Taipei: Intel said Tuesday that competition in personal computer chips from hardware giant Nvidia as a "good thing" as artificial intelligence presents new business opportunities.
The comments come a day after Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, unveiled a powerful chip for Windows machines designed to run AI agents, tools that can carry out tasks for users.
The announcement from Nvidia is a challenge to legacy PC chipmakers including Intel and AMD, as well as Apple's laptop business.
"If you take a look at what they brought to market (Monday), I think it's a good thing," Alex Katouzian, general manager of Intel's client computing and physical AI group, told a news conference in Taipei.
"It shows the importance of how critical the PC is," he added.
"We welcome the competition, but I think we're going to do really well," he said, touting Intel's scale -- with "every segment covered" -- and the trust of its customer base.
"They want us to grow with them, there's new opportunities on the AI side," Katouzian said, calling the company's roadmap "super strong".
Shares in Intel took off late last year after Nvidia announced it would invest $5 billion in the firm.
And in April, the company smashed quarterly earnings expectations, in what could be a sign it is on a path to recovery.
Intel largely missed the smartphone boom and failed to develop competitive hardware for the AI era, allowing Asian manufacturers TSMC and Samsung to dominate the custom semiconductor market.
Most notably, Intel was blindsided by Nvidia's rise as the world's leading AI chip provider.
Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), originally designed for gaming consoles, have become the essential building blocks of AI systems, with tech giants scrambling to secure them for their data servers and AI projects.
The heads of both companies are in Taipei this week for the major industry show Computex.
On Tuesday, Intel announced upgrades to its AI data centre hardware offerings as well as new collaborations with supply chain partners such as Taiwan's Foxconn.
While several experts told AFP that Nvidia's competitors should be worried about its new PC chip for the AI era, the RTX Spark, others were more cautious.
"This move may create incremental pressure for Intel and Qualcomm; however, given the complexity and likely premium pricing, we don't expect significant competition with mainstream AI PCs," Bloomberg Intelligence analysts wrote.
