Intel Graphics has announced that it has teamed up with Finland's Siru Innovations. The collaboration brings in "decades of experience developing graphics IP and software services," which could be instrumental in Intel maximizing its chances of successfully establishing this relatively new division. It's all part of the ongoing ramp up of Intel Arc Alchemist and beyond, slated to arrive on desktops in the near future.
Those familiar with Siru's previous projects might be just as impressed with the tie-up as Intel graphics boss Raja Koduri. Today, Koduri seemed positively bubbly as he retweeted the Intel Graphics announcement, running through a list of notable projects past from Siru's heritage.
Siru Innovation was officially established as a company in 2011. However, its roots and technical pedigree are much deeper. As Koduri highlights in his tweet, some of Siru's core talent came from a demo group called Future Crew. Cue the 80s chiptunes...
Future Crew was established in 1986 as a Commodore 64 demo group, but moved quickly to PC demos in 1988. Influential demos with advanced 3D for the time included Unreal (1992), Panic (1992) and Second Reality (1993). Members of Future Crew split and found careers in PC gaming and companies like FurtureMark, Remedy, and the hardware company Bitboys.
Bitboys was founded in the early 90s and, after some controversy about a new graphics card IP that never materialized, it was acquired in 2006 by ATI Technologies. This same team went on to work for Qualcomm in 2009.
That leads us nicely up to 2011 and the establishment of Siru Innovations as an enabler of next gen products and provider of SoC design skills and associated software development. It says it has "designed, implemented, and verified major architectural innovations to our customer's GPUs which are in shipping products," and specializes in low-power designs. Moreover, on the software side, Siru says it has a deep understanding of computer graphics APIs and architectures down to the finest details.
The Intel Graphics tweet says that Siru is going to be a great help in gaming graphics, as well as in the fields of ADAS, hyperscale computing, and more. Sadly, no specific details are provided about what Siru will be doing for Intel. Moreover, Intel Graphics doesn't provide an outline of the new relationship with Siru, other than saying "welcome aboard." Are they being hired as consultants, or acquired and brought in house? We will update if/when we hear about the details of the relationship.
