Intel acquires Finnish graphics tech company Siru Innovations

Intel headquarters exterior photo
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel Graphics tweeted that it has acquired Finnish company Siru Innovations. The company has a background in graphics and software development and it's expected that Intel will use this expertise as it ramps up its push into the discrete graphics market.

The Siru team is expected to become part of Intel's Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group. According to the Siru website, the company has a deep understanding of computer graphics, including developing solutions from high-level APIs to low level GPU architecture.

Siru has experience developing graphics IP for low power SoCs including those from Qualcomm and AMD. That kind of experience will surely help Intel in its quest to penetrate the lucrative laptop and mobile graphics markets. 

Acquisitions like these are vital for Intel as it seeks to establish itself in the discrete graphics market. Though the Siru team is unlikely to have much of an influence in the short term, its team can likely begin work on the driver and software optimization side of first generation Alchemist cards fairly quickly. This may also include liaising with game development teams to ensure their engines are coded to take advantage of the Alchemist architecture. 

Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest

Raja Koduri is excited too, tweeting: "Next celestial and beyond". Celestial refers to the third generation of Intel Arc GPU, following Alchemist and the second generation Battlemage.

However, graphics is just one part of Intel's big push. The really big money comes from the high performance computing market, which is an area Intel has lost ground to AMD and Nvidia. GPUs and related accelerators make excellent HPC processors and Intel is working hard to develop products to compete with the likes of Nvidia's Hopper and AMD's CDNA2 enterprise-oriented architectures. 

The acquisition of Siru will no doubt be beneficial in the development of software solutions for Intel's own HPC products, Including its monster Ponte Vecchio processors.

Several Siru team members have decades of experience, having survived multiple incarnations, acquisitions and divestments. According to the The Register, one of Siru's founders is Mika "Trug" Tuomi, a pioneer of early 1990's 3D graphics development. Tuomi went on to form Bitboys, which at one time developed a GPU with embedded DRAM. Before the turn of the millennium!

Bitboys was acquired by ATI, which was itself purchased by AMD in 2006. This division was then sold to Qualcomm in 2009 to work on its Adreno graphics processors. So it's obvious that the Siru team has a great deal of valuable experience that it can bring to Intel.

Intel's Arc GPUs are getting ready to launch over the coming weeks (and perhaps months). We have a few details on the cards including possible pricing as well as a glimpse at clock speeds and XeSS, Intel's upscaling algorithm.

Chris Szewczyk
Hardware Writer

Chris' gaming experiences go back to the mid-nineties when he conned his parents into buying an 'educational PC' that was conveniently overpowered to play Doom and Tie Fighter. He developed a love of extreme overclocking that destroyed his savings despite the cheaper hardware on offer via his job at a PC store. To afford more LN2 he began moonlighting as a reviewer for VR-Zone before jumping the fence to work for MSI Australia. Since then, he's gone back to journalism, enthusiastically reviewing the latest and greatest components for PC & Tech Authority, PC Powerplay and currently Australian Personal Computer magazine and PC Gamer. Chris still puts far too many hours into Borderlands 3, always striving to become a more efficient killer.

Read more
Intel architectural breakdown of new Battlemage GPU designs
Intel is 'confident' about next-gen Arc Celestial GPUs following Battlemage's success
Intel Gaudi 3
Intel nixes its next-gen AI GPU but still has plans to take on Nvidia
Intel Arc B580 graphics card
Intel says 'demand for Arc B580 graphics cards is high' but the GPU should be restocked every week
Intel Arc B580 graphics card
New Intel Battlemage graphics cards spotted but they may not be the cut-price RTX 4070 killers we're all desperate for
Intel Arc B580 graphics card
Shipping document suggests that a 24 GB version of Intel's Arc B580 graphics card could be heading to market, though not for gaming
Intel's Raja Koduri holding an A770
Ex-Intel exec, Raja Koduri, blames the bureaucratic 'PowerPoint snakes' within the company for its current issues: 'These processes multiply and coil around engineers'
Latest in Graphics Cards
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks while holding the company's new GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards and a Thor Blackwell robotics processor during the 2025 CES event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang announced a raft of new chips, software and services, aiming to stay at the forefront of artificial intelligence computing. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Group allegedly trying to smuggle Nvidia Blackwell chips stare down bail set at over $1 million
Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card on different backgrounds
AI will be crammed in more of the graphics pipeline as Nvidia and Microsoft are bringing AI shading to a DirectX preview next month
Nvidia RTX 50-series graphics cards alongside an RTX 4090
Nvidia says it's sold twice as many RTX 50-series cards as RTX 40-series in the first 5 weeks. I'd bloody well hope so given there was essentially just the RTX 4090 for competition
AMD Radeon RX 9070/9070 XT graphics cards with artistic renders of reference design cards circled
Looks like a reference design AMD RX 9070 XT card has shown up in China, but let's not get carried away with thoughts of MBA cards just yet
AMD Radeon Sapphire Pure RX 9070 XT graphics card for PC gaming in white colourway
Ranking AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics cards by their visual design, cuz, you know, I can't buy one for MSRP so have to kill my time somehow
XFX Radeon RX 9070 XT Quicksilver graphics card on a blue background with angel wings on either side
XFX is letting you add customisable 3D printed wings to its Quicksilver RX 9070-series graphics cards
Latest in News
Roblox CEO David Baszucki.
'Don't let your kids be on Roblox', Roblox CEO tells parents, before comparing himself to Walt Disney and declaring the platform 'the future of communication'
Titus in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3 reveal promo image
Praise be to the Omnissiah! Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3 is officially in development
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks while holding the company's new GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards and a Thor Blackwell robotics processor during the 2025 CES event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang announced a raft of new chips, software and services, aiming to stay at the forefront of artificial intelligence computing. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Group allegedly trying to smuggle Nvidia Blackwell chips stare down bail set at over $1 million
New art of Harry and Kim from Disco Elysium, with Harry holding a lit molotov cocktail.
Despite Disco Elysium Mobile aiming to 'captivate the TikTok user,' it looks surprisingly decent—but it's still insulting to Disco's ousted creators
Flag of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia buys Pokémon GO maker for $3.5 billion with a 'B'
A cold-looking gameplay shot of Fate: Reawakened
Fate: Reawakened gives the nostalgic 20-year-old action RPG series a new lease on life