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Intel Xe (stylized as Xe and pronounced as two separate letters, abbreviation for "eXascale for everyone"), earlier known unofficially as Gen12, is a
GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...
developed by
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...
. Intel Xe includes a new
instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ...
. The Xe GPU family consists of a series of microarchitectures, ranging from integrated/low power (Xe-LP), to enthusiast/high performance gaming (Xe-HPG), datacenter/high performance (Xe-HP) and high performance computing (Xe-HPC).


History

Intel's first attempt at a dedicated graphics card was the
Intel740 The Intel740, or i740 (codenamed ''Auburn''), is a 350 nm graphics processing unit using an AGP interface released by Intel on February 12, 1998. Intel was hoping to use the i740 to popularize the Accelerated Graphics Port, while most graph ...
, released in February 1998. The Intel740 was considered unsuccessful due to its performance which was lower than market expectations, causing Intel to cease development on future discrete graphics products. However, its technology lived on in the
Intel Extreme Graphics This article contains information about Intel's GPUs (see Intel Graphics Technology) and motherboard graphics chipsets in table form. In 1982, Intel licensed the NEC μPD7220 and announced it as the Intel 82720 Graphics Display Controller. Fir ...
lineup. Intel made another attempt with the Larrabee architecture before canceling it in 2009; this time, the technology developed was used in the
Xeon Phi Xeon Phi was a series of x86 manycore processors designed and made by Intel. It was intended for use in supercomputers, servers, and high-end workstations. Its architecture allowed use of standard programming languages and application program ...
, which was discontinued in 2020. In April 2018, it was reported that
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...
was assembling a team to develop discrete
graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, m ...
s, targeting both
datacenter A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house comp ...
s, as well as the PC gaming market, and therefore competitive with products from both
Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
and AMD. Rumors supporting the claim included that the company had vacancies for over 100 graphics-related jobs, and had taken on former
Radeon Technologies Group Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Te ...
(AMD) leader
Raja Koduri Raja M. Koduri (Rajabali Makaradhwaja Koduri) is an Indian-American computer engineer and executive for computer graphics hardware. He is currently the chief architect and senior vice president of Intel's architecture, graphics and software (I ...
in late 2017 – the new product was reported to be codenamed "Arctic Sound". The project was reported to have initially been targeting video streaming chips for data centers, but had its scope expanded to include desktop GPUs. In June 2018, Intel confirmed it planned to launch a discrete GPU in 2020. The first functional discrete "Xe" GPU, codenamed "DG1", was reported as having begun testing in October 2019. According to a report by ''Hexus'' in late 2019, a discrete GPU would launch in mid 2020; combined GPU/CPU (
GPGPU General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditiona ...
) products were also expected, for data center and
autonomous driving A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for Sa ...
applications. The product is expected to be initially built on a 10 nm node (with 7 nm products in 2021) and use Intel's
Foveros A three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) is a MOS (metal-oxide semiconductor) integrated circuit (IC) manufactured by stacking as many as 16 or more ICs and interconnecting them vertically using, for instance, through-silicon vias (TSVs) or ...
die stacking packaging technology (see 3D die stacking).


Architecture

Intel Xe expands upon the microarchitectural overhaul introduced in Gen 11 with a full refactor of the
instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ...
. While Xe is a family of architectures, each variant has significant differences from each other as these are made with their targets in mind. The Xe GPU family consists of Xe-LP, Xe-HP, Xe-HPC, and Xe-HPG sub-architectures. Unlike previous Intel graphics processing units which used the Execution Unit (EU) as a compute unit, Xe-HPG and Xe-HPC use the Xe-core. This is similar to an Xe-LP subslice. An Xe-core contains vector and matrix
arithmetic logic unit In computing, an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is a combinational digital circuit that performs arithmetic and bitwise operations on integer binary numbers. This is in contrast to a floating-point unit (FPU), which operates on floating point num ...
s, which are referred to as vector and matrix engines. Other components include L1 cache and other hardware.


Xe-LP (Low Power)

Xe-LP is the low power variant of the Xe architecture. Xe-LP is present as integrated graphics for 11th-generation Intel Core and the Iris Xe MAX mobile dedicated GPU (codenamed DG1), as well as in the H3C XG310 Intel Server GPU (codenamed SG1). Compared to its predecessor, Xe-LP includes new features such as Sampler Feedback, Dual Queue Support, DirectX12 View Instancing Tier2, and AV1 8-bit and 10-bit fixed-function hardware decoding.


Xe-HP (High Performance)

Xe-HP is the datacenter/high performance variant of Xe, optimized for FP64 performance and multi-tile scalability.


Xe-HPC (High Performance Compute)

Xe-HPC is the high performance computing variant of the Xe architecture. An Xe-HPC Xe-core contains 8 vector and 8 matrix engines, alongside a large 512 KB L1 cache. It powers Ponte Vecchio.


Xe-HPG (High Performance Graphics)

Xe-HPG is the enthusiast or high performance graphics variant of the Xe architecture. The microarchitecture is based on Xe-LP with improvements from Xe-HP and Xe-HPC. The microarchitecture is focused on graphics performance and supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, DisplayPort 2.0, XeSS or supersampling based on neural networks (similar to
Nvidia DLSS Deep learning super sampling (DLSS) is a family of Real-time computing, real-time Machine learning, deep learning image enhancement and image scaling, upscaling technologies developed by Nvidia that are exclusive to its Nvidia RTX, RTX line of grap ...
), and DirectX 12 Ultimate. Intel confirmed ASTC support has been removed from hardware starting with Alchemist and future Intel Arc GPU microarchitectures will also not support it. An Xe-HPG Xe-core contains 16 vector engines and 16 matrix engines. An Xe-HPG render slice will consist of four Xe-cores, ray tracing hardware, and other components.


Intel Xe 2

A successor to Xe was revealed during Intel Architecture Day 2021, under the name of Xe 2, codenamed Battlemage. It is currently under development.


Intel Xe 3

Intel Xe 3 is the upcoming successor to the Intel Xe 2 microarchitecture codenamed Celestial and is scheduled for a 2024 release as per Intel's GPU roadmap.


Intel Xe 4

Intel Xe 4 is the upcoming successor to the Intel Xe 3 microarchitecture codenamed Druid.


Products using Xe


Integrated graphics

Newer Intel processors use the Xe-LP microarchitecture. These include 11th generation Intel Core processors (codenamed " Tiger Lake" and "
Rocket Lake Rocket Lake is Intel's codename for its 11th generation Core microprocessors. Released on March 30, 2021, it is based on the new Cypress Cove microarchitecture, a variant of Sunny Cove (used by Intel's Ice Lake mobile processors) backporte ...
"), 12th generation Intel Core processors (codenamed " Alder Lake"), and 13th generation Intel Core processors (codenamed " Raptor Lake").


Discrete graphics


Intel Iris Xe Max (DG1)

In August 2020, Intel was reported to be shipping Xe DG1 GPUs for a possible late 2020 release, while also commenting on a DG2 GPU aimed at the enthusiast market (later found out to be the first generation of Intel Arc nicknamed "
Alchemist Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim ...
"). The DG1 is also sold as the Iris Xe MAX and as Iris Xe Graphics (stylized as iRIS Xe) in laptops, while cards for developers are sold as the DG1 SDV. The Xe MAX is an entry-level GPU that was first released on November 1, 2020, in China and is similar in most aspects to the integrated GPU found in Tiger Lake processors, the only differences being a higher clock speed, slightly higher performance and dedicated memory and a dedicated TDP requirement. It competes with Nvidia's laptop-level GeForce MX series GPUs. It is aimed at slim and highly portable productivity laptops and has 4GB of dedicated LPDDR4X-4266 memory with a 128-bit wide memory bus, has 96 EUs, 48 texture units, 24 ROPs, a peak clock speed of 1650 MHz and a performance of 2.46 FP32 teraFLOPs with a 25w TDP. By comparison, the integrated GPU in Tiger Lake processors has a performance of 2.1 FP32 teraFLOPs. The Xe MAX does not replace the system's integrated GPU; instead it was designed to work alongside it, so tasks are split between the integrated and discrete GPUs. It was initially available on only 3 laptops: The Asus VivoBook Flip 14 TP470, the Acer Swift 3X, and the Dell Inspiron 15 7000. Intel Xe MAX GPUs can only be found on systems with Tiger Lake processors. Intel officially announced Intel Iris Xe Graphics desktop cards for OEMs and system integrators on January 26, 2021. It is aimed at mainstream desktop and business PCs as an improvement over other graphics options in AV1 video decoding, HDR (high dynamic range) video support and deep learning inference, and is not as powerful as its laptop counterpart, with only 80 enabled EUs. The first cards are made by Asus, have
DisplayPort DisplayPort (DP) is a digital display interface developed by a consortium of PC and chip manufacturers and standardized by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). It is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device su ...
1.4,
HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controlle ...
2.0, Dual Link DL-DVI-D outputs and are passively cooled.


Intel Arc

Intel Arc Intel Arc is a brand of graphics processing units designed by Intel. These are discrete GPUs mostly marketed for the high-margin PC gaming market. The brand also covers Intel's consumer graphics software and services. Intel Arc is competing wi ...
is a high-performance discrete graphics line optimized for gaming. This will compete directly with the
Radeon Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Tech ...
and
GeForce GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia. As of the GeForce 40 series, there have been eighteen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, inte ...
lines of graphics processing units. The first generation (codenamed "Alchemist"), was developed under the "DG2" name and is based on the Xe-HPG architecture. Future generations are codenamed Battlemage ("DG3", based on Xe2), Celestial ("DG4", based on Xe3), and Druid ("DG5").


= Desktop

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= Mobile

=


= Workstation

=


Datacenter


Ponte Vecchio

Intel officially announced their Xe general HPC/ AI GPU codenamed ''Ponte Vecchio'' on November 17, 2019. It was revealed to use the Xe-HPC variant of the architecture and Intel's 'Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge' (EMIB) and Foveros die stacking packaging on a Intel 4 node (previously referred to as 7 nm). Intel later confirmed at Architecture Day 2021 that Ponte Vecchio would use Compute Tiles manufactured on TSMC N5, Base Tiles and Rambo Cache Tiles manufactured using Intel 7 (previously referred to as 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) and Xe Link Tiles manufactured on the TSMC N7 process. The new GPU is expected to be used in
Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facility is located in Lemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and is the l ...
's new exascale supercomputer,
Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...
, with compute nodes comprising two next generation
Intel Xeon Xeon ( ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded system markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same arc ...
(codenamed "
Sapphire Rapids Sapphire Rapids is a codename for Intel's server (fourth generation Xeon Scalable) and workstation processors based on Intel 7. Sapphire Rapids was intended as part of the Eagle Stream server platform. In addition, it will be powering Aurora, a ...
") CPUs, and six ''Ponte Vecchio'' GPUs.


Rialto Bridge

Intel officially announced the successor to Ponte Vecchio, GPU codenamed ''Rialto Bridge'' on May 31, 2022.


See also

* Larrabee (microarchitecture) * Intel Graphics Technology *
Arc Alchemist series This article contains information about Intel's GPUs (see Intel Graphics Technology) and motherboard graphics chipsets in table form. In 1982, Intel licensed the NEC μPD7220 and announced it as the Intel 82720 Graphics Display Controller. Fir ...


References

{{Graphics Processing Unit GPGPU Graphics microarchitectures Intel microarchitectures Intel graphics