Intel recently held a high-profile internal Xe Unleashed event, where the GPU team presented Bob Swan with their final vision for Xe graphics cards. The source claims that potential partners like ASUS were also present. Several slides from this private event, a teaser and some information about the family have leaked to the Web. First of all, it turned out that the letter "e" in the name of Intel Xe means the number of GPUs used by the video card. In particular, the flagship will be the X2 accelerator, a dual-GPU solution that will enter the market on June 31 next year.
The Intel Xe philosophy involves innovation in three areas: process technology, microarchitecture, and "e". Until now, the "e" concept has not been perfectly implemented by any manufacturer: dual graphics accelerators have always had problems and do not scale linearly. The Intel graphics team is said to have resolved this issue. Thanks to the new Xe architecture and a software innovation called OneAPI (a special layer between Direct3D and the GPU), performance promises to scale linearly as the number of GPUs in the video card increases.
The above slides confirm information about linear scaling and, in addition, indicate the existence of a class of X4 video cards, which will apparently come out later and will be designed for enthusiasts. According to a presentation at the Xe Unleashed event, the system will see a multi-GPU graphics card essentially as a single accelerator. And developers don't have to think about optimizing code for multiple GPUs - OneAPI takes care of everything.
It will also allow the company to surpass the conventional chip lithographic limit, which is currently in the ~800mm2 range. Why produce one 800mm chip when you can use two 600mm or four 400mm ones (the smaller the chip size, the more good chips from a single silicon wafer). Armed with OneAPI and the Xe microarchitecture, Intel plans to release graphics cards with eight GPUs by 2024.
A teaser leaked online points to a carbon fiber body design with blue accents (the stripes will glow in the dark). The first reference design will be made in collaboration with ASUS. The source says that the card will have two modes: Standard, which will allow the dual GPU to operate at moderate clock speeds for most users, and Turbo mode when connected to a water block, which will allow clock speeds above 2,7 GHz.
Intel plans to be very competitive in terms of pricing: the flagship X2 accelerator will have a suggested price of $699. The accelerator will be equipped with a new type of 4D XPoint memory and support Direct3D 14_2 functions in hardware.
Source: 3dnews.ru