Intel has just teased what looks to be their first discrete graphics solution, aiming a release window of 2020. Intel has shown much but confirmed that their first gaming dedicated graphics cards will ship two years from now and we are most likely to hear more details on these new cards from Intel soon.
The First Intel Gaming Discrete Graphics Cards Based on Arctic Sound GPU Architecture Launching in 2020, Teaser Confirms
During late 2017, Intel announced that Raja Koduri (Ex-Senior VP and Chief Architect at AMD) will be joining them to develop integrated and discrete graphics solutions for the blue giant. As we all know, Intel doesn’t have an actual discrete solution of their own and they would require someone with expertise in this field to develop a graphics architecture that will power their future chips. Raja is just the person that Intel was looking for and in less than a year, Intel is finally showing us the first official teaser of their upcoming discrete graphics card.
We will set our graphics free. #SIGGRAPH2018 pic.twitter.com/vAoSe4WgZX
— Intel Graphics (@IntelGraphics) August 15, 2018
The teaser makes it sound a lot like it came from Raja Koduri since it talks a lot about powering pixels. Similar quotes were made for Polaris and Vega before they were announced by the then head of AMD's Radeon Technology Group but since he's at Intel now, it seems like he is going to continue with his original aims which he wasn't able to accomplish with team red. Raja has more freedom at Intel than he had at RTG and our recent exclusive, straight from industry insiders is a reflection of that.
Following are some of the shots we were able to grab from the teaser video. The card clearly looks like a single slot option with the PCIe connector. The card seems to be using a metal-fin blower fan which would be cooling the card. More in the shots below:
From previous rumors, we know that the blue team is working on at least two next-generation GPUs that will be used to power their discrete graphics cards and integrated graphics lineup. The GPU architecture would be scalable to be featured on their top-to-bottom lineup that includes desktop, mobile processors and entry-level to high-end gaming graphics cards / HPC accelerators. It is stated that while these cards would launch in 2020, they would be the beginning for Intel's grand entrance in the discrete graphics market.
What We know about The Next-Gen Arctic Sounds GPU Architecture
The discrete graphics cards are expected to feature the next-generation Arctic Sound discrete GPU. The codenames include the 12th Generation Arctic Sound discrete GPU and the 13th Generation Jupiter Sound discrete GPU. Just to make the generation clear, Intel’s current Gen 9 and Gen 9.5 solutions are found on Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake chips while Gen 10 will arrive on Cannonlake processors if previous reports are to be taken into account.
As for the process, Intel will be offering their first mainstream 10nm products based on Ice Lake architecture in 2020 so we can expect the discrete GPUs to be based on the same process if the manufacturing yield allows.
The 14nm process is currently Chipzilla's most mature process node to date but even it faces production constraint due to large dependencies and product portfolio that relies on the process as a whole. Since the first products are expected to aim the mainstream and budget tier market, we can think they would do well but what matters is there overall performance along with pricing and efficiency which is what matters the most to gamers nowadays. We will let you know more as soon as we have more details.
