Intel took a big hit last year when Apple decided to go with its own chipsets. Intel was the former supplier of MacBooks and iMacs CPUs and in just a few months lost this huge client. Apple started with the MacBook featuring the M1 processor, and earlier this year introduced new iMac computers with its own chipset. Intel is trying to find alternatives in the industry and, apparently, it is now targeting the market of GPUs.
The US-based chipmaker has just announced the launch of a graphics division which will be dubbed Arc. This branch of Intel will develop GPUs for laptops and computers. The first laptops featuring ARC-based chips will launch in Q1 2021. That means sometime between January and March 2021. The company hasn’t revealed any specific projects but posted a video on YouTube. The company wants to assure potential customers that even demanding games such as Metro Exodus and PUBG will run fine on the new graphics platform.
Intel’s first Arc GPU “Alchemist” will be based on Iris Xe-HPG microarchitecture
The first Intel Arc GPU will be based on Iris Xe-HPG microarchitecture. It’s a combination of previously used technologies by the company. It will bring mesh shading, variable-rate shading, video upscaling, and ray tracing. There is also going to be an Intel Alternative to NVIDIA’s supersampling and AMD’s super-resolution technology.
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As per Intel Graphics Product Team, we’ll hear more in the upcoming weeks and months about the performance of the Intel Arc products. The hardware will be ready for all kinds of loads. It includes gaming, streaming, multitasking, and the people behind the product want to bring it to “three billion gamers across the world”.
Interestingly, reports have been suggesting that Intel has been working on its dedicated graphics technology for many years now. The new architecture bears the codename “Alchemist”. The upcoming generations will be called “Battlemage, Celestial and Druid”. (Someone clearly enjoys RPGs at Intel’s office). Alchemist will bring the company’s hardware-based ray tracing and aforementioned, an artificial intelligence-driven supersampling and DirectX 12 Ultimate.
It’s good to see that Intel is looking for ways to improve the GPUs on its portable computers. After all, it’s one more company doing a decent job on integrated GPUs. This is particularly useful in these times when dedicated Graphics Cards are getting more and more expensive due to the crisis in the semiconductor industry. With a good integrated GPU, one can do many activities that wouldn’t be possible in old graphics cards.
