Intel announced that it has hired four leading game developer advocates as it prepares to launch its first high-performance discrete gaming GPUs, the Arc Alchemist. Developing and launching a new hardware product is a strenuous process with millions of moving parts – both with the hardware development and qualification side of the equation, as well as developing the software stack that actually allows the hardware to be tapped into by developers and finally enjoyed by users. While Intel is yet to throw its hat on the high-performance discrete gaming GPU market with its Alchemist and future products, the company knows what it needs to do to increase the chances of a successful launch. As Steve Balmer so eloquently put it, it’s all about developers.
One requirement is pretty simple: Intel’s GPUs will not be deployed in a vacuum. While Intel is most certainly building upon its iGPU driver stack, its discrete graphics implementation provides a wholly new architecture. To further these types of efforts, companies like AMD and NVIDIA both maintain developer outreach and support programs. This can sometimes translate to the mere sending of documentation and remote collaboration, but sometimes also implies the allocation of engineers to developers to help with game performance optimization and compatibility. And judging from Intel’s recent hires, the company feels that it still has work to do with developer outreach.
Over the last four days, Intel, via one of its official Twitter channels, announced that it had hired four senior positions related to developer outreach, developer relations, and developer-facing tool development.
The first hire announcement (dated September 14th) was André Bremer, who joined Intel as the new Vice President (VP) and General Manager (GM) of Gaming and Graphics Workload Engineering (all of these positions are more than a mouthful). Bremer brings decades of experience in the gaming and developer industry, having previously worked at Prime Gaming, Amazon Web Services’ Game Tech, Zynga, EA, and LucasArts.
