Fans of Team Blue's Alchemist graphics architecture were slightly disappointed by no new discrete Arc GPU products showing up at this week's Innovation event—where product presentations focused heavily on the CPU-side of things. There was a small hope of Intel's Arc A580 GPU making an appearance at Intel's California gig, following alleged pre-release samples getting benchmarked over the summer. This was the first sign of activity in a year—the three other first generation Alchemist SKUs (A380, A750 and A770) have been released into the wild.

The whole series suffered numerous delays, and launched to a mixed reception late last year. Intel engineers have produced plenty of driver updates and software improvements at an admirable rate throughout 2023. We have not heard much about Alchemist+ since springtime—leaked presentation slides indicated that a refreshed generation was marked for launch around the third and fourth quarters of this year. Given that Team Blue did not showcase Arc "1.5" cards during their Innovation show, we can assume that deadlines have been missed yet again. Battlemage has been spotted most recently—in the form of a BMG G10 GPU sitting in plain sight during a press tour of Intel's Malaysian facility. It will be interesting to find out whether this fully next-generation series has been prioritized.