Today, Intel throws its Arc Pro series of GPUs designed especially for powerful laptops and desktop workstations. The Intel Arc Pro A50 and A40 will be available for workstations, while the A30M will be open in pro-focused laptops.
All three GPUs are capable of AV1 hardware acceleration and hardware-based ray tracing — and are created with AI tasks and developer apps like Adobe Premiere Pro in mind.
The Intel Arc Pro A40 will dispatch in a tiny single-slot form factor with eight ray-tracing cores, 3.5 teraflops of graphical power, and 6GB of GDDR6 memory. Intel is targeting the GPU at slimline workstations or small form factor PCs. Intel is ready to take on the pro GPU market.
The more significant A50 steps up to a dual-slot form factor, eight ray-tracing cores, 4.8 teraflops of graphical power, and 6GB of GDDR6 memory. Due to its dual-slot layout, this is probably more suited to traditional workstations. These workstation GPUs will also contain four Mini DisplayPorts for multiple monitor configurations. Intel sustains two monitors at 8K 60Hz, one at 5K 240Hz, two at 5K 120Hz, or four at 4K 60Hz.
While you can technically recreate games on these GPUs, they’re not scheduled for gaming. Instead, Intel is optimizing for pro tasks and creator apps like HandBrake, Blender, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve Studio, and many more. In addition, Intel aims to certify these GPUs for apps within architecture, engineering and construction, and manufacturing. These GPUs will also keep full AV1 hardware acceleration, which Intel dubs an industry first.
The Mobile A30M GPU will include eight ray-tracing cores, 3.5 teraflops of graphical performance, and 4GB of GDDR6 memory. It’s designed to employ between 35 and 50 watts of peak power, and display outputs will rely on laptop configurations from OEMs.
Intel has fixed expectations low for its recently launched consumer gaming GPUs, and the company isn’t offering any indications on workstation performance. However, Intel says its Arc Pro range of GPUs will be available from mobile and desktop partners later this year.
Intel Arc is a label of graphics processing units designed by Intel. These are discrete GPUs primarily marketed for the high-margin PC gaming demand. The brand also shields Intel’s consumer graphics software and services.
Intel Arc contends with Nvidia’s GeForce and AMD’s Radeon lines. The Arc-A laptop series was pitched on March 30, 2022, with the Arc 5 and 7 “set to reach later this year in ‘early summer.’ “
According to Intel, the label is named after the concept of story arcs discovered in video games.
Graphics processor generations
- Alchemist: Developed under the earlier codename “DG2”, the first generation of Intel Arc GPUs (codenamed “Alchemist”) is slated for clearance by March 30, 2022. It will arrive in both add-ons desktop cards and laptop form elements. TSMC is set to simulate the die utilizing the TSMC N6 process. Alchemist uses the Intel Xe GPU architecture, specifically the Xe-HPG variant. As a result, the Alchemist will sustain XeSS, hardware-based ray tracing, or supersampling founded on neural networks (comparable to Nvidia DLSS) and DirectX 12 Ultimate. Also endowed is DisplayPort 2.0 and overclocking. In addition, AV1 fixed-function hardware encoder is planned for this GPU as part of the Intel Quick Sync Video core. Intel confirmed ASTC support had been removed from hardware starting with Alchemist, and future Intel Arc GPU microarchitectures will also not support it. Instead, Intel revealed that Meteor Lake and later generations of CPU SoCs would use Intel Arc Tile GPU. Intel officially declared Arc Pro workstation GPUs on August 8, 2022.
- Battlemage: Intel also unveiled future generations of Intel Arc GPUs under development. Battlemage (established on Xe2), Celestial (founded on Xe3), and Druid. Battlemage will succeed Alchemist. Intel disclosed that Lunar Lake and later years of CPU SoCs would use Intel Arc Tile GPU.
- Celestial: Celestial will succeed Battlemage.
- Druid: Druid will succeed Celestial.
- Intel XeSS: Intel XeSS is a real-time deep learning vision upsampling technology developed especially for video games as a competitor to Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR technologies. Additionally, XeSS is not restricted to Intel Arc graphics cards. Instead, it utilizes XMX instructions exclusive to Intel Arc graphics cards but will fall back to using DP4a instructions on competing GPUs with support for DP4a instructions. Finally, XeSS is trained with 64 samples per pixel instead of Nvidia DLSS’s 16 samples per pixel.