congatec - a leading vendor of embedded and edge computing technology - introduces the 12th Generation Intel Core mobile and desktop processors (formerly code named Alder Lake) on 10 new COM-HPC and COM Express Computer-on-Modules. Featuring the latest high performance cores from Intel, the new modules in COM-HPC Size A and C as well as COM Express Type 6 form factors offer major performance gains and improvements for the world of embedded and edge computing systems. Most impressive is the fact that engineers can now leverage Intel's innovative performance hybrid architecture. Offering of up to 14 cores/20 threads on BGA and 16 cores/24 threads on desktop variants (LGA mounted), 12th Gen Intel Core processors provide a quantum leap [1] in multitasking and scalability levels. Next-gen IoT and edge applications benefit from up to 6 or 8 (BGA/LGA) optimized Performance-cores (P-cores) plus up to 8 low power Efficient-cores (E-cores) and DDR5 memory support to accelerate multithreaded applications and execute background tasks more efficiently.

An Intel Gen12 Xe GPU, possibly a discrete- DG1 prototype, showed up on the SiSoft SANDRA online database. The GPU is detailed by SANDRA as having 768 unified shaders across 96 execution units (EUs), a 1.50 GHz GPU clock speed, 1 MB of on-die L2 cache, and 3 GB of dedicated video memory of an unknown type (likely GDDR6). This is probably a different chip from the DG1-SDV, which caps out at 900 MHz GPU clock, although its SIMD muscle is identical.

At a clock-speed of 1.50 GHz, the chip would feature an FP32 throughput of 2,303 GFLOPs (we know this from the DG1-SDV offering 1382 GFLOPs at 900 MHz). If the software-side optimization backs this hardware, the resulting product could end up with performance in the league of the 8 CU Radeon "Vega" solution found in the AMD "Renoir" APU, or the Radeon RX 560 discrete GPU, which are just about enough for PUBG at 1080p with medium settings.

As we are approaching the year 2020, when Intel is rumored to launch its discrete graphics cards to the hand of consumers around the world, we are gearing up on the number of leaks about the upcoming products. Thanks to Twitter user @KOMACHI_ENSAKA, who found the latest EEC listing, we have new information regarding Intel's upcoming DG1 discrete graphics solution.

In the leaked EEC listing, the DG1 GPU is being presented as a GPU with 96 execution units, meaning that Intel is planning to take on entry-level graphics cards with this GPU. If the graphics unit is following the same design principle of the previous-generation GPUs, then there should be around 8 shading units per one execution unit, totaling 768 shading units for the whole DG1 GPU. If the 12th Gen Xe design inside the DG1 follows a different approach, then we can expect to see a double amount of shading units, meaning 1536 in total.

Intel's upcoming Gen12 iGPU solutions are being touted as sporting Intel's greatest architecture shift in their integrated graphics technologies in a decade. For one, each Execution unit will be freed of the additional workload of having to guarantee data coherency between register reads and writes - that work is being handed over to a reworked compiler, thus freeing up cycles that could be better spent processing triangles. But of course, there are easier ways to improve a GPU's performance without extensive reworks of their design (as AMD and NVIDIA have shown us time and again) - simply by increasing the number of execution units. And it seems Intel is ready to do just that with their Gen12 as well.

An unidentified Intel Gen12 iGPU was benchmarked in CompuBench, and the report includes interesting tidbits, such as the number of Execution Units - 96, a vast increase over Intel's most powerful iGPU to date, the Iris Pro P580, with its 72 EU - and far, far away from the consumer market's UHD 630 and its 24 EUs. The Gen12 iGPU that was benchmarked increases the EU count by 33% compared to Intel's top performing iGPU - add to that performance increases through the "extensive architecture rework", and we could be looking at an Intel iGPU part that achieves some 40% (speculative) better performance than their current best performer. The part was clocked at 1.1 GHz - and the Iris Pro P580 also clocked to that maximum clock under the best Boost conditions. Let's see what next-gen Intel has in store for us, shall we?