Intel's discrete GPUs are close, and recent reports indicate Intel will reveal its next-generation Arc Battlemage graphics cards in December, moving from an earlier expected Black Friday announcement. Hardware insider Golden Pig Upgrade first mentioned this timeline shift, with data researcher Tomasz Gawroński providing supporting evidence through shipping manifest analysis. The December timing appears to position Intel's announcement before CES 2025, where AMD plans to showcase its Radeon RX 8000 series with RDNA 4 architecture, and NVIDIA will present its GeForce RTX 50 line. This will give Intel ample room to "steal" the attention of the tech press, who will be busy with NVIDIA and AMD during CES.

X account Bionic_Squash has confirmed Battlemage won't be Intel's final discrete graphics card, addressing questions about the company's long-term graphics development plans. Intel's future roadmap includes the Xe3 "Celestial" architecture, though current information only confirms its initial implementation in mobile chips at a reduced scale. The timeline for a full discrete graphics card using Celestial architecture remains unspecified. We are also left to wonder about Intel's approach to discrete GPU marketing push, as the company has yet to gain any significant footing among enthusiasts. In the coming years, Intel's expansion could prove worthwhile as it updates its GPUs with more performance from newer generations.

Intel is expected to debut its next-generation Arc "Battlemage" discrete GPU in December 2024, or ahead of the 2025 CES, HotHardware reports, citing Golden Pig Upgrade, a reliable source with GPU leaks. The source says that they expect "wonderful performance" for the GPU. Intel has a lot invested in its PC graphics division, across not just its two-year-old Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs, but also the integrated graphics solutions it's been launching with its Core Ultra processor generations. It debuted the DirectX 12 Ultimate-capable Xe-LPG graphics architecture with Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" and Arc Graphics branding, which it carried forward to the Core Ultra Series 200 "Arrow Lake" on the desktop platform. Meanwhile, "Battlemage" got debuted as the iGPU of the Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" mobile processor, which posted gaming performance beating that of the Ryzen 8000 "Hawk Point" processor, but falling short of the Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point."

Intel is expected to tap into a fairly new foundry node for the Arc "Battlemage" discrete GPU series. Its chips could strike a performance/Watt and performance/price inflection point in the performance segment, that drives the most volumes for NVIDIA and AMD. It is this exact segment that AMD has withdrawn from the enthusiast segment to focus on, with its next-generation Radeon RDNA 4 generation. With "Alchemist," Intel already laid a strong foundation for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI, and the company is only expected to advance on these fronts further. Could "Battlemage" and "Granite Rapids" go down as the most exciting products from Intel in 2024? We should find out next month.

Some of the first die-shots and annotations of the Intel Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" processor surfaced on the web, thanks to die-shots by GeenWens and Kurnalsalts on Twitter. Be sure to check out our Lunar Lake Technical Deep-dive article to learn the basics of how Lunar Lake is different from "Meteor Lake." Both are disaggregated chiplet-based processors, but Lunar Lake remodels things a bit. All the logic engines of the processor—the CPU, the iGPU, and the NPU, are located in a centralized Compute tile that's built on the TSMC 3 nm process, while all the I/O controllers are spun out to the Platform Controller tile built on TSMC 6 nm, which sit on a Foveros base tile that acts as an interposer, facilitating high-density microscopic connections between the two tiles. The base tile sits on the fiberglass substrate, which also has stacked LPDDR5X memory for either 16 GB or 32 GB of on-package system memory.

The Kurnalsalts annotation provides a good lay of the land for the Compute tile. The most striking aspect of it is the CPU. "Lunar Lake" comes with a 4P+4E core hybrid CPU, but the two kinds of cores do not share a last-level cache or sit in a ringbus, unlike in case of the Compute tile of "Meteor Lake." The four "Lion Cove" P-cores each come with 2.5 MB of dedicated L2 caches, and share a 12 MB L3 cache. The four "Skymont" E-cores are not part of the ringbus connecting the four P-cores, rather they are physically separated, much like the low-power island E-cores on "Meteor Lake." The E-core cluster shares a 4 MB L2 cache among the four E-cores. This E-core cluster is directly connected to the switching fabric of the Compute tile.

Intel today released the latest version of the Arc GPU Graphics drivers. Version 101.6079 Beta comes with optimization for EA FC25, Throne and Liberty, and Delta Force. The installer download size of these drivers are "temporarily increased" in size (from around 400 MB to over 800 MB), as these are the first drivers to include support for the Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" integrated graphics of Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" processors, indicating that Intel will soon retire driver payload for older iGPUs such as 11th Gen "Tiger Lake." There are no fixed issues with this release, but the company identified a few new issues as listed below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.6079 Beta

Intel's upcoming Arc "Battlemage" G21 GPU has made an appearance in Geekbench benchmarks, offering a glimpse into the future of the company's discrete graphics offerings. This next-generation GPU, part of Intel's Xe2 graphics architecture, shows promising performance that puts it almost on par with the current Arc A770 in initial tests. The benchmark results reveal a GPU with 20 Xe2 cores, translating to 160 CUs. Notably, the chip boasts a clock speed of 2,850 MHz. Equipped with 12 GB of memory, this particular model appears to be targeting the mid-range segment of the market.

Identified by the PCI ID "8086:E20B" and listed as "Intel Xe Graphics RI," the GPU scored 97,943 points in Geekbench 6's OpenCL test. This score places it near the Arc A770 and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060, suggesting competitive performance in its class. The test system paired the Battlemage GPU with an Intel Core i5-13600K CPU and 32 GB of DDR5-4800 memory, providing a solid platform for evaluation. One interesting thing to note is that, while these early benchmarks show weak OpenCL performance, Intel didn't historically target this particular API, and the final performance will be higher in actual games that use DirectX 12 or Vulkan APIs, possibly worthy of competing with NVIDIA and AMD solutions.

Intel's ambitious new ultraportable mobile processor series, the Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake," launches on September 3, according to an Acer announcement for a media event covering the launch of its notebooks based on these chips. Acer scheduled this event on September 4, which means Intel to launch these processors no later than September 3. Media events by PC OEMs tend to follow a day after Intel's launch of a new processor generation or platform. A September 3 launch would precede the IFA 2024 Conference in Berlin, which kicks off on September 6, but which is open to press and industry delegates a little sooner, as is the norm for trade shows.

The Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" is Intel's first processor generation to implement MoP (memory on package), eliminating the need for discrete memory modules. This reduces the Z height as well as PCB footprint of the platform, enabling thinner notebooks. MoP also has certain power and latency advantages compared to discrete memory. The compute complex of "Lunar Lake" consists of a 4P+4E CPU with "Lion Cove" P-cores, and "Skymont" E-cores. This is also the first processor to debut Intel's Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture, as it powers its iGPU. It packs a powerful NPU that meets Microsoft Copilot+ AI PC requirements. You can learn all about "Lunar Lake" in our architecture deep-dive.

A prototype discrete GPU based on the Intel Arc "Battlemage" graphics architecture was spotted in a public boot log by Intel GFX Continuous Integration group. The group is probably testing a prototype discrete GPU with a Linux driver. The OS loads its driver at boot, which puts out a few messages in the boot log, including explicit mention of "Battlemage" as BMG. It also mentions its memory size to be 12 GB, a memory speed of 19 Gbps, and a memory bus width of 192-bit.

It is hence likely that this is a mid-tier GPU from the series, with the top tier one probably featuring a 256-bit memory interface. This aligns with Intel's strategy of targeting the bulk of the gaming graphics market, instead of gunning for the enthusiast class. The new "Battlemage" architecture is expected to make Intel contemporary against rival architectures in the segment, such as NVIDIA "Ada" and AMD RDNA 3, although it remains to be seen if it can square off against the next-generation NVIDIA "Blackwell" and AMD RDNA 4.

It appears like 2024 will go down as the second consecutive year without any new GPU generation launch from either NVIDIA or AMD. Kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks, says that the GeForce RTX 50-series "Blackwell" generation won't see a debut before the 2025 International CES (January 2025). It was earlier expected that the company would launch at least its top two SKUs—the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080—toward the end of 2024, and ramp the series up from 2025. There is no explanation behind this "delay." Like everyone else, NVIDIA could be rationing its foundry allocation of the 3 nm wafers from TSMC for its high-margin "Blackwell" AI GPUs. The company now makes over five times the revenue from selling AI GPUs than it does from gaming GPUs, so this development should come as little surprise.

Things aren't any different with NVIDIA's rivals in this space, AMD and Intel. AMD's RDNA 4 graphics architecture and the Radeon RX series GPUs based on it, aren't expected to arrive before 2025. AMD is making several architectural upgrades with RDNA 4, particularly to its ray tracing hardware; and the company is expected to build these GPUs on a new foundry node. Meanwhile, Intel's Arc B-series gaming GPUs based on the Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture are expected to arrive in 2025, too, although these chips are rumored to be based on a more mature 4 nm-class foundry node.

Intel is preparing a complete refresh of its desktop platform this year, with the introduction of the Core Ultra 200 series processors based on the "Arrow Lake" microarchitecture. The company skipped a desktop processor based on "Meteor Lake," probably because it didn't meet the desired multithreaded performance targets for Intel as it maxed out at 6P+8E+2LP, forcing Intel to come up with the 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" generation to see it through 2H-2023 and at least three quarters of 2024. The company, in all likelihood, will launch the new "Arrow Lake-S" Core Ultra 200 series toward late-Q3 or early-Q4 2024 (September-October). The first wave will include the overclocker-friendly K- and KF SKUs, alongside motherboards based on the top Intel Z890 chipset. 2025 will see the series ramp to more affordable processor models, and mainstream chipsets, such as the B860. These processors require a new motherboard, as Intel is introducing the new Socket LGA1851 with them.

Core configurations of the "Arrow Lake-S" chip surfaced on the web thanks to Jaykihn, a reliable source with Intel leaks. In its maximum configuration, the chip is confirmed to feature 8 P-cores, and 16 E-cores. There are no low-power island E-cores. Each of the 8 P-cores is a "Lion Cove" featuring 3 MB of dedicated L2 cache; while each the E-cores are "Skymont," arranged in 4-core modules that share 4 MB L2 caches among them. Intel claims that the "Lion Cove" P-core offers a 14% IPC increase over the "Redwood Cove" P-core powering "Meteor Lake," which in turn had either equal or a 1% IPC regression compared to "Raptor Cove." This would put "Lion Cove" at a 13-14% IPC advantage over the "Raptor Cove" cores. It's important to note here, that the "Lion Cove" P-cores lack HyperThreading, so Intel will be banking heavily on the "Skymont" E-cores to shore up generational multithreaded performance increase. "Skymont" was a show-stopper at Intel's Computex event, with a nearly 50% IPC gain over previous generations of Intel E-cores, which puts it at par with the "Raptor Cove" cores in single-thread performance.

ASUS has revealed its upcoming ExpertBook P5 laptop, set to debut alongside Intel's highly anticipated "Lunar Lake" processors. This ultrabook aims to boost AI-capable laptop market, featuring an unspecified Intel Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" CPU at its core. The ExpertBook P5 boasts impressive AI processing capabilities, with over 45 TOPS from its Neural Processing Unit and a combined 100+ TOPS when factoring in the CPU and GPU. The NPU provides efficient processing, with additional power coming from Lunar Lake's GPU with XMX cores, featuring the Xe2 Battlemage architecture. This is more than enough for the Copilot+ certification from Microsoft, making the laptop debut as an "AI PC." The ExpertBook P5 offers up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory running at 8333 MT/s, up to 3 TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage with two drives, and Wi-Fi 7 support.

The 14-inch anti-glare display features a 2.5K resolution and a smooth 144 Hz refresh rate, ensuring a premium visual experience. Despite its powerful internals, the ExpertBook P5 maintains a solid profile weighing just 1.3 kg. The laptop is housed in an all-metal military-grade aluminium body with a 180-degree lay-flat hinge, making it both portable and versatile. ASUS has also prioritized cooling efficiency with innovative technology that optimizes thermal management, whether the laptop is open or closed. Security hasn't been overlooked either, with the ExpertBook P5 featuring a robust security ecosystem, including Windows 11 secured-core PC framework, NIST-155-ready Commercial-Grade BIOS protection, and biometric login options. While an exact release date hasn't been confirmed, ASUS is preparing ExpertBook P5 and other Lunar Lake-powered laptops to hit the market in the second half of 2024.

Intel has reportedly chosen the TSMC 4 nm EUV foundry node for its next generation Arc Xe2 discrete GPUs based on the "Battlemage" graphics architecture. This would mark a generational upgrade from the Arc "Alchemist" family, which Intel built on the TSMC 6 nm DUV process. The TSMC N4 node offers significant increases in transistor densities, performance, and power efficiency over the N6, which is allowing Intel to nearly double the Xe cores on its largest "Battlemage" variant in numerical terms. This, coupled with increased IPC, clock speeds, and other features, should make the "Battlemage" contemporary against today's AMD RDNA 3 and NVIDIA Ada gaming GPUs. Interestingly, TSMC N4 isn't the most advanced foundry node that the Xe2 "Battlemage" is being built on. The iGPU powering Intel's Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" processor is part of its Compute tile, which Intel is building on the more advanced TSMC N3 (3 nm) node.

Intel very much does intend to make discrete gaming GPUs based on its Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture, which made its debut with the Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake-MX" processor as an iGPU. With its next generation, Intel plans to capture an even bigger share of the gaming graphics market, both on the notebook and desktop platforms. "Battlemage" will be crucial for Intel, as it will be able to make its case with Microsoft and Sony for semi-custom chips, for their next-generation consoles. Intel has all pieces of the console SoC puzzle that AMD does. A Xe2 "Battlemage" discrete GPU sample, codenamed "Churchill Falls," has been spotted making its transit in and out of locations known for Intel SoC development, such as Bangalore in India, and Shanghai in China.

Such shipping manifests tend to be incredibly descriptive, and speak of an Arc "Battlemage" X3 and Arc "Battlemage" X4 SKUs, each with 448 execution units (EU), across 56 Xe cores. Assuming an Xe core continues to have 128 unified shaders in the "Battlemage" architecture, you're looking at 7,168 unified shaders for this GPU, a staggering 75% increase in just the numerical count of the shaders, and not accounting for IPC increase and other architecture-level features. The descriptions also speak of a 256-bit wide memory bus, although they don't specify memory type or speed. Given that at launch, the Arc A770 "Alchemist" was a 1440p-class GPU, we predict Intel might take a crack at a 4K-class GPU. Besides raster 3D performance, Intel is expected to significantly improve the ray tracing and AI performance of its Xe2 discrete GPUs, making them powerful options for creative professionals.

During Computex 2024, Intel announced the next-generation compute platform for the notebook segment in the form of the Core Ultra 200V series, codenamed Lunar Lake. Set for release in September 2024, these processors are generating excitement among tech enthusiasts and industry professionals alike. According to the latest leak by VideoCardz, Intel plans to unveil nine variants of Lunar Lake, including Core Ultra 7 and Core Ultra 5 models, with a single high-end Core Ultra 9 variant. While exact specifications remain under wraps, Intel's focus on artificial intelligence capabilities is clear. The company aims to secure a spot in Microsoft's Copilot+ lineup by integrating its fourth-generation Neural Processing Unit (NPU), boasting up to 48 TOPS of performance. All Lunar Lake variants are expected to feature a hybrid architecture with four Lion Cove performance cores and four Skymont efficiency cores.

This design targets low-power mobile devices, striking a balance between performance and energy efficiency. For graphics, Intel is incorporating its next-generation Arc technology, dubbed Battlemage GPU, which utilizes the Xe2-LPG architecture. The leaked information suggests that Lunar Lake processors will come with either 16 GB or 32 GB of non-upgradable LPDDR5-8533 memory. Graphics configurations are expected to include seven or eight Xe2 GPU cores, depending on the model. At the entry level, the Core Ultra 5 226V is rumored to offer a 17 W base power and 30 W maximum turbo power, with performance cores clocking up to 4.5 GHz. The top-tier Core Ultra 9 288V is expected to push the envelope with a 30 W base power, performance cores boosting to 5.1 GHz, and an NPU capable of 48 TOPS. You can check out the rest of the SKUs in the table below.

According to the report from Phoronix, the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel will introduce initial display support for the highly anticipated Intel Battlemage graphics processors. Battlemage, built on Intel's Xe2 architecture, represents the company's latest effort to challenge established players in the graphics arena. This new line of GPUs is designed to succeed the current DG2/Alchemist hardware, promising enhanced performance and improved power efficiency. The Linux 6.11 kernel will provide the fundamental capability to drive displays connected to Battlemage GPUs. While this initial support is a crucial first step, it lays the groundwork for more comprehensive functionality in future updates. Linux users and developers can look forward to testing and providing feedback on these new graphics solutions.

Intel's focus on power efficiency is evident in the features accompanying Battlemage support. The kernel will introduce Panel Replay functionality, a technology aimed at reducing display power consumption. This aligns with the growing demand for energy-efficient computing solutions, particularly in mobile and laptop segments. However, the work is far from complete. Intel's Linux graphics driver team continues to refine and optimize Battlemage support, with the goal of delivering a seamless experience by the time these GPUs hit the market later this year. The introduction of Battlemage support not only expands options for Linux users but also intensifies competition in the GPU market, potentially driving innovation across the industry. With promises of up to 1.5x over the previous generation Arc GPUs, we are in for a decent upgrade this year.

Intel has prepared the Core Ultra 5-238V, a Lunar Lake-MX CPU that integrates 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory into the CPU package. This new design represents a significant departure from the traditional approach of using separate memory modules, promising enhanced performance and efficiency, similar to what Apple is doing with its M series of processors. The Core Ultra 5-238V is the first of its kind for Intel to hit mass consumers. Previous attempt was with Lakefield, which didn't take off, but had advanced 3D stacked Foveros packaging. With 32 GB of high-bandwidth, low-power LPDDR5X memory directly integrated into the CPU package, the Core Ultra 5-238V eliminates the need for separate memory modules, reducing latency and improving overall system responsiveness. This seamless integration results in faster data transfer rates and lower power consumption with LPDDR5X memory running at 8533 MT.

Applications that demand intensive memory usage, such as video editing, 3D rendering, and high-end gaming, will be the first to experience performance gains. Users can expect smoother multitasking, quicker load times, and more efficient handling of memory-intensive tasks. The Core Ultra 5-238V is equipped with four big Lion Cove and four little Skymont cores, in combination with seven Xe2-LPG cores based on Battlemage GPU microarchitecture. The bigger siblings to Core Ultra 5, the Core Ultra 7 series, will feature eight Xe2-LPG cores instead of seven, with the same CPU core count, while all of them will run the fourth generation NPU.

Today, we have the latest round of leaks that suggest that AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 graphics cards, codenamed the "RX 8000-series," might continue to rely on GDDR6 memory modules. According to Kepler on X, the next-generation GPUs from AMD are expected to feature 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory, marking the fourth consecutive RDNA architecture to employ this memory standard. While GDDR6 may not offer the same bandwidth capabilities as the newer GDDR7 standard, this decision does not necessarily imply that RDNA 4 GPUs will be slow performers. AMD's choice to stick with GDDR6 is likely driven by factors such as meeting specific memory bandwidth requirements and cost optimization for PCB designs. However, if the rumor of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory proves accurate, it would represent a slight step back from the 18-20 Gbps GDDR6 memory used in AMD's current RDNA 3 offerings, such as the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX GPUs.

AMD's first generation RDNA used GDDR6 with 12-14 Gbps speeds, RDNA 2 came with GDDR6 at 14-18 Gbps, and the current RDNA 3 used 18-20 Gbps GDDR6. Without an increment in memory generation, speeds should stay the same at 18 Gbps. However, it is crucial to remember that leaks should be treated with skepticism, as AMD's final memory choices for RDNA 4 could change before the official launch. The decision to use GDDR6 versus GDDR7 could have significant implications in the upcoming battle between AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel's next-generation GPU architectures. If AMD indeed opts for GDDR6 while NVIDIA pivots to GDDR7 for its "Blackwell" GPUs, it could create a disparity in memory bandwidth performance between the competing products. All three major GPU manufacturers—AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel with its "Battlemage" architecture—are expected to unveil their next-generation offerings in the fall of this year. As we approach these highly anticipated releases, more concrete details on specifications and performance capabilities will emerge, providing a clearer picture of the competitive landscape.

According to the latest report from ComputerBase, Intel had a strong presence at the recently concluded Embedded World 2024 conference. The company officially showcased its Arc series of GPUs for the embedded market, based on the existing Alchemist chips rebranded as the "E series." However, industry whispers hint at a more significant development—the impending launch of Intel's second-generation Arc Xe² GPUs, codenamed "Battlemage," potentially before the lucrative Black Friday shopping season. While Alchemist serves as Intel's current offering for embedded applications, many companies in attendance expressed keen interest in Battlemage, the successor to Alchemist. These firms often cover a broad spectrum, from servers and desktops to notebooks and embedded systems, necessitating a hardware platform that caters to this diverse range of applications.

Officially, Intel had previously stated that Battlemage would "hopefully" arrive before CES 2025, implying a 2024 launch. However, rumors from the trade show floor suggest a more ambitious target—a release before Black Friday, which falls on November 29th this year. This timeline aligns with Intel's historical launch patterns, as the original Arc A380 and notebook GPUs debuted in early October 2022, albeit with a staggered and limited rollout. Intel's struggles with the Alchemist launch serve as a learning experience for the company. Early promises and performance claims for the first-generation Arc GPUs failed to materialize, leading to a stuttering market introduction. This time, Intel has adopted a more reserved approach, avoiding premature and grandiose proclamations about Battlemage's capabilities.

Speculated lower-end Intel second generation Arc GPUs popped up via SiSoftware Sandra database entries around mid-March—evaluation samples are likely in the hands of trusted hardware partners. Yesterday, momomo_us happened upon another interesting shipping manifest, following a series of AMD-related leaks. The latest list reveals five "Battlemage" products—three utilizing the BMG-21 GPU, and the remaining two being based on the BMG-10 design. These identifiers have appeared in older leaks, although the latter has been viewed in place sight—chez Intel Malaysia's Failure Analysis Lab.

Previous leaks suggest that these second generation Arc models (Xe2) reside within a "High-Performance Graphics" (HPG) discrete GPU family—the Xe2-HPG BMG-10 range is likely targeting an "enthusiast" market segment, while the Xe2-HPG BMG-21 tier is rumored to offer mid-tier performance. Intel staffers have expressed confidence about a possible late 2024 launch window. Back in January, Tom "TAP" Petersen revealed that the Arc hardware team had already moved onto third-gen "Celestial" GPU endeavors: "I'd say about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because our hardware team is on the next thing." The first-gen deck has not been cleared fully it seems—the Alchemist family could be joined by two new variants in the near future.

Intel is quietly working on second generation Arc GPUs—we have not heard much about Xe2 "Battlemage" since CES 2024. Back in January, Tom "TAP" Petersen—an Intel fellow and marketing guru—casually revealed during an interview conducted by PC World: "I'd say about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because our hardware team is on the next thing (Celestial)...Battlemage has already has its first silicon in the labs which is very exciting and there's more good news coming which I can't talk about right now." Intel appears to be targeting a loose late 2024 launch window; Petersen stated that he would like to see second generation products arrive at retail before CES 2025's commencement. The SiSoftware Sandra database was updated around mid-March with two very intriguing new Intel GPU entries—test systems (built on an ASUS PRIME Z790-P WIFI mainboard) were spotted running graphics solutions "equipped with 20 Xe-Core (160 EU) and 24 Xe-Cores (160 EU)."

Michael/miktdt commented on the freshly discovered database entries: "some smaller versions are on Sisoft...I guess they are coming. Single-float GP Compute looks quite good for just 160 VE/192 VE. Doesn't tell much about the release though, I guess anything between Q4 2024 and Q2 2025 is a possibility." Both models seem to sport 11.6 GB VRAM capacities—likely 12 GB—and 8 MB of L2 cache. Wccftech has guesstimated potential 192-bit memory bandwidth for these speculative lower-level GPUs. Team Blue has a bit more tweaking to do—based on leaked figures—but time is on their side: "the performance per core for Alchemist currently sits an average of 16% faster than the alleged Battlemage GPU which isn't a big deal since driver-level optimizations and final silicon can give a huge boost when the retail products come out."

Tulpar, an emerging PC gaming hardware company, has been doing the rounds across several European tech events—they demoed Meteor Lake-powered handheld devices at last month's Intel Extreme Masters tour stop in Katowice, Poland. A Hardwareluxx Germany report presented evidence of the Turkish company expanding into graphics card market sectors—Tulpar exhibited their "customized" Intel Arc A770 16 GB model at a recent trade show in Berlin. Andreas Schilling, resident editor at Hardwareluxx, realized that Tulpar had simply rebadged and color adjusted ASRock's Arc A770 Phantom D OC card design.

Tulpar's product placard boasted about their own "3X Cooling System"—a thin renaming of the already well-known ASRock Phantom Gaming triple-fan cooling solution. Their reliance on OEM designs is not a major revelation—the Tulpar 7-inch handheld gaming PC appears to be based on an existing platform—somewhat similar to Emdoor's EM-GP080MTL. Company representatives estimate that their "first dedicated gaming GPU" will be hitting retail within the third quarter of this year. News outlets have questioned this curious launch window—first generation Intel Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards (released in late 2022) are a tough sell, even with a much improved driver ecosystem delivering significant improvements throughout 2023/2024. Tulpar could be targeting a super budget price point, since Team Blue has signalled that their next-gen "Battlemage" GPUs are due later on in the year.

Intel is reportedly pitching Microsoft to work on an "all American" semi-custom SoC for Microsoft's next Xbox generation that succeeds the Series X/S. The company's main pitch to Microsoft is the fact that the chip would be made entirely in the US, including its silicon fabrication and packaging. Microsoft currently relies on AMD for its SoC, which combines an AMD "Zen 2" CPU with a powerful RDNA2 iGPU that meets DirectX 12 Ultimate requirements.

Intel's semi-custom chip could be functionally the same, albeit based on its next generation CPU and graphics microarchitectures. Strengthening Intel's case is the fact that it now has a contemporary high performance gaming graphics architecture in Xe "Alchemist," and is on course to launch its successor, the Xe² "Battlemage," later this year. The company also made huge strides with chiplet-based SoCs as demonstrated with "Meteor Lake." Intel's semi-custom SoC for Microsoft could combine any of its upcoming CPU microarchitectures, such as "Lunar Lake," or "Panther Lake," and an iGPU based on "Battlemage" or Xe³ "Celestial." This chip could also integrate a next generation NPU if the platform calls for one. This wouldn't be Intel's first rodeo with powering a console; in fact the very first Microsoft Xbox was powered by a Pentium 3 "Coppermine" CPU, paired with a discrete GeForce 3 GPU supplied by NVIDIA.

Intel is planning to launch its next-generation Arc "Battlemage" GPUs in 2024. When they come out, they could possibly be the first to implement a PCIe Gen 5 host interface, with the BCM-G10 silicon powering the top SKUs reportedly featuring PCI-Express 5.0 x16. Given how sensitive current generation Arc GPUs are to host interface features such as resizable BAR, the GPUs might possibly need not just the added bandwidth, but also features Gen 5 introduces, such as memory coherency. It might not just be a move aimed at sprucing up the specs sheet.

The Moore's Law is Dead report behind this leak also says that with the Arc Xe2 generation, Intel might not release mobile AIC cards like it does with the current generation. Now, this does not mean that there won't be mobile SKUs, it's just that they'll be sold to laptop OEMs to hardwired onto their laptop mainboards—as it's done on the majority of laptops with discrete GPUs. Besides laptop GPUs in trays, Intel will also develop desktop PCIe add-on graphics cards based on the new GPUs.

Intel in its 2024 International CES presentation, unveiled its two new upcoming client microarchitectures, "Arrow Lake" and "Lunar Lake." Michelle Johnston Holthaus, EVP and GM of Intel's client computing group (CCG), in her keynote address, held up a next-generation Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" chip. This is the Lunar Lake-MX package, with MOP (memory on package). You have a Foveros base tile resembling "Meteor Lake," with on-package LPDDR5x memory stacks. With "Lunar Lake," Intel is reorganizing components across its various Foveros tiles—the Compute and Graphics tiles are combined into a single tile built on an Intel foundry node that's possibly the Intel 20A (we have no confirmation); and a smaller SoC tile that has all of the components of the current "Meteor Lake" SoC tile, and is possibly built on a TSMC node, such as N3.

"Lunar Lake" will pick up the mantle from "Meteor Lake" in the U-segment and H-segment (that's ultraportables, and thin-and-light), when it comes out later this year (we predict in the second half of 2024), with Core Ultra 2-series branding. Intel also referenced "Arrow Lake," which could finally bring light to the sluggish pace of development in its desktop segment. When it comes out later this year, "Arrow Lake" will debut Socket LGA1851, "Arrow Lake" will bring the AI Boost NPU to the desktop, along with Arc Xe-LPG integrated graphics. The biggest upgrade of course will be its new Compute tile, with its "Lion Cove" P-cores, and "Skymont" E-cores, that possibly offer a large IPC uplift over the current combination of "Raptor Cove" and "Gracemont" cores on the "Raptor Lake" silicon. It's also possible that Intel will try to bring "Meteor Lake" with its 6P+8E Compute tile, Xe-LPG iGPU, and NPU, to the LGA1851 socket, as part of some mid-range processor models. 2024 will see a Intel desktop processor based on a new architecture, which is the big takeaway here.

Intel, in a company presentation made to its channel partners, confirmed that it is looking to release its next generation Arc Xe² discrete GPU lineup, codenamed "Battlemage." This would be Intel's second rodeo with high performance gaming graphics since its 2022 return to the segment with the Arc "Alchemist" series. The One Intel presentation slide talks about what to look forward to from the company in the client segment, in the coming year. The slide states that PC processor, workstation processor, and discrete GPU segments will each see upcoming products, which can be seen as a confirmation for a 2024 launch of "Battlemage." Older company slides had illustrated that the launch of "Battlemage" would be timed around that of the company's "Meteor Lake" and "Arrow Lake" client processors. The company is expected to launch "Arrow Lake" sometime in 2024. With "Battlemage," Intel is looking to offer a linear increase in performance, along with new hardware capabilities. The discrete GPUs from this family are expected to be built on a 4 nm-class foundry node by TSMC.

With the reality of high performance Arm processors from Apple and Qualcomm threatening Intel's market share in the client computing space, Intel is working on learner more PCB-efficient client SoCs that can take the fight to them, while holding onto the foundations of x86. The first such form-factor of processors are dubbed -MX. These are essentially -U segment processors with memory on package, to minimize PCB footprint. Intel has fully integrated the PCH into the processor chip with "Meteor Lake," with PCH functions scattered across the SoC and I/O tiles of the processor. An SoC package with dimensions similar to those of -UP4 packages meant for ultrabooks, can now cram main memory, so the PCBs of next-generation notebooks can be further compacted.

Intel had recently shown Meteor Lake-MX packages to the press as a packaging technology demonstration in its Arizona facility. It's unclear whether this could release as actual products, but in a leaked company presentation, confirmed that its first commercial outing will be with Lunar Lake-MX. The current "Alder Lake-UP4" package measures 19 mm x 28.5 mm, and is a classic multi-chip module that combines a monolithic "Alder Lake" SoC die with a PCH die. The "Meteor Lake-UP4" package measures 19 mm x 23 mm, and is a chiplet-based processor, with a Foveros base tile that holds the Compute (CPU cores), Graphics (iGPU), SoC and I/O (platform core-logic) tiles. The "Lunar Lake-MX" package is slightly larger than its -UP4 predecessors, measuring 27 mm x 27.5 mm, but completely frees up space on the PCB for memory.