Start of an era! Intel had its Architecture Day event today, where the chip giant shed some light on a few of the areas that it is investing in. The highlight here being its Xe graphics architecture.
It also talked in detail about the technology inside the upcoming Tiger Lake processors.
For those of you following along, it was back in 2018 that Intel first began teasing it first discrete GPU in over 20 years. The company talked about the card again at CES this year, and now we finally seem to be getting somewhere.
This upcoming GPU goes by the name of DG1, and is based on the Intel Xe-LP (low power) graphics architecture — the same architecture that powers the graphics processing inside the Tiger Lake processors that are expected to bring much improved graphics performance.
Now in production, it is on track to begin shipping later this year.
But if what you are really looking for is a high-end GPU to compete with what NVIDIA or AMD have to offer, then Intel has good news for you here as well. It has announced the Intel Xe-HPG architecture that is geared at high-performance gaming.
This is a combination of the performance-per-watt of the Xe-LP architecture with the scalability of the Xe-HP (high power) architecture, and the frequency combination of the Xe-HPC (high performance computing) architecture.
In other words, this thing is a beast and makes use of a memory subsystem based on GDDR6, with support for raytracing.
Intel plans to ship this card next year.
That is when the world of graphics in Windows will truly welcome a new power player. The market is currently dominated by two camps, Red and Green, AMD and NVIDIA. A Blue team was very much the need of the hour.
It is time.
