center providers, and cloud platforms provide their own customers with cutting-edge graphics and AI capabilities, where Lavender acknowledges that its rivals have in some ways pulled ahead.
"We're a little bit late to the market on GPU technology on AI and ML and high-end graphics," Lavender said. "We're playing catch up quick."
Intel already contributes to open source projects like the Linux operating system and the PyTorch and TensorFlow AI projects. In the third quarter, Intel had 8 million downloads of its software it built for TensorFlow, it says. Intel plans to be "good citizens in the open source community," Lavender said.
Lavender himself joined Intel from VMware in June, tapped by CEO Pat Gelsinger to lead the chip giant's software strategy. The two execs had previously worked together at VMware, where Lavender had similarly served as CTO to Gelsinger, then the cloud company's CEO.
Lavender says he and Gelsinger have "grown up together in this industry." Lavender has worked as a computer science professor at UT Austin and companies like Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Citi, and most recently, VMware. Gelsinger spent most of his career at Intel before working at EMC as COO and then VMware as CEO.
"Pat and I got to know each other over 13 years ago," Lavender said. "We developed a mutual trust. I trusted him as a hardware guy. He trusted me as a software guy."
In addition to open source software, Intel is also investing over $20 billion to build chip factories in Arizona to develop a foundry business. Analysts say investors may be worried this investment will take years to pay off.
Do you work at Intel? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@insider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request.
