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Intel’s upcoming Xe 2 graphics architecture will focus only on iGPUs and discrete cards

Xe 2 could be ready by 2024.
Xe 2 could be ready by 2024.

Instead of modifying the Xe 2 architecture for the low power, gaming, datacenter and HPC market segments, Intel is planning to increase cost-efficiency and reduce segmentation, focusing only on integrated (LPG) and discrete (HPG) solutions.

In a recent interview with HardwareLuxx, Intel Graphics Group representative Tom Petersen admitted that having the Xe architecture split into slight variations for different market segments (low power, gaming, data center and HPC) has not proved as cost-efficient as initially thought. That is why Intel is now looking to do a less cumbersome segmentation for future iterations, with the upcoming Xe 2 generation expected to focus on only two branches: Xe2-LPG for iGPUs and Xe2-HPG for discrete graphics. The goal is to eventually have a single unmodified design serving all segments.

[…] Think in hindsight we would have been better off had we rigorously said „you know what, we gonna give up something“, like give up some differentiation in the high end or we are going to have some overhead in the low end. We are gonna just have one thing and it goes everywhere unmodified. That’s more the strategy we are looking at going forward. And that’s because, that’s really the only way to get IP reused to really work.

There is a Xe and there is a Xe 2 and in that Xe 2 generation there is a Xe-LPG and there is a HPG (…) and there are slight variations (…) which is our big learning. The idea was we needed to optimize for each segment and build separate chips and do separate verifications. And I think now the real learning is we would be better off concentrating our focus and really thinking of it like a really solidly, hard IP business.

[…] And that’s what we’ve done a much much better job going forward. We are learning to refrain from overly customizing IP because that proliferates QA and verification and really bloats the work to be done.

Videocardz points out that Intel also plans to update the current Xe architecture with a Xe-LPG branch specifically developed for the Meteor Lake mobile chips launching later this year. Some time in 2024, the next-gen Lunar Lake chips designed exclusively for ultrathin laptops will most likely launch with the Xe2-LPG branch mentioned by Petersen. Thus, the Lunar Lake iGPUs could feature more than 128 XMX execution units and provide a competitive alternative for AMD’s RDNA3 iGPUs. Xe2-HPG, on the other hand, could first launch with the Arc Battlemage desktop GPUs replacing the current Alchemist models.

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