In a surprise announcement, Intel put out a media alert today about an upcoming online event regarding the company’s future. Newly-appointed Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger himself will make an appearance on March 23 at 5 PM ET to discuss “the new era of innovation and technology leadership at Intel.” The strange thing about this announcement is that it coincides with several Xe teasers that dropped today, leading to speculation that Intel may finally announce its gaming GPU lineup.
This of course comes as a huge surprise, as many suspected news about Xe to be much further out. We expected Pat Gelsinger to take the stage for a big talk at some point soon, as he’s made plenty of bold statements in his short time as CEO. After all, Intel has plenty of other products and revenue sources. Still, the clues are hard to misinterpret. Companies don’t typically pair product teasers with wubstep when marketing to other businesses. It appears we’re about to hear something substantial about the Intel Xe gaming GPU initiative that’s been in the works over the past several years.
The moment of truth
Intel hasn’t been shy about its Xe GPU program. Since announcing the initiative, it claimed it would compete in the high-end of gaming. Having the smarts of Raja Koduri at the helm certainly gives credibility to the potential for Xe. Before working with Intel, Koduri was in charge of AMD’s graphics division and played a defining role in developing the RDNA architecture that is currently giving Nvidia a run for its money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8L5uqNXlNE
Intel Xe GPUs are rumored to have 512 execution units, 4096 cores, 1800MHz clock speeds, and 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM and feature “tiles.” These are essentially chiplets, and will work in a similar way to how AMD uses chiplets for its CPUs. The result is multiple GPU die working in tandem to provide more performance. Seeing as Intel is potentially about to reveal its gaming GPU efforts, we’ll leave the speculation at that for now.
Mark your calendars for March 23, 5 PM ET and also keep your eye on this strange new website with something called an Intel Xe HPG Scavenger Hunt. We will apparently get some kind of code to access it on March 26.
