[ksec]

Competing with Nvidia on Gaming GPU wasn't something Intel were keen to do after their failure with i740. The Gaming market wasn't as big, and you are ultimately competing on Driver optimisation, not on actual hardware.

CUDA and Deep Learning may have started in 2007 and 2010. But their usage, or their revenue potential was unclear back then. Even in 2015, Datacenter revenue was less than one eighth of gaming revenue. And rumours of Google AI Processor ( now known as TPU ) started back in 2014 when they started hiring. In 2021, Datacenter is roughly equal to Gaming revenue, and are expected to exceed them in 2022.

Intel sort of knew GPGPU could be a threat by 2016 / 17 already. That is why they started assembling a team, and hired Raja Koduri in late 2017. But as with everything Intel in post Pat Gelsinger era, Intel was late to react. From Smartphone to Foundry Model and now GPGPU.