Intel Expands on Xe Product positioning - Shows DG1 Development card photos and Xe Slides
Below the fold, you can see presented slides from the graphics briefing that occurred earlier yesterday, and images of the “DG1” Software Development Vehicle (SDV). Intel reveals pictures of the card, designed primarily for ISV's as a software development product.
First a quick apology to Intel and media that abide embargoes, mistakenly we posted this news item earlier today when it was work-in-progress. It was a simple matter of pushing the wrong button and then 10 minutes later realizing the content was actually live. We're sorry about that, as breaking embargoes is not our style. Back to the news then. At the end of 2017 it was apparent that Intel wanted to develop dedicated GPU's, they formed a new Core and Visual Computing Group and placed Raja Koduri (ex-AMD Radeon) leading the team, here is where Xe got alive.
Xe
Intel shares word and imagery on its development card and product positioning with its micro-architectures. Obviously, there will be one main 'Xe' architecture, however, the product ranges will be split up in three microarchitectures which are to be named Xe-LP, Xe-HP, Xe-HPC spanning the entire range of solutions from mobile to high-performance computing.
- Xe LP is segmented for Ultra Mobile, PC Mobile, Entry level to Mid-Range Graphics.
- Xe HP is getting a focus for Media Transcode Analytics, Workstation, High-End Graphics.
- Xe HPC is obviously short for high-performance computing HPC / Exascale, DL / Training, Cloud GFX.
Xe-LP is the microarchitecture optimized for low power products. HP is for high performance and HPC is the data center/supercomputing as well as the product for this demographic, the enthusiast gaming audience.
One of the initial products to utilize Intel's Xe discrete GPUs would be the Tiger Lake powered mobile notebooks, expected to arrive later this year. Digging into the slides Tiger Lake could offer up another big jump in graphics performance improvement over Ice Lake (they've verbally mentioned “up to 2x” the graphics performance of Ice Lake at the press conference and the briefing). Double-digit CPU performance gains from 10th gen Intel Core to 11th gen Intel Core.
The card on the renders then, hardware developers can use it to develop software for Intel's first discrete GPU. But unfortunately, no technical details are revealed here. Intel itself speaks about a software enablement vehicle.
Intel placed the DG1 silicon on a PCIe card and will be shipping it to ISVs globally in the upcoming weeks and months, enabling developers to optimize for Xe for both Tiger Lake and DG1. Intel showed its “DG1” Software Development progress by running the Warframe game. No specs, settings, etc, however, have been revealed or shared. Aside from interesting looks, the development card photos themselves show very little, indicative of an SDK card for ISVs.
You will notice it lacking external power connectors, meaning this sample is fairly low as it uses less than 75 Watts. While the plating is ready for display-port and HDMI connectors, these are factual missing for the development product as well. It is likely to see and expect more details and hopefully some specs in the Computex time frame, at the start of the Summer. The big overall news is that products based on the Xe architecture are coming, that is the main message that Intel is relaying today.
Have a peek:
Intel Xe based Discrete GPU shown with Destiny 2 - 01/08/2020 09:19 AM
Intel yesterday also had its keynote, and as a bit of a surprise showed gameplay from Destiny 2 on its first Xe based GPU. However, there were no technical details about the DG1 chip shared....
Intel Xe Rumors: Development reportedly stagnating and efficiency worse than its competitors - 12/04/2019 08:15 AM
Intel received a lot fo coverage on Xe, their enterprise and gaming GPU that should hit the market in 2020. The coverage was mostly due to the fact that several key staff froM AMD moved to Intel to ta...
Intel Xe Discrete Graphics based on 7nm - has HBM and carries codenamed Ponte Vecchio - 11/14/2019 08:09 AM
Intel has released a bit of info on their Xe line of GPUs, and that info is rather limited. First off, the product will be fabbed at a 7nm node. Secondly, and yeah think of this what you will, it's g...
Intel Xe graphics card spotted in benchmark database (no benchmarks though). - 11/08/2019 08:29 AM
By 2020 Intel's first graphics cards based on the Xe architecture will be released. The first test phase has already been completed, as Intels Robert "Bob" H. Swan mentioned in a statemen...
Intel Xeon E-2200 Processors Launch With Hardware Security Built-in - 11/01/2019 11:26 AM
Intel's Xeon E-2200 processors are available, bringing enhanced security usages with the additional layer of hardware-based security and manageability made possible by Intel Software Guard Extensions...
Junior Member
Posts: 18
Joined: 2019-12-30
This is a low power sample to give developers an idea of the architecture. Not a final product. Even if they had a semi final product, they would not show it now.
We don't know what kind of scaling is possible with the architecture (see current Zen as an example. AMD just slaps a few more cores on each chip and doubles, triples, quadruples performance).
We don't know what kind of segment this sample is from. It could very well be their entry level line, meant for Smartphones and ultrabooks. Or it could be their best shot at Datacenter compute. We just don't know at all.
We don't know how much they are willing to show right now. You usually lowball pretty hard if you are a big player, but a newcomer in a fresh segment of the market. There is enough Hype around this without any big promises, just because it is a big player like Intel.
If they push it too hard, they can only disappoint, which would be a disaster for a launch product that could very well be in the 2-3 digit billion investment range.
People jumping to conclusions on final performance could just as well check with their local crystal ball at this point.
What they need is developers giving feedback on the architecture while they can still adjust it somewhat.
Senior Member
Posts: 495
Joined: 2017-02-04
You don't start building supersonic jets, when all you did before was build toys. You won't see an enthusiast gpu from Intel until 2022 if ever. This is what happens when your real product has stagnated, but you still have $100 billion dollars to start experimenting. Intel will never be the go to Gpu provider. But when you have more money than common sense you can talk yourself in to anything. Yes Yes Yes I know competition is good for pricing for the consumer. Look at the AMD/Nvidia competition. Prices are so low I don't know who to buy from, maybe one from each company.

Senior Member
Posts: 3042
Joined: 2006-04-25
I am happy there is a 3rd player coming. I don't expect them to do much in the first round or 2 of releases but they may eventually give AMD and Nvidia some actual competition.
I would be happier if the 3rd player were some other company that wasn't already a bit... greedy? But whatever. It's a 3rd option. Maybe.
Senior Member
Posts: 1761
Joined: 2003-10-27
Sadly not really interested unless the card supports g-sync fully (not g-sync compatible). Proper g-sync is just too good to give up, was a game changer when it was released and still is.
Senior Member
Posts: 1436
Joined: 2018-01-03
I dont know why it needs them a standard VGA connector would be fine since it will be more than enough to drive 1024x768 while surfing the web and 800x600 while gaming.
I bet its on par with 8800GTS 640MB give or take ... integer scalling is a must on this one
As if,8800 is a right jalopy Now