Arc Alchemist GPUs for the mass market was first exhibited to us yesterday, and while they have some great potential, Intel’s driver stack is now the major hindrance. The Arc software ecosystem will be developed by the gaming community by trying it out and contributing vital game performance and stability data to Intel. Arc Alchemist GPUs will begin rolling out to customers in the upcoming week.
Intel is already working on its next-generation GPU architecture, dubbed Battlemage, even though it is still making improvements to its drivers. Raja Koduri, the head of the Arc GPU division, really revealed details about their next Arc range when participating in an Arc graphics roundtable. Raja stated that the majority of the silicon team has already been assigned to the platform engineering and development of Battlemage, in addition to their ongoing work on preliminary software systems. In terms of comparisons with the Alchemist GPUs, Intel already has its first generation of Arc GPUs available, so they have that as a baseline. The next-generation GPU is far better than what Alchemist had when Battlemage was at the same stage, and when combined with the second claim about the engine being bigger and better, we may anticipate Intel to compete in the high-end market next to NVIDIA’s and AMD’s future-generation GPUs. -Raja Koduri Raja Koduri put an end to all the online rumours last month that the Arc brand was being discontinued, but it appears that the reality is quite different now that Intel’s design engineers are already at work on the next Battlemage DG3 and Celestial GPUs. So when we look at all of those vectors, it’s (Battlemage) substantially better at this point in time than where Alchemist was around. Arc Alchemist GPUs are Intel’s initial foray into the mass market and volume market. Arc Battlemage GPUs are Intel’s next step into the high-performance and enthusiast market. However, the fact that Intel has a range that intends to increase competition in the graphics industry is exciting for gamers and content creators. Of course, we first have to wait and see how the Arc 7 series performs before we can speak about next-gen technology. Most of our ASIC team is on Battlemage. A small portion of it is on our future, which is Celestial. And then there’s a very small portion on Alchemist today, but they’re kind of different function sets. So like a board and, what I’ll call, chip teams are on Alchemist right now. Kind of think of it as getting our board just right, getting our BIOS just right, making all the final tuning. But the bulk of our design team is on Battlemage.”
