Yesterday, Intel demonstrated its new discrete graphics accelerator, but did not provide any details about it. Along with this, the TechPowerUp resource has published new details about the architectural features of Intel's 11th generation (Gen11) integrated graphics. It is important that in a slightly modified form this architecture will also find application in discrete GPUs from Intel.
The published illustrations from the technical documentation of Intel are talking about the GT2 version of the 11th generation graphics. This class of embedded GPUs is usually the most widespread, as it is used in desktop and mobile Intel Core processors of the S and U series, aimed at the mainstream market.
According to published data, Intel will continue to use its ring bus in Ice Lake processors, despite the increase in the number of cores. This is somewhat surprising, because in multi-core high-performance and server processors, Intel switched to Mesh connection. Nevertheless, Intel will offer a long-proven connection to the mass user. However, the new graphics architecture assumes that the integrated GPU will have priority access to the ring bus. For graphics, it is possible to use 64 bytes per clock for reading and writing, while each CPU core has only 32 bytes per clock for reading and writing.
Intel graphics memory will be accessed through a component called GTI (Graphics Technology Interface). This interface interacts with two components of the integrated GPU: Slice Common and L3 cache. Moreover, the graphics will have their own 3 MB LXNUMX cache, separate from the processor cache. Through the third-level cache, communication will be carried out between the GTI and what Intel calls SubSlice - indivisible computing units that contain shaders, texture units, instruction caches and other components. The design is somewhat reminiscent of streaming multiprocessors from NVIDIA.
Each SubSlice compute unit has eight Execution units (EU). There are a pair of ALUs per execution unit, each with four processing pipelines. In total, next generation GT2 graphics will offer 64 EU. In the current "inserts" such as GT2, there are only 24 EU, that is, the increase will be 166%. Of course, this will also have a positive effect on the performance of integrated Intel graphics. Another new Intel architecture involves the presence of separate hardware for processing geometry, as well as updated external interfaces.
Source: 3dnews.ru
