“Xe graphics doubles performance against Gen11 in laptops”

As recently as yesterday, Intel’s graphics manager Raja Koduri indicated that the company’s graphics card in the Xe series will make its debut in the summer of 2020. The upcoming series is based on the graphics architecture Gen12, which previously went by the code name Arctic Sound, and will support ray tracing.

This is confirmed by Intel again during the Intel Developer Forum (IDC) in Tokyo. During the fair, Kenichiro Yasu, Head of Intel’s Technology Headquarters in Japan, will present both performance data for Gen12 and another confirmation that the Xe series supports ray tracing.

The performance data applies to how the Gen12 architecture in mobile design should perform compared to the current mobile Gen11 architecture. Compared to the Gen11 circuits that Ice Lake processors are equipped with, Gen12 should offer twice the performance. Kenichiro Yasu points out that where the Ice Lake family’s integrated graphics offer resolution of 1080p at 30 FPS in popular e-sports titles, the company is aiming for 60 FPS with the integrated Xe series.

During the presentation, the company also goes into the dedicated Xe graphics cards. These are confirmed to be launched again in 2020. Intel confirmed during the FMX graphics conference in April that the Xe series will support ray tracing for data center graphics cards. As FMX is a conference aimed at professional creators, this does not necessarily mean that the technology will reach consumer products in 2020.

The Xe series is designed to scale between several different product categories. On the consumer side, it should take place in everything from mobile integrated circuits to discrete graphics cards. It will also take place in servers and workstations, where Foveros technology is used to stack everything from graphics processors to memory circuits and memory controllers on the same circuit board.

Intel has confirmed that Xe graphics cards for servers and data centers will be the first to be manufactured on the company’s 7-nanometer technology. Previous reports indicate that the Xe series at the consumer level is initially manufactured on 10-nanometer technology and then moved to 7 nanometers.

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