Intel Xe2 HPG & LPG
In an exclusive interview with HardwareLuxx, Intel confirmed its Xe architecture will be split between discrete and integrated solutions.
Intel Fellow, Tom Petersen, confirmed Intel Xe architecture will feature LPG and HPG variants. The decision to split the architecture came with time as the company realized that its IP has to be differentiated and optimized for these two vastly different segments.
This will be a further segmentation of Intel’s graphics portfolio enabling similar feature sets among different products. Intel has already been shipping HPC (data-center), LP (low-power) and HPG (gaming) under an umbrella of Xe architecture.
Petersen said that Xe2 graphics series codenamed “Battlemage” will be available with LPG and HPG variants, these variations will be optimized for integrated and discrete GPUs.
There is a Xe and there is a Xe 2 and in that Xe 2 generation there is a Xe-LPG and there is a HPG (…) and there a slight variations (…) which is our big learning. The idea was we needed to optimize for each segment and build separate chips and do separate verifications. And I think now the real learning is we would be better off concentrating our focus and really thinking of it like a really solidly, hard IP business.
But it’s a tough thing, because if you know that your are going into the data center, you know that you are going desktop discrete and you know you are going be integrated – they all have slightly different ways to optimize. And that’s what we’ve done a much much better job going forward. We are learning to refrain from overly customizing IP because that proliferates QA and verification and really bloats the work to be done.
— Tom Petersen, Intel
As we know from the leaks, Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs will be the first to sport Redwood Cove P-cores, Crestmont E-cores and new Xe-LPG GPU architecture. This will be a major shift from the current implementation of integrated Iris Xe graphics.
The Xe2-LPG is more than likely to be used by a successor to Meteor Lake called Lunar Lake. Such graphics would offer more than 128 Execution Units (XMX Engines) which should be enough for some casual gaming.
Intel Meteor Lake with integrated Xe-LPG architecture, Source: Igor’sLAB
Intel’s shift to more capable Xe Gaming architectures comes as AMD is introducing its RDNA3 integrated GPU for Ryzen 7000 Phoenix APUs. This platform will be used by thin & light gaming laptops and upcoming handheld gaming consoles, a market segment that has seen a tremendous increase in popularity in the past 2 years alone. Many of these devices are available with Intel processors, the most recent being the Alder Lake based.
Source: HardwareLuxx
