Arctic Sound resurfaces as Alchemist… ARC PRO series?
An interesting update arrived at Intel’s open-source GPU driver called “Media Driver 2021Q4”.
Patch notes reveal that the driver now supports Intel Alchemist/ATS-M. According to Phoronix means Arctic Sound Mainstream. We are not familiar with this codename and ‘the original’ Arctic Sound has disappeared from the news headlines after Intel seemingly abandoned its plans for Xe-HP architecture. For many months the company has been teasing three of its Xe-HP products, only to scrap the plans to commercialize them in the end.
Later on, we learned that Intel will be releasing Xe-HPG based products for workstations as well, which led us to believe that gaming-oriented architecture will take Xe-HP’s place, possibly under the Intel ARC AXXX PRO series.
Intel Xe-HP (left) and Xe-HPG (right) GPUs, Source: Intel
Back in June, @davideneco25320 shared some details on the potential ATS-M specs. The series was seemingly heading for Q4 2021 release, but that of course did not happen. Those GPUs were to be operated within 75W to 150W power envelope, support PCIe Gen4 interface, and GDDR6 memory. A higher-end ATS-P series was also mentioned, with TDP going up to 300W and possible HBM2E DRAM support.
ATS-P Premium
GPU HDG avec un TDP de 300W
PCIE 4.0 et HBM2E
Prévu pour début 2022 (Q1)GPU misant sur la flexibilité et efficacité énergétiques avec haut débit (je sais pas traduire High Throughput)
Pour l'AI inference en particulier— La Frite David ?? (@davideneco25320) June 26, 2021
Intel Media Driver 22: New Features and Enhancement
- Enabled Alchemist/ATS-M platform decoding and video processing features
- Added ADL-N platform support
- Enhanced AV1 decoding robustness for error clips handling
- Added vaCopy caps reporting
- Enabled GPU copy for small resolution in vaMap/unMap
- Optimized GetImage perf for NV12 format
- Added HEVC sub-features caps reporting
- Improved compatibility by disabling compression when creating surface
- Improved debuggability by enabling OCA support
At this point, one would expect Intel Xe-HPG/DG2/Alchemist workstation products to launch after the gaming series. However, even those don’t have a release date yet.
Source: Phoronix
