Intel Arc Battlemage and Celestial Graphics Architectures Teased by Employees

[btarunr]

Intel Graphics employees inadvertently revealed that the company's Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture is being designed for the 4 nm silicon fabrication node, which would give Intel's GPU designers a leap in transistor density and power headroom, given that TSMC 4 nm is an EUV node compared to the current 6 nm DUV node the company builds its Arc "Alchemist" GPUs on. The leak also seems to confirm that its succeeding "Celestial" graphics architecture is being designed for 3 nm. An enthusiast named gamma0burst sifted through public profiles of several Intel employees, and scored these details in their professional profile pages.

We are almost certain that Xe2 "Battlemage" is going to be built on the TSMC 4 nm node, and to a slightly lesser degree, about Xe3 "Celestial" being designed for TSMC's 3 nm N3X node. Intel roadmaps pin the debut of "Battlemage" to a 2023-2024 timeline, although this could also be a reference to the iGPU of the upcoming Core "Meteor Lake" processors that debut in the second half of 2023. Intel is highly likely to deliver "Meteor Lake" within its 2H-2023 timeline, which would mean that the mention of "2024" in the graphics technology roadmap could mean that discrete GPUs based on "Battlemage" only arrive next year.



The same logic applies to Xe3 "Celestial," with the company mentioning "2024+" on the roadmap slide, which could mean that an "Celestial" will debut with an iGPU for a future Intel Core processor (such as "Panther Lake"), and as a discrete GPU only later. Intel is expected to take advantage of the 4 nm node to quantitatively double the SIMD machinery on the largest "Battlemage" discrete GPU. It is rumored that this chip will feature as many as 1,024 execution units (EU), which doubles the unified shader count to 8,192 over the current Arc A770. Besides double the shaders with higher IPC and clock speeds; "Battlemage" could also introduce larger on-die caches on the GPU to speed up the memory sub-system.

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[ixi]

Push intel, puuuuush! Give us mooore!

Question to TPU members. Do you think intel did any damage/loss to amd and nvidia by their current priced gpu's?

 

[Hyderz]

not just push the architecture but also the drivers which intel is doing a good job at the moment
i hope by the time i do a complete overhaul i have 3 companies gpus to considers

Push intel, puuuuush! Give us mooore!

Question to TPU members. Do you think intel did any damage/loss to amd and nvidia by their current priced gpu's?

i dont think intel has done any damage or loss but more of they have made their presence known now in the gpu space and its growing

 

[MachineLearning]

Best of luck to Intel's GPU division. Hope they evolve into a viable 3rd manufacturer. Already caught my interest

 

[ZoneDymo]

Push intel, puuuuush! Give us mooore!

Question to TPU members. Do you think intel did any damage/loss to amd and nvidia by their current priced gpu's?

only in the sense that a lot of media is interested in covering their stuff, you constantly see new vidoes of "new drivers, has Arc reached new heights?!" etc so they are taking a lot of mindshare it seems.
and I think everyone expects Intel to have learned a lot from the Arc lineup, both software and hardware-wise, so I think quite a few are very interested in Battlemage and that in turn will do "damage".

 

[hs4]

From the information currently available, the Meteor lake "GT2" iGPU is promising. If it works as well as the A370M with the same architecture, same number of EUs, and same clock, it seems to make a big impression as it can offer higher performance than the Radeon 780M @80W with half the power consumption.

 

[ZoneDymo]

From the information currently available, the Meteor lake "GT2" iGPU is promising. If it works as well as the A370M with the same architecture, same number of EUs, and same clock, it seems to make a big impression as it can offer higher performance than the Radeon 780M @80W with half the power consumption.

yeah.....I highly doubt that, but we shall see.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

I'm pretty sure N6 has EUV layers as well as DUV.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Push intel, puuuuush! Give us mooore!

Question to TPU members. Do you think intel did any damage/loss to amd and nvidia by their current priced gpu's?

Nvidia's MX line was hurt badly, it no longer exists, or is viable.

 

[Eternit]

I wonder why they won’t use Intel 18A for Celestial. They should have it ready in 2025 and it should be better than TSMC N3.

 

[Vayra86]

From the information currently available, the Meteor lake "GT2" iGPU is promising. If it works as well as the A370M with the same architecture, same number of EUs, and same clock, it seems to make a big impression as it can offer higher performance than the Radeon 780M @80W with half the power consumption.

Intel tried scaling their IGP to discrete before and its exactly the reason ARC was delayed so much- that approach doesnt work very well.

 

[katzi]

Who'da thunk that Intel would become the PC gamers hope for cheaper GPUs.

Screw nvidia every day of the week, greedy c*nts.

 

[hs4]

yeah.....I highly doubt that, but we shall see.

It will be necessary to explain the two steps separately.

1. the A370M offers higher performance than the 780M at half the power consumption. the A370M is available to everyone and has been tested on actual devices in the notebookcheck database. The benchmarks and FPS recorded by the A370M in this database at 35W (60W total system power consumption at wall plug)⁑ exceeded the performance of 780M at 80W setting measured by ETA Prime on the ASUS TUF A15.⁂

2. MTL-GT2 is an A370M with XMX removed, the manufacturing node changed from N6 to N5, and shared memory. The number of EU is the same. It may be possible to raise the GT2 to the same level of clock as the A370M is shown by the last leak to ATOS (Core Ultra 5, that is).


⁑ Acer Swift X's data from notebookcheck database
⁂ "AMD Radeon 780M RDNA3 iGPU has been tested, delivers smooth 1080p gaming" Videocardz Apr 19th 2023

 

[TechLurker]

Question to TPU members. Do you think intel did any damage/loss to amd and nvidia by their current priced gpu's?

Based on a number of "X-Months with Arc" post-reviews, Intel GPUs basically did nothing noteworthy sales-wise, with a few reviews claiming that ironically, Intel's GPUs took over home media setups mainly thanks to their decoding prowess vs other GPUs. But for gaming, it's still a mixed bag and no one really recommends them unless Intel can prove they'll support them for awhile. Doesn't help that not all older games still work well with them (understandably, Intel has to prioritize the newer games and engines), and even to today, their drivers and UI can still be a bit buggy. Even Linus' long-duration test with Arc didn't really work out, and recommended just buying a used older GPU from AMD or NVIDIA.

 

[Minus Infinity]

I know people are dissing Intel, but honestly, if they can deliver on the promise of top Battlemage card hitting 4080 performance and can price it for say $799 or less I would be very tempted. Driver's team are slowly getting their act together and I think with 12 months or so when Battlemage ships they should be viable alternative. I don't care if RDNA4 and Blackwell are a lot stronger, they will be a lot dearer and 4080 is plenty strong enough.