Alongside immediately’s profitable-but-uneasy earnings report from Intel, the corporate’s earnings presentation additionally supplied a brief replace on the standing of their discrete GPUs. As of immediately, Intel’s DG1 GPU is now delivery. Meanwhile the corporate introduced their subsequent GPU, appropriately named DG2, which relies on their upcoming Xe-HPG structure. This GPU is now again from the fab and is in Intel’s lab, and is now far sufficient alongside to have been powered on.
First and foremost we now have DG1, or because it’s higher recognized by its business product title, Iris Xe Max. Intel’s first discrete GPU in over 20 years, the corporate has because the starting of this 12 months been touting it as a companion to their Tiger Lake CPUs, pitching it as an upgraded graphics choice for skinny & gentle notebooks, and a successor of kinds to Intel’s GT3e and GT4e iGPU configurations from previous generations. Until not too long ago, we weren’t fairly positive when it will present up in business merchandise, however current OEM pocket book reveals together with Intel’s earnings announcement at the moment are confirming that the GPU is delivery to OEMs. According to Intel, DG1-equipped notebooks are anticipated later in This fall. In the meantime, there are nonetheless scant few particulars on DG1 itself, similar to anticipated efficiency and energy consumption; so hopefully Intel will likely be getting forward of its OEM companions on this one to set some expectations.
Meanwhile, immediately’s notes additionally announce for the very first time the subsequent discrete GPU to come back out of Intel, DG2. While clearly nonetheless a while off, Intel has accomplished tape-out and fabbing of the preliminary alpha silicon, with the corporate reporting that they’ve powered-on the GPU of their labs.
Somewhat surprisingly, CEO Bob Swan has additionally confirmed that this isn’t only a DG1 successor, however as a substitute is a better performing GPU primarily based on the corporate’s forthcoming Xe-HPG(aming) structure. First revealed this summer time, Xe-HPG is Intel’s fanatic/gamer-focused structure, incorporating marquee options present in comparable dGPUs like ray tracing. It’s additionally being manufactured utterly exterior of Intel; whereas the corporate hasn’t stated which fab and course of node is getting used, it’s none of Intel’s nodes. So that is the primary main piece of exterior fabbed silicon that we all know of to be up and working at Intel.
But like all teasers/monetary disclosures, Intel isn’t saying an excessive amount of extra right now. Nothing new was revealed in regards to the Xe-HPG structure, and Intel hasn’t clarified whether or not DG2 is an enormous, flagship-grade chip, or a extra modest, high-volume half. For now, the corporate is just saying that DG2 will “take our discrete graphics capability up the stack into the enthusiast segment.”
