Intel’s Raja Koduri hints at launching Xe graphics card by summer 2020

For over a decade, the duo AMD and Nvidia have been alone in the market for graphics cards. This will change in the year 2020 when Intel releases the brand new graphics architecture Gen12, also known as Arctic Sound, which will both be used in dedicated graphics cards and integrated into processors.

The new graphics cards and integrated graphics parts with Gen12 will be part of Intel’s brand new Xe series, which will be the company’s equivalent of Radeon and Geforce. Although the year is known, many details remain, both technical but also more precise when Intel’s first graphics card in over 20 years is released.

⁦@IntelGraphics⁩ pic.twitter.com/T2symDHxJ7

– Raja Koduri (aRajaontheedge) October 4, 2019

On Twitter, Intel’s graphics director Raja Koduri publishes a picture on the back of a Tesla Model X, where the license plate strongly indicates when the launch of the Xe series will take place. The text “THINKXE” (Think Xe) is flanked by the already known year 2020, but also the month “JUN” or June. This would mean a launch in connection with Computex 2020, which takes place between 2 June and 6 June.

The first graphics cards for consumers are expected to range from models in lower price ranges up to the mid-range, as it is considered unlikely that Intel will be able to compete against AMD and Nvidia in the performance segment from day one. In addition to the consumer market, Intel will work on another variant of the architecture, which is better suited to general calculations (GPGPU) and data centers.

The first wave of graphics cards will be manufactured on Intel’s 10-nanometer technology and already in 2021, at least the variant for data center will take the step to the company’s own 7 nanometers. Following Raja Koduri’s visit to Samsung earlier this year, there is also speculation that part of the production will be handled by Samsung later on.

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