The Road Ahead for GPUs

20 years. Yes, its indeed been that long since Intel released its last dedicated Graphics Card (the Intel 740 released way back in 1998).
As we near the end of this year, this wait is slowly coming to an end.

Intel announced their GPU in August 2018 with an eye-catching video showcasing their past achievements in the field of graphics.

The technological aspects remain a mystery. However, most sources indicate that the Xe Graphics(pronounced X-E and not Zee) will feature three micro-architectures: a low-profile Xe LP, mid-range Xe HP and high-performance computing suited Xe HPC. While the LP is expected to have 96 execution units(EU), the HP variants are rumoured to have 128, 256 and 512 EU variants.

These cards are rumoured to be Intel’s attempt to get back at market rivals Nvidia and AMD in the areas of AI, streaming and of course, gaming. The Xe GPU architecture internally referred to as Gen12, would mark Intel’s entry in the discrete graphics market. The first generation of Xe could feature a 2x performance lift over Gen11 Ice lake GPU’s with ray tracing support — rendering technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light as pixels.

The lineup is expected to be launched in June 2020 as teased(see tweet below) by Raja Koduri, senior vice president of Intel’s newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group.

Koduri was formerly leading AMD’s Vega and Navi GPU series revolution. Jim Keller, who was instrumental in designing the AMD Zen series, was also snapped up in mid-2018 by Intel.

Intel is expected to unveil more details at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on 7th January 2020. As for now, all we can do is wait.

For further reading:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/intel/xe-gpu-release-date-graphics-card-specs-performance