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.

Intel has awarded TSMC with some big contracts for future manufacturing of next generation GPUs, according to Taiwan's Commercial Times. As previously covered on TPU, the second generation Battlemage graphics processing units will get fabricated via a 4 nm process. According to insider sources at both partnering companies, Intel is eyeing a release date in the second half of 2024 for this Xe2-based architecture. The same sources pointed to the third generation Celestial graphics processing units being ready in time for a second half of 2026 launch window. Arc Celestial, which is based on the Xe3 architecture, is set for manufacture in the coming years courtesy of TSMC's N3X (3 nm) process node.

One of the sources claim that Intel is quietly confident about its future prospects in the GPU sector, despite mixed critical and commercial reactions to the first generation line-up of Arc Alchemist discrete graphics cards. The company is said to be anticipating great demand for more potent versions of its graphics products in the future, and internal restructuring efforts have not dulled the will of a core team of engineers. The restructuring process resulted in the original AXG graphics division being divided into two sub-groups - CCG and DCAI. The pioneer of the entire endeavor, Raja Koduri, departed Intel midway through last month, to pursue new opportunities with an AI-focused startup.

Intel's next-generation Arc "Battlemage" GPU is expected to numerically-double its shader counts, according to a report by RedGamingTech. The largest GPU from the Arc "Battlemage" series, the "BMG-G10," aims to power SKUs that compete in the performance segment. The chip is expected to be built on a TSMC 4 nm-class EUV node, similar to NVIDIA's GeForce "Ada" GPUs, and have a die-size similar to that of the "AD103" silicon powering the GeForce RTX 4080.

Among the juiciest bits from this report are that the top "Battlemage" chip will see its Xe Core count doubled to 64, up from 32 on the top "Alchemist" part. This would see its execution unit (EU) count doubled to 1,024, and unified shader counts at 8,192. Intel is expected to give the chip clock speeds in excess of 3.00 GHz. The Xe Cores themselves could see several updates, including IPC uplifts, and support for new math formats. The memory sub-system is expected to see an overhaul, with a large 48 MB on-die L2 cache. While the memory bus is unchanged at 256-bit wide, the memory speed could see a significant increase up from the 16-17.5 Gbps on the Arc A770. As for when customers can actually expect products, the RedGamingTech report puts launch of the Arc "Battlemage" series at no sooner than Q2-2024. The company is expected to launch refreshed "Alchemist+" GPUs in 2023.

Intel in its Q4-2022 Financial Results presentation confirmed that it has split Accelerated Computing Group (AXG), the business that designs both client GPUs and scalar compute processors, and distributed its IP among the CCG (client computing group), and DCAI (data-center and artificial-intelligence group). CCG is Intel's largest breadwinner, and the group behind its Intel Core client processors. This business was receiving iGPU IP from AXG, and will now oversee all its client graphics portfolio. The DCAI group will handle the company's Data Center GPU lineup, with products such as "Ponte Vecchio."

Over 2023, Intel is expected to update its Arc Graphics series with the refreshed "Alchemist+" graphics architecture. Very little is known about "Alchemist+," except that it is rumored to introduced a more advanced third-party foundry node than its current TSMC 6 nm node; and while retaining the same IP as the current "Alchemist" GPUs, scale upward—either in terms of Xe core counts; or performance, by increasing clock-speeds. 2024 will see Intel introduce "Battlemage," its second client graphics architecture for discrete GPUs. "Battlemage" is expected to introduce new architectural changes, utilize an even newer foundry node, and significantly increase performance. Raja Koduri hinted in late 2022 that he still wants to build GPUs in the 200-300 W power-range, without implying that this constitutes "mid-range," so we'll have to wait and see how "Battlemage" improves performance/Watt over "Alchemist+."Image Courtesy: VideoCardz