Intel’s graphics manager shows high-performance Xe cards

The year 2020 was the starting shot for Intel’s return to the graphics card market after a 22-year absence. First out was the Iris Xe Max, a small graphics circuit whose specifications are virtually exactly the same as the integrated graphics part of the Tiger Lake processor family. The circuit is also used in quadruple set in H3C XG310, a graphics card intended for servers and cloud gaming.

So far, it has been exclusively about the architecture Xe-LP (Low Power), where the focus is primarily on energy efficiency. On Twitter Intel’s graphics manager Raja Koduri gives a taste of an unprecedented plug-in card in which the Xe-HP architecture is housed instead. Judging from the picture, it is a single larger circuit, which makes the circuit board shorter than the H3C XG310 with four circuits on one circuit board. The picture also shows an 8-pin PCI Express connection.

Intel’s four variants of the Xe architecture

Intel Xe is basically an architecture, but instead of using a completely identical one across all segments, it is differentiated for different areas. This is done by scaling away and adding features. The Xe-LP variant is the architecture that is integrated into the company’s consumer processors. For this, the focus is primarily on energy efficiency and functions for, among other things, acceleration of media, but also basic capacity for gaming.

Intel Xe-HPG is an upscale variant of Xe-LP with a pronounced focus on high gaming performance. It is first and foremost about higher performance that is made possible by more calculation units. For this, there are also game-oriented features such as dedicated silicon ray tracing in real time. For generation one, Intel will, according to its own statement, use the GDDR6 memory technology.

Intel Xe-HP which is in the card Raja Koduri shows is a variant where the focus is shifted from games to more general calculations. In addition to being used in servers and data centers, it is also possible to sell loose graphics cards with Xe-HP for workstations. This will take the step up to more energy efficient, higher performing and more expensive memory technology High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

The next step up is the Xe-HPC with which Intel does not save on gunpowder. Several individual circuits must work together to form a large “graphics card”. This is through the Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), which places several circuits on the same substrate. Foveros is also used for this, a technology where circuits are stacked on top of each other. The purpose of Xe-HPC is data center in Exascale class. The first product is Ponte Vecchio.

While 2020 was the starting shot, 2021 will be a more interesting year. In addition to integrated graphics and solutions for servers, this is when the first dedicated graphics card for games will be released. Intel has so far not communicated anything more concrete than that the launch will take place during the year.

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