Or instead, Arrow Lake may use an updated version of Meteor Lake-U's iGPU that includes XMX cores, as one rumor suggests. Whether Arrow Lake is only limited to the smaller iGPU is unclear, though it wouldn't be surprising if it did considering integrated graphics aren't a top priority on the desktop.
It has already been confirmed that the upcoming Arrow Lake CPU lineup (both desktop+laptop) would sport the updated and 'refreshed' version of the existing Alchemist "Xe-LPG" GPU arch, the
Xe LPG+ graphics IP. A new revision dubbed as Xe LPG PLUS.
At least most of the SKUs would support this new graphics IP,
if not all, but it has the same general code path as the current LPG.
Well, although integrated graphics won't be a top priority for a desktop, but don't forget that Arrow Lake is also coming on the Mobile platform, with the high-end H and HX series SKUs. So these processors will definitely pack some extra iGPU horsepower, sporting more Xe cores.
Since these integrated graphics chips are also supposed to have dedicated
XMX units as per a recent rumor, it appears that Intel wants to bring support for its
XeSS upscaling technology with them. No doubt the multi-tile design of the Arrow Lake processors should allow for the easy integration of XMX, thus bringing support for FP64, FP32, FP16, and bfloat16 formats common in AI algorithms.
This latest Linux kernel patch further proves the existence of Xe LPG PLUS arch on Arrow Lake lineup, "Extend ARL support":
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2024-January/341965.html
"Some SKUs of Arrow Lake use a slightly newer Xe_LPG+ graphics IP (version 12.74). Add some additional PCI IDs and extend the code to support this newer IP version. The general code flow should continue to match existing MTL and Xe_LPG code paths."
Some additional PCI IDs can be found here as well, namely 0x7D41, 0x7D51, and 0x7DD1:
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2024-January/341966.html
I also stumbled upon this Intel Graphics Compiler patch recently whch added a lot of new lines of code to it, and based on these entries, the Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) also lists support for Arrow Lake with Xe LPG+ graphics.
https://github.com/intel/intel-graphics-compiler/commit/e3333c9e81383996d9d2cf72e16128cfeb173bf6
The Lunar Lake benchmark also reports an integrated GPU with eight Xe cores, though we are pretty confident that this iGPU is actually based on second-generation Arc Battlemage. The core count may imply Lunar Lake will take over from Meteor Lake-U CPUs, though it's hard to say. A different Lunar Lake leak on SiSoftware Sandra revealed the chip has eight CPU cores, which is lower than Meteor Lake-U's 10.
Lunar Lake will indeed sport the
Battlemage "Xe2" architecture, but the previous leak on the Sandra benchmark featured a different CPU with 8 cores. This new leak shows an early engineering sample/ES, and you are comparing CPU cores with GPU Xe cores.
This particular new entrant Intel
Lunar Lake engineering sample has 20 cores. We can also note the clock speed of 1.0 GHz base and up to 3.91 GHz of boost.
But in any case the article missed an important point worth noting. The performance of the Battlemage "Xe2" architecture speak volumes since we can see how fast the next-gen iGPU on Lunar Lake might be judging by the
"GPU Processing performance" metric.
Arrow Lake's GPU Processing performance is
1075.69 Mpix/s, and the Lunar Lake chip scored a performance of
1927.62 Mpix/s which is indeed huge, almost 70-80% higher, and it shows how much optimized the Battlemage arch might be.
Also, given the fact that the Lunar Lake chip was rated at 17W in this leak, and these chips are basically designed for ultra thin and light Laptops, the Xe2 iGPU's performance is indeed impressive,
vs the Alchemist "Xe" architecture.
And this is just based on an early engineering sample. Just my thoughts.
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