Tuesday, May 10th 2022
Intel Confirms: Arc Mobile Rollout Facing Delays, Desktop Debut On Track for Q2-2022
Intel Graphics on Monday, in a blog post by Lisa Pearce, VP and GM for the Visual Compute Group, answered three important questions around the launch timelines of its elusive Arc Graphics "Alchemist" discrete GPUs for notebooks and desktops. The already-launched Arc mobile GPUs are already being installed on gaming notebooks in production, but Intel blames COVID and the supply-chain crisis in East Asia for delays. Arc 3-series notebooks should be available "ASAP," while Arc 5-series and 7-series powered notebooks should start becoming available in "early Summer." Intel maintains a Summer 2022 launch timeline for desktop Arc graphics cards, and stated that the company will launch entry-level Arc 3-series discrete GPUs first, as OEM-exclusives in Q2-2022, followed by retail availability exclusively in China, with general worldwide availability expected "later this Summer."An excerpt from the blog post follows:
Source:
Intel
Question #1: Can you update us on the status of your Intel Arc graphics mobile products?
We have been working closely with OEM partners to get Intel Arc graphics mobile designs fully launched. First was Samsung who started with availability in Korea and is expanding globally. We planned to have broader OEM availability at this point; however, we have had some software readiness delays and, together with COVID lock downs impacting global supply chains, OEM designs are only this month becoming more widely available.
Despite the constraints, our OEM partners have announced laptops with Intel Arc 3 graphics - including Samsung, Lenovo, Acer, HP, and Asus - and we are working with our partners to help them get these products into market ASAP. Laptops with Intel Arc 5 and Arc 7 graphics will start becoming available in early summer.
Question #2: When are the desktop cards with Intel Arc graphics coming?
Unlike notebook designs, desktop systems have a vast set of combinations, including memory, motherboards, and CPUs. To initially limit some of this variation, we will launch working with system builders and OEMs with specific configurations.
We will release our entry-level Intel Arc A-series products for desktops (A3) first in China through system builders and OEMs in Q2. Etail and retail component sales will follow shortly in China as well. Proximity to board components and strong demand for entry-level discrete products makes this a natural place to start. Our next step will be to scale these products globally.
Roll-out of Intel Arc A5 and A7 desktop cards will start worldwide with OEMs and system integrators later this summer, followed by component sales in worldwide channels.
This staggered approach gives us confidence at each step that we can effectively serve our customer base.
Question #3: In an earlier blog you mentioned a driver toggle for certain benchmark specific optimizations. What is the status of that?
Apologies for not updating the community on this earlier. During our evaluation of this feature, we decided to go a step further and implement a system to allow users to control collections of our driver-based optimizations, including memory management options, constant folding, and others. We will collect related toggles into groups to allow end user customization. This has required additional development time, but we believe this will be the best solution for our Intel Arc graphics customers, and we'll circle back in the next few weeks on when we expect to post the first driver with this capability.
57 Comments on Intel Confirms: Arc Mobile Rollout Facing Delays, Desktop Debut On Track for Q2-2022
Is the Intel Arc (aka. Alchemist?) an Intel only franchise or will there be AIB's?
Missing the targets they've officially announced is disappointing, but seemingly par for the course these days. It just seems like they should have been more cautious with the release window since they obviously didn't have everything ready to go yet. On the lower end laptop side it sounds a lot like software holding them back as they've got what will be retail units for testing (see the PC World test on the A370m).
The starting point for Alchemist right now is far worse than what Polaris at the time was for AMD. They havent got mature drivers, they havent got a competitive (small) die for the performance on tap, they havent got volume in stock and the whole stack stops at midrange performance of 2020. Meanwhile AMD and Nvidia are going to relegate that midrange (~ 3060, the optimistic take on Intel's numbers) to entry level come the next release which is by now, likely to happen earlier. People think Intel might compete on price, but I think they wont even be able to.
That's a disappointing take on Intel's entry into dGPU marketplace, but probably accurate. I just hope Intel can weather the storm of being relegated to entry level(?) or midrange(?) competition and become a real competitor to the existing duopoly.
I mean would you EVER trust a company that releases a product every once in a while, and not in a somewhat fixed cadence? If there is no constant flow of refreshes and improvements, the whole support chain is a dead end too. That also applies to game developers, they won't trust and thus won't be willing to optimize for Intel, which is what Intel is experiencing right now.
Nvidia and AMD's drivers aren't just 'the drivers' but a huge box of tweaks applied over decades to virtually every game on the market, to keep their GPUs competitive in the marketplace, and quite often they got to that point by working with studios all over the place - actual engineers doing actual work in tandem with devs. Intel can at the very best apply some catch-all, blunt instruments to mimic that, but it will never EVER get to the level of refinement its competition has built up over time. The devil is in the details between camp green and red. Here comes Intel, with a sledgehammer-like object trying to wrestle control from two giants that turned sledgehammers into toothpicks a decade ago.
Even now, the postponing of product... Intel is still betting on some sliver of margins but that chance slips out of their fingers much faster by delaying product. No product is worse than 'a' product in the hands of gamers, because they'll never get started on building that commitment. Are we really smarter than Intel by saying and seeing this? Yes, and for the simple reason the company is stuck between rock and hard place, every choice they make right now is already going into the red numbers big time. If they're not committed to that for now and the next 2-4 generations of GPU, they might as well stop today. They do seem to have planned ahead though, but that planning is also moving further away from us by postponing the initial stuff, making it less realistic, even as a business case on its own.
AMD and Nvidia realized that there is no need for them to go into price wars.
Nvidia releases the new product first and set price then AMD release theirs and they price them exactly to relation to NVIDIA so if their card in class is 5% faster it will cost 5% more.
All I'm saying is that with 3 players that might not be so easy to do.
If AMD and NVIDIA learned any lesson from this is how not to get caught.
Desktop ARC3:
June - China OEMs
July - China retail
August - Worldwide OEM
September - Worldwide retail
Desktop ARC5/ARC7:
ARC3 plus one month (at least)
So worldwide retail ARC5/ARC7 missing even the Q3 deadline? (and possibly mobile ARC5/ARC7 missing the back-to-school period? (worldwide))
At this rate, for desktop they may as well wait for Intel's/AMD's next gen products to launch first and at least announce competitive SRPs according to next gen, while at the same time using the mean time to polish the drivers/software.
I'm feeling the new intel - the prior attempts were under different, and poor, leadership that was complacent. The culture of the company is shifting back to engineering under Pat and they are gunning for the GPU segment with lessons from the failures of past products.
Is it going to be pretty, and on time, led by Raja, the first release out of the gate? Hell no... lol- it's going to be a mediocre product late to market, but it will come, and then the second, and then the third. Intel needs this not for just gamers but to compete in HPC space and there will be no stopping; battlemage will probably end up being what Alchemist was supposed to be, but I'm not seeing that any of these things will stop them. They're trending in the right direction.
The parallel stands: AMD was YEARS behind intel in the CPU space, and had no top stack to compete with nvidia, had horrible track record with vendors of delivering and with game developers for bad drivers and support utilities etc. They were leasing back their campus just to stay financially afloat. But they were engineering focused and were trending in the right direction.
The first versions of Zen were brushed off by many; just like Alchemist will be. And Intel will be in the same place in the GPU space: years behind with a relatively sucky product, the second one will suck slightly less, but once they apply disaggregated packaging and the designs from the cpu space we will have a very interesting product.
They sound like a junky who can’t get a fix and is about to start with the autoerotic asphyxiation…..
Difference= zen 1 came out the first year it was due not the third.
The parallel fails AMD released just another CPU as they already had and did (zen1)
Unless we count the 740 or larrabee Intel released zip didly squat.
does UHD 770 suck absolute balls for gaming? yes! But it DOES run games.
What do I win boss man? Will Intel suck my balls for buying a iGPU that fails to deliver any real performance beyond it does word real good?
I bet you get excited for the Kia car announcements and had a Kia on your wall as a kid instead of a supercar, plain looking people excite you, not supermodels, you like cream without the ice as it hurts your sensitive tummy, vanilla is for wild people that like to live on the edge?
Topic: Intel and their failure at delivering a Dgpu, typical Fanboi response, yeah but that Igpu thou.........
Also no offense man, but you are off topic here.
Genius argument ,I laughed my arse off.
Reads thread title again, hmnn so no, Google translate isn't that shit surely.