Intel has shown its interest and acceptance of the metaverse that companies such as Meta (Facebook) or Epic Games are developing. The US processor company, however, believes that the creation of a virtual world and parallel to reality will require a “great computing capacity” and that it is not as close as big technology makes us believe.
This was stated by Raja Koduri, senior vice president and head of the Intel Graphics and Accelerated Computing Systems Group. Koduri seems excited about the metaverse idea, especially considering the digital dependency that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused. However, it is realistic and suggests that the development of this universe is a long road .
The Intel executive says that the virtual world will require avatars, detailed elements such as clothing, realistic skin tones or 3D objects. Also other components that will need to be rendered in real time. Today there are equipment and systems that can perform these types of tasks on a small scale. However, these are not capable of processing as much information as the metaverse will require. “Imagine solving this problem on a large scale, for hundreds of millions of users simultaneously. You will quickly realize that our computing, storage and networking infrastructure today is simply not sufficient to enable this vision,” he says.
Facebook (Meta), in fact, has detailed on multiple occasions that the creation of a virtual world will not be done “overnight.” “Many of these advances will not be completed for 10 to 15 years,” he said in a statement. The company, unlike Intel, has never claimed that today's computing infrastructure is not prepared to perform these types of tasks.
Intel ensures that not only the hardware is important for the development of the metaverse
Furthermore, the metaverse will not only require a major advance in hardware, which according to Koduri would mean “a 1,000-fold increase in computational efficiency.” The software, of course, also plays an important role . Intel, in any case, has been open to offer solutions so that companies can advance in the development of their virtual world. Among them, open source tools so that developers can adapt their services and applications quickly.
At the hardware level, however, Intel ensures that its upcoming processors and GPUs will offer enough performance to “accelerate high-performance computing and visualization.” In addition, its components will continue to advance to “zetta-scale computing” over the next 5 years.
Meanwhile, the development of the metaverse – or at least a small part of it – is proceeding rapidly. NFTs are becoming more popular and more companies are betting on being part of this virtual universe. Nike, for example, recently acquired a company that makes NFTs so it can sell sneakers in the metaverse.
