Intel experienced a few bumps in the road Intel trying to get its Arc Alchemist GPUs into gamers' hands. Although the cards were launched about a year late, they were generally well-received by the gaming public. Some were disappointed that they didn't do battle with flagship GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. But they were aggressively priced and offered excellent performance on modern titles. With Alchemist done and dusted but nothing revolutionary, gamers wondered if Intel would continue with the project or cancel it after Intel's dismal recent earnings and newly announced spending cuts. The recent departure of graphics chief Raja Koduri also fueled the fire. Now, a new report from Taiwan says that Intel is full steam ahead on future discrete GPU architectures planned for 2024 and 2026.
A new article in Taiwan's Commercial Times (via TechSpot) states that "industry sources" report Intel will be launching its follow-up to Alchemist, which is dubbed Battlemage, in the latter part of 2024. It'll use the Xe2 architecture, which, unlike Alchemist, will be segmented into two variants: high-power for desktop and low-power for integrated GPUs. Celestial will follow that in late 2026 with Xe3 architecture. This two-year cadence is the same as what AMD and Nvidia use, but Intel's timing puts it behind the eight ball just a tad.
In late 2024 we'll see Nvidia launch its 50-series GPUs, code-named Blackwell, and AMD's RDNA 4 will likely arrive then. Both architectures are expected to be built on TSMC's 3nm process, as it's a natural progression from their current 4/5nm products. However, the Commercial Times report states that Battlemage will utilize TSMC's 4nm process, with Celestial on its 3nm node. That means its rivals will be one node ahead of it when it comes to market, theoretically allowing better performance-per-watt.
Though the news of Intel plowing ahead is encouraging, it shouldn't be surprising. After Alchemist launched, Intel's Tom Peterson said the company would continue to work on its discrete GPU roadmap despite its difficulties with Alchemist. That's also despite its CEO admitting it would not hit its sales goal of shipping 4 million GPUs in 2022. Not to mention that one analyst surmised Intel dumped $3.5 billion into Arc with no hope of recouping that investment in the short term. Intel is clearly in it for the long haul, not just for client gaming but also for its data center products. Still, with Intel beginning to tighten its belt to cut $10 billion in costs by 2025, it'll be interesting to see if the graphics division feels any of that pain.
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