Intel has come up with a way to upgrade the built-in graphics on CPUs: a dedicated GPU chip tile on future processors.
The company plans on introducing the new technology next year with Intel’s Meteor Lake family, which will use an optimized 7-nanometer manufacturing process.
In a presentation ahead of an Intel investors meeting, SVP Raja Koduri added: “Meteor Lake is a brand new architecture that’ll enable tile GPUs to be integrated on a 3D package. This is super exciting as this allows us to offer discrete graphics class performance with the efficiency of integrated graphics.”
The tile GPUs will fall under Intel’s Arc brand, which is going to launch its first discrete gaming GPUs for laptops later this quarter. “This is a new class of graphics. You can’t really call it integrated or discrete,” Koduri added. “And this is just the beginning of the strategic advantage that this tile architecture will give us.”
Intel has been offering integrated graphics on its CPU processors for years. However, a slide from Koduri’s presentation indicates the new Arc tile GPUs will be crammed on the same silicon as the Meteor Lake CPU. To pull this off, Intel has been developing 3D packaging tech, which is capable of stacking microprocessors on top of each other into a single unit.
The Arc tile GPUs could make Intel’s processors more competitive against AMD’s APU processors, which also contain integrated graphics. Valve’s Steam Deck, a PC gaming handheld, is the latest product to feature an AMD APU containing dedicated GPU cores.
The Arc tile GPUs are intended to address mainstream consumers. For users looking for more performance, Intel will also offer discrete GPUs for laptops and desktop PC graphics cards under the Arc brand. The first desktop GPUs, dubbed Alchemist, will arrive in Q2.
Koduri’s presentation also showed that the Intel Arc brand will address high-end “enthusiast and ultra-enthusiast users” in 2023 and 2024 with its upcoming “Battlemage” and “Celestial” GPUs.
