Intel Arc Xe2 “Battlemage”: Intel’s high-end graphics card coming in 2024

Over a year ago, Intel introduced its first GPUs based on the Xe “Alchemist” core architecture. The first GPUs were introduced with the Arc A380 and gradually saw the release of higher level products such as the A770, A750 and the latest A750. The GPU architecture has also been adopted by several mobile chips and since its introduction Intel has refined and fixed many performance issues and bugs associated with the architecture, drivers and software ecosystem.

Intel has now introduced the Arc Xe “Alchemist” architecture as an iGPU in its Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” CPUs. This solution offers very competitive performance compared to AMD’s RDNA 3 iGPUs and we can certainly expect further improvements as the drivers are further developed. In 2024, Intel plans to introduce a completely new GPU architecture called Xe2 “Battlemage”. This new architecture will be used by the next generation of Arc Gaming & Pro discrete GPUs for desktop and mobile PCs from Intel.

Intel unveiled a new client PC roadmap during the Japanese launch event of Core Ultra CPUs, showing the discrete GPU lineup through 2023 and then through 2024 with the release of the Xe2 “Battlemage” discrete GPUs. The roadmap only lists discrete Arc products such as a Pro A60, A60M and A580, all launched this year. The Alchemist Arc iGPU for Core Ultra GPUs is not mentioned as it does not fall into the discrete graphics chip category. Intel uses a different terminology for its iGPUs, which was first mentioned by Raja Koduri.

The GPU tile is referred to as tGPU or Tiled GPU, and the first generation of such a solution was introduced with Arc Xe. in 2024, Intel is now expected to introduce an updated version of the Arc Xe “Alchemist” iGPU called Xe-LPG, which is expected in the 2nd generation of the Core Ultra product line, codenamed Arrow Lake. The company will then introduce Xe2 Battlemage on its Lunar Lake and then Xe3 Celestial for future client chips.

The roadmap also confirms that Battlemage Xe2 could be available for discrete graphics solutions in 2024. The Battlemage GPUs will then offer new features such as support for Intel’s first frame generation technology, ExtraSS. The company has also increased support for its next-gen GPUs within the Xe kernel drivers for Linux 6.8, demonstrating its commitment to providing a robust software platform for current and future chips such as Battlemage.

Not only have the Battlemage GPUs corrected some architectural decisions that seemed somewhat unnecessary for Alchemist, according to earlier reports, but the first chips appear to be performing quite well. The first BMG-G10 GPUs (Xe2-HPG) have reportedly already been running in labs, so if things go smoothly, we can expect more information in the coming months or perhaps even sooner at Intel’s upcoming CES 2024 keynote.

Source: 4Gamer