According to Intel CEO Sandra Rivera, artificial intelligence presents a developing and potentially profitable possibility for the company’s recently independent programmable chip segment.

The programmable chip division of Intel started working independently at the beginning of the year. On Thursday, the company revealed its future goals and adopted the moniker “Altera, an Intel company.”

For Altera, the parent firm intends to conduct a stock offering during the following two to three years.

According to Rivera, the programmable chips Altera designs are helpful for AI applications and computing activities that lie in the middle of Nvidia’s general-purpose AI chips and purpose-built bespoke processors produced by cloud computing businesses like Amazon.com.

According to her, programmable chips will satisfy a developing niche market since the technology required to run artificial intelligence is currently changing.

“(Programmable chips are) always at the forefront of that innovation cycle and that’s our job to stay at the forefront,” Rivera said. “To make it easy to drive these transitions.”

According to Rivera, the market for programmable chips was estimated to be worth $8–10 billion in 2023, but the exact size of the potential is unknown due to the lack of reliable third-party data.

“I think it’s larger than people realize,” she said, and added that’s because there are many programmable chips helping at various stages of the “AI workflow.”

The company’s contract manufacturing division, Intel Foundry, produces the Agilex family of programmable chips that are now available. Although Rivera would not confirm if Intel Foundry will produce the upcoming Agilex 3 chips, the company does anticipate being “treated like customers” and receiving a “friends and family discount on top.”

A representative for Intel responded to a follow-up email by saying that customers using contract manufacturing might “receive favourable pricing based on their anticipated volumes and Intel business units are the largest customer(s) of Intel Foundry today.”

(Adapted from Reuters.com)