Intel rises as chip maker says some Arc GPUs to have summer launch, acknowledges 'delays'
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) shares rose early Tuesday after the chipmaker said some of its often-discussed Arc GPUs would be released in the summer with a staggered launch, though it highlighted some software delays with the new graphics card.
In a late Monday blog post, Lisa Pearce, Vice President and General Manager for the Visual Compute Group, said that laptops with Arc 5 and Arc 7 graphics would be available in the "early summer" and that the company was working closely with its PC partners, including Samsung, Lenovo, Acer, HP (HPQ) and Asus to get computers with its entry level Arc 3 GPU into the market "ASAP."
"We planned to have broader OEM availability at this point; however, we have had some software readiness delays and, together with COVID lock downs impacting global supply chains, OEM designs are only this month becoming more widely available," Pearce wrote in the post.
Intel (INTC) shares rose more than 2% to $43.97 in early trading on Monday.
On Monday, Seeking Alpha reported that the launch of the Arc graphic cards had been pushed back again to the latter part of the summer.
Several analysts, including investment firm Truist analyst William Stein, have praised Intel's (INTC) Arc desktop GPUs, with Stein calling it a "step in the right direction," but the GPU market has long been dominated by offerings from Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
In March, Nvidia (NVDA) unveiled the new Hopper line of GPUs, starting with the H100, which has 80 billion transistors and technically surpasses the Nvidia (NVDA) Ampere architecture, launched in 2020.
Separately on Tuesday, AMD (AMD) announced three new Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards that are available immediately from a number of different retailers.
AMD (AMD) shares rose more than 2% to $88.24 in early trading on Tuesday.
Last month, Intel (INTC) forecast second-quarter revenue to come in slightly below analysts' estimates, and suggested that weakness in the PC market may be on the horizon.