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.

A CPU-Z screenshot has been shared by YuuKi_AnS—the image contains details about an alleged next-gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor engineering sample (ES). The hardware tipster noted in (yesterday's post) that an error had occurred in the application's identification of this chunk of prototype silicon. CPU-Z v2.09 has recognized the basics—an Intel Granite Rapids-SP processor that is specced with 80 cores, 2.5 GHz max frequency, a whopping 672 MB of L3 cache, and a max. TDP rating of 350 W. The counting of 320 threads seems to be CPU-Z's big mistake here—previous Granite Rapids-related leaks have not revealed Team Blue's Hyper-Threading technology producing such impressive numbers.

The alleged prototype status of this Xeon chip is very apparent in CPU-Z's tracking of single and multi-core performance—the benchmark results are really off the mark, when compared to finalized current-gen scores (produced by rival silicon). Team Blue's next-gen Xeon series is likely positioned to catch up with AMD EPYC's deployment of large core counts—"Granite Rapids" has been linked to the Intel 3 foundry node, reports from last month suggest that XCC-type processors could be configured with "counts going up to 56-core/112-threads." Micron is prepping next-gen "Tall Form Factor" memory modules, designed with future enterprise processor platforms in mind—including Intel's Xeon Scalable "Granite Rapids" family. Industry watchdogs posit that Team Blue will be launching this series in the coming months.

Phoronix has taken a short break away from monitoring the latest goings-on at AMD's software department—the site's editor-in-chief, Michael Larabel, took a moment to investigate patch notes relating to Intel's Xe and i915 Linux kernel graphics drivers. Earlier today, he noticed that "two additional PCI IDs" have been added to Team Blue's DG2/Alchemist family. This discovery prompted further sleuthing—after: "some searching and turning up hits within the Intel Compute Runtime code, 0x56BE is for an Intel Arc Graphics A750E variant and 0x56BF is for an Intel Arc Graphics A580E."

The aforementioned GPU identification codes seem to exist in gray area—the patch notes do not reveal whether these new variants are destined for desktop or mobile platforms. VideoCardz cited a remark made by "Bionic_Squash"—the reputable leaker reckons that the: "IDs are linked to Intel's Arc Embedded series. This family is tailored for industrial, business, and commercial applications, ranging from edge systems to powering large interactive screens." It is highly likely that Intel is paving the way for embedded/low-power variants of its existing Arc A750 and A580 GPUs. Tom's Hardware proposes that Team Blue is clearing out its inventory of remaining Alchemist silicon ahead of a successive generation's rollout—Battlemage is a major priority in 2024.

Construction of Intel's New Albany, Ohio fabrication site started back in late 2022—since then, a series of setbacks have caused anticipated timelines to slip. Team Blue's original plans included a 2025 opening ceremony—last month, this was amended to late 2026 or early 2027. New equipment deliveries have been affected by extreme weather conditions—Intel appears to be shoring up its flood prevention systems at their Licking County location. Ohio's Department of Development received a progress report at the start of this month, authored by Team Blue staffers—revised figures indicate that Fabrication sites 1 and 2 are expected to reach operational status somewhere within "2027-2028."

Jim Evers (Intel's Ohio Site Manager) stated: "we are making great progress growing the Silicon Heartland. In addition to the approximately $1.5 billion investment in completed spends through 12/31/23 referenced in the report, Intel has an additional $3 billion in contractually committed spends underway, totaling $4.5 billion committed toward our Ohio One projects." Intel committed a hefty $20 billion greenfield investment into the two Ohio wafer fab sites, but the latest progress report indicates that just under a quarter of that budget has trickled out of company coffers (so far). Evers's statement continued: "this investment is growing every day as we work to establish a new manufacturing campus to build leading-edge semiconductor chips right here in Ohio." A Tom's Hardware report reminds us about Team Blue's New Albany project receiving "over $2 billion in incentives." Industry rumors posit that the US government is readying a multi-billion dollar grant for Intel's Arizona facility.

Two years ago, Intel Corporation and the Italian Government initiated negotiations over the "enabling" of a new state-of-the-art back-end manufacturing facility—a potential investment of up to 4.5 billion euros was mentioned at the time. Italy's chipmaking fund was put together in order to attract several big semiconductor firms, but Team Blue appeared to be the primary target. This week, Minister Adolfo Urso confirmed to media outlets that Intel had: "given up or postponed its investments in France and Italy, compared with others that it plans in Germany." Intel has not commented on this announcement according to a Reuters report—a spokesperson declined to make a statement.

Italy's Business Minister stated that he will welcome a continuation of negotiations, if Intel leadership chooses to diversify its construction portfolio outside of Germany: "if it decides to complete those projects, we are still here." His nation is set to receive further investments, following a recent announcement from Silicon Box—the Singapore-headquartered advanced semiconductor packaging company has signed an up to €3.2 billion deal. Their new Italian facility will: "enable next generation applications in artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC)," and other segments. Urso reckons that "there will be others in coming months." He also added that a ministry task force had conducted talks with unnamed Taiwanese groups.

According to the latest report by Reuters, the US government is preparing to announce a multi-billion dollar grant for Intel's chip manufacturing operations in Arizona next week, possibly worth more than $10 billion. US President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will make the announcement, which is part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act aimed at expanding US chip production and reducing dependence on China and Taiwan manufacturing. The exact amount of the grant has yet to be confirmed, but rumors suggest it could exceed $10 billion, making it the most significant award yet under the CHIPS Act. The funding will include grants and loans to bolster Intel's competitive position and support the company's US semiconductor manufacturing expansion plans. This comes as a surprise just a day after the Pentagon reportedly refused to invest $2.5 billion in Intel as a part of a secret defense grant.

Intel has been investing significantly in its US expansion, recently opening a $3.5 billion advanced packaging facility in New Mexico, supposed to create extravagant packaging technology like Foveros and EMIB. The chipmaker is also expanding its semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Arizona, with plans to build new fabs in the state. Arizona is quickly becoming a significant hub for semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. In addition to Intel's expansion, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is also building new fabs in the state, attracting supply partners to the region. CHIPS Act has a total funding capacity of $39 billion allocated for semiconductor production and $11 billion for research and development. The Intel grant will likely cover the production part, as Team Blue has been reshaping its business units with the Intel Product and Intel Foundry segments.

The US government is reported to be preparing a very healthy $3.5 billion investment in Intel Corporation—a mid-week published Bloomberg article proposes that the White House has authored a new "fast-moving spending bill." Congressional aides believe that Team Blue—upon official approval/signing off of funds—will be tasked with the production of advanced semiconductors for military and intelligence programs. Bloomberg posits that the resources will be sourced from a "Secure Enclave" project, seemingly linking to a wider tranche of funds within the US government's CHIPS and Science Act. The agreement/contract is expected to run over a period of three years. According to Bloomberg: "the Senate is expected to pass the legislation by a Saturday (March 9) deadline."

Reports from last November suggested that Intel leadership and US government representatives had engaged in negotiations regarding funds for military and intelligence chip applications—the construction costs for new manufacturing facilities were estimated to be in the $3 billion to $4 billion range. A Commerce Department statement was submitted to Bloomberg, but they only commented on an overall $10 billion budget: "We are still reviewing the effect of the appropriations text on the program...(we look) forward to continuing to work with Congress on implementing the Chips and Science Act in a manner the promotes our economic and national security." TSMC, Micron and Samsung are expected to receive "multi-billion-dollar awards" in the near future—these multinational corporations will assist in a bolstering of North American chip manufacturing capabilities.

Intel's "AI Everywhere" hype campaign has generated the most noise in mainstream and enterprise segments. Team Blue's Gaudi—a family of deep learning accelerators—does not hit the headlines all that often. Their current generation model, Gaudi 2, is overshadowed by Team Green and Red alternatives—according to Intel's official marketing spiel: "it performs competitively on deep learning training and inference, with up to 2.4x faster performance than NVIDIA A100." Habana, an Intel subsidiary, has been working on optimizing Large Language Model (LLM) inference on Gaudi 1 and 2 for a while—their co-operation with Hugging Face has produced impressive results, as of late February. Siddhant Jagtap, an Intel Data Scientist, has demonstrated: "how easy it is to generate text with the Llama 2 family of models (7b, 13b and 70b) using Optimum Habana and a custom pipeline class."

Jagtap reckons that folks will be able to: "run the models with just a few lines of code" on Gaudi 2 accelerators—additionally, Intel's hardware is capable of accepting single and multiple prompts. The custom pipeline class: "has been designed to offer great flexibility and ease of use. Moreover, it provides a high level of abstraction and performs end-to-end text-generation which involves pre-processing and post-processing." His article/blog outlines various prerequisites and methods of getting Llama 2 text generation up and running on Gaudi 2. Jagtap concluded that Habana/Intel has: "presented a custom text-generation pipeline on Intel Gaudi 2 AI accelerator that accepts single or multiple prompts as input. This pipeline offers great flexibility in terms of model size as well as parameters affecting text-generation quality. Furthermore, it is also very easy to use and to plug into your scripts, and is compatible with LangChain." Hugging Face reckons that Gaudi 2 delivers roughly twice the throughput speed of NVIDIA A100 80 GB in both training and inference scenarios. Intel has teased third generation Gaudi accelerators—industry watchdogs believe that next-gen solutions are designed to compete with Team Green H100 AI GPUs.

The existence of Intel's upcoming Core i9-14900KS processor has been confirmed by a series of insider leaks and premature retail listings—an "alleged" example was photographed and appeared online right at the start of 2024. French e-tail listings produced evidence of two packages—a traditional retail box version, and a barebones tray option for OEM purposes. Earlier today, the I_Leak_VN social media account uploaded proof of a single "Special Edition" box sitting in an unnamed Vietnamese warehouse—it is not immediately clear whether units have reached retail facilities, or have just arrived on Southeast Asian shores. The embargo-busting post seemingly corroborates global insider information/whispers about distribution networks receiving stock—possibly in preparation for a rumored mid-March launch. VideoCardz believes that Vietnamese customers will be paying roughly $765 a pop—30% pricier than the current cost of 14th Gen Core flagship ownership.

Intel has been hyping up their artificial intelligence-augmented processor products since late last year—their "AI Everywhere" marketing push started with the official launch of Intel Core Ultra mobile CPUs, AKA the much-delayed Meteor Lake processor family. CEO, Pat Gelsinger stated (mid-December 2023): "AI innovation is poised to raise the digital economy's impact up to as much as one-third of global gross domestic product...Intel is developing the technologies and solutions that empower customers to seamlessly integrate and effectively run AI in all their applications—in the cloud and, increasingly, locally at the PC and edge, where data is generated and used." Team Blue's presence at this week's MWC Barcelona 2024 event introduced "AI Everywhere Across Network, Edge, Enterprise."

Nikkei Asia sat down with Intel's David Feng—Vice President of Client Computing Group and General Manager of Client Segments. The impressively job-titled executive discussed the "future of AI PCs," and set some lofty sales goals for his firm. According to the Nikkei report, Intel leadership expects to "deliver 40 million AI PCs" this year and a further 60 million units next year—representing "more than 20% of the projected total global PC market in 2025." Feng and his colleagues predict that mainstream customers will prefer to use local "on-device" AI solutions (equipped with NPUs), rather than rely on remote cloud services. Significant Edge AI improvements are expected to arrive with next generation Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake processor families, the latter will be bringing Team Blue NPU technologies to desktop platforms—AMD's Ryzen 8000G series of AM5 APUs launched with XDNA engines last month.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger engaged with press/media representatives following the conclusion of his IFS Direct Connect 2024 keynote speech—when asked about Team Blue's ongoing relationship with TSMC, he confirmed that their manufacturing agreement has advanced from "5 nm to 3 nm." According to a China Times news article: "Gelsinger also confirmed the expansion of orders to TSMC, confirming that TSMC will hold orders for Intel's Arrow and Lunar Lake CPU, GPU, and NPU chips this year, and will produce them using the N3B process, officially ushering in the Intel notebook platform that the outside world has been waiting for many years." Past leaks have indicated that Intel's Arrow Lake processor family will have CPU tiles based on their in-house 20A process, while TSMC takes care of the GPU tile aspect with their 3 nm N3 process node.

That generation is expected to launch later this year—the now "officially confirmed" upgrade to 3 nm should produce pleasing performance and efficiency improvements. The current crop of Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processors has struggled with the latter, especially when compared to rivals. Lunar Lake is marked down for a 2025 launch window, so some aspects of its internal workings remain a mystery—Gelsinger has confirmed that TSMC's N3B is in the picture, but no official source has disclosed their in-house manufacturing choice(s) for LNL chips. Wccftech believes that Lunar Lake will: "utilize the same P-Core (Lion Cove) and brand-new E-Core (Skymont) core architecture which are expected to be fabricated on the 20A node. But that might also be limited to the CPU tile. The GPU tile will be a significant upgrade over the Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs since Lunar Lake ditches Alchemist and goes for the next-gen graphics architecture codenamed "Battlemage" (AKA Xe2-LPG)." Late January whispers pointed to Intel and TSMC partnering up on a 2 nanometer process for the "Nova Lake" processor generation—perhaps a very distant prospect (2026).

US Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, was a notable guest speaker during yesterday's Intel Foundry Direct Connect Keynote—she was invited on (via a video link) to discuss the matter of strengthening the nation's semiconductor industry, and staying competitive with global rivals. During discussions, Pat Gelsinger (Intel CEO) cheekily asked whether a "CHIPS Act Part Two" was in the pipeline. Raimondo responded by stating that she is till busy with the original $52 billion tranche: "I'm out of breath running as fast as I can implementing CHIPS One." Earlier this week, her department revealed a $1.5 billion planned direct fund for GlobalFoundries: "this investment will enable GF to expand and create new manufacturing capacity and capabilities to securely produce more essential chips for automotive, IoT, aerospace, defense, and other vital markets."

Intel is set to receive a large grant courtesy of the US government's 2022-launched CHIPS and Science Act—exact figures have not been revealed to the public, but a Nikkei Asia report suggests that Team Blue will be benefiting significantly in the near future: "While the Commerce Department has not yet announced how much of the funding package's $52 billion it would grant Intel, the American chipmaker is expected to get a significant portion, according to analysts and officials close to the situation." Raimondo stated that: "Intel is an American champion company and has a very huge role to play in this revitalization." The US Commerce Chief also revealed that she had spoken with artificial intelligence industry leaders, including OpenAI's Sam Altman, about the ever-growing demand for AI-crunching processors/accelerators/GPUs. The country's semiconductor production efforts could be bolstered once more, in order to preserve a competitive edge—Raimondo addressed Gelsinger's jokey request for another batch of subsidies: "I suspect there will have to be—whether you call it Chips Two or something else—continued investment if we want to lead the world...We fell pretty far. We took our eye off the ball."

The recently concluded Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) event (in Katowice, Poland) played host to another emerging Windows 11 handheld gaming computer—attendees spent hands-on time with potentially Meteor Lake APU-powered pre-release devices. International audiences were treated to a small selection of photos from IEM, as teased by Team Blue's Gaming division last weekend: "A new handheld PC is approaching. The Tulpar brings gaming on the go!" Exact details/specifications and user impressions have not reached the wider world, but many believe that rebadged Emdoor EM-GP080MTL units were showcased in Southern Poland last week. Tulpar is a subsidiary company of Turkish brand, Monster Notebook—it mainly sells gaming laptops and gear in UK and German markets.

Tulpar's mysterious handheld reportedly sports a seven inch display, indicating that it is a slightly smaller device when lined up against the EM-GP080MTL model (8-inch, 1200p). Internet sleuths reckon that the Tulpar shares many of the same technical underpinnings—general Emdoor OEM specs seem to include an unspecified Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake-H processor, Arc Graphics 5 and 32 GB LPDDR5X. The EM-GP080MTL was unveiled several months before the debut presentation of MSI's Claw—another Meteor Lake-H-based handheld—at last month's CES trade show. Later on, MSI confirmed that three distinct Claw SKUs will be heading to retail—with an entry-level version sporting Intel's Core Ultra 5-135H CPU, and more expensive options utilizing Core Ultra 7-155H processors.

Intel is aiming to get its $20 billion fabrication location—in New Albany, Ohio—up and running by 2025, but the advanced manufacturing facility is facing another round of setbacks. According to a WCMH NBC4 local news report (covering the Colombus, Ohio area), a planned "oversized equipment" reshuffle has been delayed—the shifting of heavy machinery was supposed to start last weekend. Extreme weather conditions (flooding) have been cited as major factor, as well as the complicated nature of transporting "overweight and oversized" loads to Team Blue's 1000-acre site. Workers are set to resume efforts this weekend—starting no later than February 17. Tom's Hardware has kept tabs on the Ohio fab's progress: "The project to move the equipment is expected to last over nine months, meaning this phase of Intel's construction could be done near the end of 2024. There isn't a firm indication of how much work remains to be done at the site after the equipment is delivered." TPU previously covered the leading-edge location's indefinitely postponed groundbreaking ceremony—CHIPS Act subsidies were not delivered in an expected timely manner back in 2022.

A couple of media outlets (Tom's Hardware, Network World, etc.) have received an official statement regarding the slippage of events in New Albany: "While we will not meet the aggressive 2025 production goal that we anticipated when we first announced the selection of Ohio in January, 2022, construction has been underway since breaking ground in late 2022 and our construction has been proceeding on schedule. Typical construction timelines for semiconductor manufacturing facilities are 3-5 years from groundbreaking, depending on a range of factors...We remain fully committed to the project and are continuing to make progress on the construction of the factory and supporting facilities this year. As we said in our January 2022 site-selection announcement, the scope and pace of Intel's expansion in Ohio may depend on various conditions." Industry insiders believe that an "opening ceremony" could occur around late 2026, or even early 2027.

Intel's Core i9-14900T processor was "officially" released last month alongside an expanded population of "Raptor Lake Refresh" products—the T-class alternative to Team Blue's flagship desktop Core i9-14900 CPU is a less glamorous prospect, hence almost zero press coverage and tech reviews. Its apparent lack of visibility is not helped by non-existent availability at retail, despite inclusion in Team Blue's second wave of 14th Generation Core processors (Marketing Status = Launched). The Core i9-14900 (non-K) is readily obtainable around the globe, as a lower-power alternative to the ever greedy Core i9-14900K, but their T-class SKU sibling takes frugality to another level. TPU's resident CPU tester, W1zzard, implemented six distinct power limit settings during a i9-14900K supplemental experiment, with the lowest being 35 W—coincidentally, matching the i9-14900T's default base power.

His simulated findings were not encouraging, to say the least, but late last week BenchLeaks noticed that a lone test system had gauged the T-class part's efficiency-oriented processing prowess. Geekbench 6.2.2 results were generated by an ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 build (with 64 GB of 5586 MT/s DDR5 SDRAM)—scoring 3019 in the overall single-core category, and 16385 in multi-core stakes. The latter score indicates a 22% performance penalty when referenced against Tom Hardware's Geekbenched i9-14900K sample. The publication reckons that these figures place Intel's Core i9-14900T CPU in good company—notably AMD's Ryzen 9 7900 processor, one of the company's trio of 65 W "non-X" SKUs. Last March, W1zzard was suitably impressed by his review sample's "fantastic energy efficiency"—the Geekbench 6 official scoreboard awards it 2823 (single-core) and 16750 (multi-core) based on aggregated data from multiple submissions.

A Taiwan Economic Daily news article proposes that a couple of high profile clients are considering TSMC's 2 nanometer process—Apple is widely believed to be the first customer to join the foundry's queue for cutting edge services. The report posits that Intel is also signed up on the Taiwanese firm's 2 nm reservation list—TSMC is expected to start production in 2025—insiders reckon that Team Blue's "Nova Lake" CPU family is the prime candidate here. Its CPU tile is alleged to utilize TSMC 2 nm node. Intel's recent "Core" processor roadmaps do not display any technologies beyond 2025—many believe that "Nova Lake" is pencilled in for a loose 2026 launch window, perhaps within the second half of the year.

The existence of "Nova Lake" was revealed late last year by HWiNFO patch notes—a short entry mentioned preliminary support for the family's integrated GPU. Intel is engaged in hyping up of its own foundry's 20A and 18A processes, but remain reliant on TSMC plants for various bits of silicon. Industry tipsters reckon that aspects of "Lunar Lake" CPUs are based on the Taiwanese foundry's N3B node. Team Blue Corporation and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) announced a new development partnership last week, but initial offerings will arrive on a relatively passé "12-nanometer semiconductor process platform." TSMC's very advanced foundry services seem to be unmatched at this juncture.

Intel presented its next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" processor family during September's Innovation Event—their roadmap slide (see below) included other Birch Stream platform architecture options. Earlier this week, Team Blue's software engineers issued a Linux kernel patch that contains details pertaining to codenamed projects: Sierra Forest, Grand Ridge and the aforementioned Clearwater Forest. All E-Core Xeon "Sierra Forest" processors are expected to launch around the middle of 2024—this deployment of purely efficiency-oriented "Sierra Glen" (Atom Crestmont) cores in enterprise/server chip form will be a first for Intel. The Sierra Forest Xeon range has been delayed a couple of times; but some extra maturation time has granted a jump from an initial maximum 144 E-Core count up to 288. The latest patch notes provide an early look into Clearwater Forest's basic foundations—it seems to be Sierra Forest's direct successor.

The Intel Xeon "Granite Rapids" processor family is expected to hit retail just after a Sierra Forest product launch, but the former sports a very different internal configuration—an all "Redwood Cove" P-Core setup. Phoronix posits that Sierra Forest's groundwork is clearing the way for its natural successor: "Clearwater Forest is Intel's second generation E-core Xeon...Clearwater Forest should ship in 2025 while the open-source Intel Linux engineers begin in their driver support preparations and other hardware enablement well in advance of launch. With engineers already pushing Sierra Forest code into the Linux kernel and related key open-source projects like Clang and GCC since last year, their work on enabling Sierra Forest appears to be largely wrapping up and in turn the enablement is to begin for Clearwater Forest. Sent out...was the first Linux kernel patch for Sierra Forest. As usual, for the first patch it's quite basic and is just adding in the new model number for Clearwater Forest CPUs. Clear Water Forest has a model number of 0xDD (221). The patch also reaffirms that the 0xDD Clearwater Forest CPUs are using Atom Darkmont cores."