Intel Xe on its way to developer after successful test drive

Intel Xe represents several interesting things. In part, this means that the company is launching dedicated graphics cards for the first time in fourteen years. It also means that the long-standing duopoly between AMD and Nvidia will eventually become a trio, and with the increased competition, a market situation that has been the same for many years will change.

Intel has previously announced that the company will launch the first dedicated graphics cards in the Xe series with the Gen12 architecture in 2020. A new architecture and a reported manufacturing process of 10 nanometers means that the Xe graphics cards are a complicated product to produce successfully.

This quarter we’ve achieved power-on exit for our first discrete GPU DG1, an important milestone.

During the company’s latest quarterly report, Intel’s CEO Bob Swan announces that Xe has been tested successfully. He states that Xe DG1 has gone through what is called “power on exit”. This means that the graphics card could be started and made available for work tasks. DG1 is the code name for a test version of the graphics card where the graphics circuit is placed on a specially developed circuit board for test purposes.

Furthermore, it appears that Intel has started shipping developer kits for the Xe DG1 prototypes to a number of different European developers. The data comes from the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which lists the product “Discrete Graphics DG1 External FRD1 Accessory Kit (Alpha) Developer Kit”.

The fact that Intel gives developers the opportunity to start adapting the development of the Gen12 architecture confirms previous information about the launch of the Xe series. These data indicate a launch for the summer of 2020, with hints from graphics director Raja Koduri that the introduction will take place in June.

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