Alongside today’s profitable-but-uneasy earnings report from Intel, the company’s earnings presentation also offered a short update on the status of their discrete GPUs. As of today, Intel’s DG1 GPU is now shipping. Meanwhile the company announced their next GPU, appropriately named DG2, which is based on their upcoming Xe-HPG architecture. This GPU is now back from the fab and is in Intel’s lab, and is now far enough along to have been powered on.

First and foremost we have DG1, or as it’s better known by its commercial product name, Iris Xe Max. Intel’s first discrete GPU in over two decades, the company has since the beginning of this year been touting it as a companion to their Tiger Lake CPUs, pitching it as an upgraded graphics option for thin & light notebooks, and a successor of sorts to Intel’s GT3e and GT4e iGPU configurations from past generations. Until recently, we weren’t quite sure when it would show up in commercial products, but recent OEM notebook reveals along with Intel’s earnings announcement are now confirming that the GPU is shipping to OEMs. According to Intel, DG1-equipped notebooks are expected later in Q4. In the meantime, there are still scant few details on DG1 itself, such as expected performance and power consumption; so hopefully Intel will be getting ahead of its OEM partners on this one to set some expectations.

Meanwhile, today’s notes also announce for the very first time the next discrete GPU to come out of Intel, DG2. While obviously still some time off, Intel has completed tape-out and fabbing of the initial alpha silicon, with the company reporting that they’ve powered-on the GPU in their labs.

Somewhat surprisingly, CEO Bob Swan has also confirmed that this isn’t just a DG1 successor, but instead is a higher performing GPU based on the company’s forthcoming Xe-HPG(aming) architecture. First revealed this summer, Xe-HPG is Intel’s enthusiast/gamer-focused architecture, incorporating marquee features found in similar dGPUs like ray tracing. It’s also being manufactured completely external of Intel; while the company hasn’t said which fab and process node is being used, it’s none of Intel’s nodes. So this is the first major piece of external fabbed silicon that we know of to be up and running at Intel.

But like all teasers/financial disclosures, Intel isn’t saying too much more at this time. Nothing new was revealed about the Xe-HPG architecture, and Intel hasn’t clarified whether DG2 is a big, flagship-grade chip, or a more modest, high-volume part. For now, the company is simply saying that DG2 will “take our discrete graphics capability up the stack into the enthusiast segment.”

Source: Intel

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  • beginner99 - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    Agree. For gaming it's too little especially compared to iGPU and doesn't offer any other thing an iGPU already does. With a entry level NV card you can at least prototype some CUDA workloads for example.
  • Eliadbu - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    No one at Intel thinks that first gen even if they come out to be good products would gain significant market share, but the idea is building a brand over multiple generations and not relying on first gen to b
  • Eliadbu - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    Build brand name.

    Anandtech please put edit button. The lack of one is killing me sometimes.
  • hubick - Thursday, October 22, 2020 - link

    The DG1 would be interesting for a desktop Linux system. I don't see them actually being sold anywhere yet though?
  • JayNor - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    Asus and Acer are already advertising DG1 in products for q4.
  • hubick - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    Those are laptops, I want the discrete card for my desktop PC. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15364/intels-dg1-di...
  • Spunjji - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    I'm not sure there will be a DG1 in that form - the performance is too low. I think those were test cards and it's going to be a notebook-only product - at least, based on the lack of announcements outside that area.
  • JayNor - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    Intel is also in production of SG1 ... a 4 tile version of DG1. Maybe these will make it down to desktop.
  • asfletch - Tuesday, October 27, 2020 - link

    I agree - I want a super efficient single slot low profile GPU for my fanless htpc. Gt1030 is the closest so far, but still needs a huge heatsink if you opt for no fan. Looked into MXM adapters but can't find anything useful/affordable.
  • Alistair - Friday, October 23, 2020 - link

    You can tell they have no confidence in the product. Where are our $100 add-in boards? Nothing.

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