Intel’s 7-nanometer Xe graphics circuit is called “Ponte Vecchio”

In 2020, two will be three when the processor giant Intel enters the graphics game in earnest. The investment includes everything from integrated graphics parts to graphics cards for consumers up to data centers. In addition, Intel has already announced that it will be a graphics circuit that will be first out at 7 nanometers.

Now it appears that Intel’s first Xe graphics circuit at 7 nanometers is called “Ponte Vecchio”. The information comes from Videocardz, which refers to Intel informing selected media about the graphics circuit ahead of an upcoming official unveiling. The name follows in the footsteps of many Intel architectures on the processor side with the suffix “Bridge” – Ponte Vecchio is the name of an old stone bridge in Florence, Italy.

The bridge-related name should refer to the choice of communication layer used to connect multiple graphics circuits. According to the report, Ponte Vecchio will use Compute Express Link (CXL), which is based on the PCI Express 5.0 protocol and adds support for, among other things, synchronization of cache memory.

That CXL would be the basis for Intel’s pairing of Xe graphics cards was something SweClockers Andreas Eklöv speculated about during the spring.

That the actual graphics circuit with calculation units should be manufactured at 7 nanometers is not the whole story. Ponte Vecchio will use Intel’s Foveros technology, where several circuits manufactured on both modern and older manufacturing technologies are stacked on top of each other. This is to get cost benefits, but also when certain parts such as I / O (input / output) can rarely be scaled down well with newer technologies.

By all accounts, Intel has chosen to depart from the previously unofficial code names for its graphics architectures. As the Ponte Vecchio can be expected to be included in the second generation Xe graphics, this should be based on the architecture that was previously rumored to have the name Jupiter Sound, which succeeds Arctic Sound.

Data center only

Intel Ponte Vecchio will first be 7 nanometers from the company, but this particular circuit is nothing for consumers. First out will be the upcoming supercomputer Intel Aurora, which is based on clusters where each part of the cluster is equipped with six graphics circuits and two processors from the Sapphire Rapids family. Everything is woven together through the new programming model OneAPI, of which Intel is the initiator.

Intel’s first 7-nanometer graphics chips for consumers will not appear until 2022 at the earliest.

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