I know Intel is dipping its toe into the GPU market, but let’s be real, AMD and nVidia are the only options and have been for the last 20+ years. The manufacturers/assemblers of the complete graphics cards are varied and widespread, but the core tech comes from two companies only.
Why is this the case? Or am I mistaken and am just brainwashed by marketing, and there are in fact other viable options for GPUs?
Cheers!
Oh, and there are other graphics makers that could theoretically work on linux, like Imagination’s PowerVR, and some Chinese startups. Qualcomm’s already trying to push into laptops with Adreno (which has roots in AMD/ATI, hence ‘Adreno’ is an anagram for ‘Radeon’)
The problem is making a desktop-sized GPU has a massive capital cost (over $1,000,000,000, maybe even tens of billions these days) just to ‘tape out’ a single chip, much less a line, and AMD/Nvidia are just so far ahead in terms of architecture. It’s basically uneconomical to catch up without a massive geopolitical motivation like there is in China.