Oh darn. I was all ready for it to spell something in hex. And, since it's Intel, you'd probably have to swap the order (because little endian, of course).
There are fields in code of that suggesting they will register people for something. "email","first-name","last-name","password","userid" I guess they want people to google them a lot of times, to get stats higher for launch.....
I'd expect terrible at first, as none of the mining algos are optimized for its hardware yet. Once that happens (and it certainly will), who knows. But it should hopefully give gamers a chance to buy some first at least.
Depending on how many of these Intel can produce, this might be the best possible time for them to launch their dedicated GPU architecture.
If they'd launched in, say, 2019, I could see these flying under the radar and maybe not selling well due to consumers entrenched in the AMD and Nvidia camps.
Even if price and performance are lackluster... as long as they mostly *just work*, Intel should be able to sell every last card simply because you can't buy any competing cards.
Aren't they fabbing it in-house? If they are, it will absolutely increase availability of cards in the market, no matter what... because they would be taxing a foundry that is NOT currently cranking out large dGPUs.
They are building Xe-HP in house in 10ESF. They demoed it last year performing at 42TFlop FP32. It doesn't look like they have a problem building GPUs in 10ESF, but no doubt that they still have capacity issues trying to add a potentially popular gaming GPU at the same time as all the other 10nm projects they are launching. The GPUs are good candidates for moving to TSM to expand Intel's capacity.
This is a chiplet architecture, and I believe they're making some of the chiplets (IO die?) in house, but the main compute dies are going to be TSMC for this round of products.
Whether it will be better price/perf will depend on the ratio of mining performance to gaming performace. If it has great utilisation but lower peak FLOPS like Navi vs Polaris, or low mem B/W and something like infinity cache then there might be some hope
As Tiger Lake benchmarks show, Xe has come quite a ways. I'm not saying it's going to dominate Nvidia or even AMD, but it should be fast enough that the right pricing could make it very interesting.
So is this where Intel swoops in with discrete GPUs with no shaders but MASSIVE compute and gaming GPUs crash in value?
Because their examples were pretty mediocre on the gaming front but they could absolutely do that, saving gamers and creaming it on profit.
It would make perfect sense for them to do so, compute is what they're good at, gaming graphics is not what they're good at and they'd be able to break into GPUs in a big way and generate more profit with less risk. While simultaneously nailing goodwill from gamers without actually selling them anything.
Huh? How do you do "MASSIVE compute" with "no shaders"? Compute is traditionally all about the shaders (i.e. their number, clock speed, and efficiency).
This is so embarrassing, how do ppl work there know they;re just shoveling crap? I guess anything for a paycheck right?
They don't even give an explanation on why their prior dGPUs failed and try baby steps like scaling up their integrated offerings into discrete ones for folks to work with.
> They don't even ... try baby steps like scaling up their integrated offerings into discrete ones for folks to work with.
Where have you been?? Intel has been scaling up their chipset & integrated GPUs for the last 1.5 decades!!
They even rolled out Xe (Gen 12, if we're counting) in Tiger Lake laptop chips with up to 96 EUs, which is 4x what Skylake had (after scaling up Gen 11 to 64 EUs, in Ice Lake laptops). And then, they actually built that into a sort of development vehicle and OEM dGPU, commercially launched at the end of last year. If that's not baby steps, I don't even know what is!
Seriously, learn some facts, dude. You could start by giving this a good read:
No matter how good the card is, I'm (maybe more than a) little worried about the drivers. The developers are optimizing their games to play well on NVidia's and AMD's cards and still, NVidia and AMD both regularly release a new driver when a AA/AAA game is released. There must be thousands of game specific profiles/optimizations in their drivers by now.
On the other hand, I've often wondered why game specific drivers are released so often in the GPU world. The games are using standards like DX12, Vulkan etc. so what is causing the need to release GPU drivers so often?
> I'm (maybe more than a) little worried about the drivers.
Intel has been seriously supporting games on their iGPUs since Sandybridge, if not before. Xe looks to be an evolutionary outgrowth of that architecture, and you can already read about driver support on Tiger Lake (which is also Xe-based).
> I've often wondered why game specific drivers are released so often in the GPU world. The games are using standards like DX12, Vulkan etc. so what is causing the need to release GPU drivers so often?
In a never-ending race for the best benchmarks, GPU vendors have resorted to putting game-specific optimizations in their drivers.
Also, those APIs are undergoing continual enhancements and receiving extensions, which means new drivers.
And when new GPUs launch? You guessed it: new drivers!
I wonder if Intel's Bullshitter in Chief Ryan Shart will be shouting from the rooftops about one meaningless benchmark where the HPG beats Nvidia and AMD by a small margin.
LOL. Intel’s marketing strategy has been questionable of late. Trying to revenge Apple for divorcing them. They are have literally strangled the life out of 14nm++++++++++++++++ or whatever back port of 5nm they will come up with next. And now they want to join in with Teams Red and Green. Good way to create Team RGB of gaming graphics. Intel are in between a rock and a hard place right now. They MUST merge with AMD to survive the ARM RISC onslaught that is happening right now. All it will take is Microsoft to provide proper ARM compatibility with Windows and Intel’s days are looking to being numbered in the x86 world.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
50 Comments
Back to Article
Machinus - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
035160
237
208
tpurves - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
whelp those numbers could be IP and yep... 35.160.237.208 works as an ip address that redirects you to https://xehpg.intel.com/Hulk - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Good for you!mode_13h - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Oh darn. I was all ready for it to spell something in hex. And, since it's Intel, you'd probably have to swap the order (because little endian, of course).ballsystemlord - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
;)deil - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
There are fields in code of that suggesting they will register people for something."email","first-name","last-name","password","userid"
I guess they want people to google them a lot of times, to get stats higher for launch.....
shabby - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Won't this be oem only? Seems kinda pointless to hype it up.SarahKerrigan - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Where did you get that idea? This isn't DG1. This is a mainstream dGPU product.shabby - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Ah that's what I was thinking of 👍CiccioB - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
It's an IP address: 35:160:237:208Try it, it will bring you to the Xe HPG Intel page!
Have I won something?
Jorgp2 - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Can't believe I fell for thatkpb321 - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Will Intel's card be the best card you can buy because it will be the only one actually in stock anywhere and they win by default?MenhirMike - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Depends: How's the Mining performance of those cards?deil - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
2016 nvidia kind.tomatotree - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
I'd expect terrible at first, as none of the mining algos are optimized for its hardware yet. Once that happens (and it certainly will), who knows. But it should hopefully give gamers a chance to buy some first at least.haukionkannel - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Maybe. Just like They win cpu race, just by making cpus...MrCommunistGen - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Depending on how many of these Intel can produce, this might be the best possible time for them to launch their dedicated GPU architecture.If they'd launched in, say, 2019, I could see these flying under the radar and maybe not selling well due to consumers entrenched in the AMD and Nvidia camps.
Even if price and performance are lackluster... as long as they mostly *just work*, Intel should be able to sell every last card simply because you can't buy any competing cards.
jeremyshaw - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Don't get too excited. Intel's presentation at 2020 Hot Chips (covered here on Anandtech) notes for Xe HPG: External (as in foundry).Likely running into the same constraints as everyone else. Probably even contributing to it.
Alexvrb - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Aren't they fabbing it in-house? If they are, it will absolutely increase availability of cards in the market, no matter what... because they would be taxing a foundry that is NOT currently cranking out large dGPUs.BedfordTim - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
TSMC apparently.29a - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
They can't make it in house.JayNor - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
They are building Xe-HP in house in 10ESF. They demoed it last year performing at 42TFlop FP32. It doesn't look like they have a problem building GPUs in 10ESF, but no doubt that they still have capacity issues trying to add a potentially popular gaming GPU at the same time as all the other 10nm projects they are launching. The GPUs are good candidates for moving to TSM to expand Intel's capacity.SarahKerrigan - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Xe-HP - the server GPU - is inhouse. Xe-HPG is foundry.tomatotree - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
This is a chiplet architecture, and I believe they're making some of the chiplets (IO die?) in house, but the main compute dies are going to be TSMC for this round of products.ArcadeEngineer - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
HP is chiplet architecture, but it's very unlikely for HPG.Spunjji - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
"as long as they mostly *just work*"That's the rub. So far, their GPUs don't akways do that.
Pinn - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Was around Intel for both IA64 and Larrabee. Don't have much hope.p1esk - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Yeah, this card gotta be both faster and cheaper than Nvidia. Zero hope.Unashamed_unoriginal_username_x86 - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Whether it will be better price/perf will depend on the ratio of mining performance to gaming performace. If it has great utilisation but lower peak FLOPS like Navi vs Polaris, or low mem B/W and something like infinity cache then there might be some hopemode_13h - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
I think Intel has traditionally been FLOPS-heavy, and I don't expect Xe-HPG to change that.tomatotree - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
I'll be happy if it's just faster and cheaper than the Nvidia cards that are actually in stock, which is mostly ones from 3+ years ago...mode_13h - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
As Tiger Lake benchmarks show, Xe has come quite a ways. I'm not saying it's going to dominate Nvidia or even AMD, but it should be fast enough that the right pricing could make it very interesting.Spunjji - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
Xe is roughly a generation behind the other two, so pricing is going to be the key.brucethemoose - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
I think the blocks are there because it looks cool.But setting that aside, that beam of light sorta, *kinda* resembles photolithography, right? And modern chips do have multiple layers.
Danvelopment - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
So is this where Intel swoops in with discrete GPUs with no shaders but MASSIVE compute and gaming GPUs crash in value?Because their examples were pretty mediocre on the gaming front but they could absolutely do that, saving gamers and creaming it on profit.
It would make perfect sense for them to do so, compute is what they're good at, gaming graphics is not what they're good at and they'd be able to break into GPUs in a big way and generate more profit with less risk. While simultaneously nailing goodwill from gamers without actually selling them anything.
mode_13h - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Huh? How do you do "MASSIVE compute" with "no shaders"? Compute is traditionally all about the shaders (i.e. their number, clock speed, and efficiency).MayDayComputers - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Intel will be releasing a compute focused line in the form of Xe-HPC. So, they could cover both sides.nunya112 - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
if its as fast as a 2060 or 56-5700 9AMD) and its priced well and its AVAILABLE ill defo be ditching NV/AMDeastcoast_pete - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Is this dGPU one of the Intel chips that is fabbed at TSMC in 7 nm? If so, this could get really interesting!Kurosaki - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Well, we can't hope to get it reviewed with other half year old cards, can we? Is all hope lost?ozzuneoj86 - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
I'm busting out my collection of Real3D Starfighters in preparation for this event.webdoctors - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
This is so embarrassing, how do ppl work there know they;re just shoveling crap? I guess anything for a paycheck right?They don't even give an explanation on why their prior dGPUs failed and try baby steps like scaling up their integrated offerings into discrete ones for folks to work with.
mode_13h - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
> They don't even ... try baby steps like scaling up their integrated offerings into discrete ones for folks to work with.Where have you been?? Intel has been scaling up their chipset & integrated GPUs for the last 1.5 decades!!
They even rolled out Xe (Gen 12, if we're counting) in Tiger Lake laptop chips with up to 96 EUs, which is 4x what Skylake had (after scaling up Gen 11 to 64 EUs, in Ice Lake laptops). And then, they actually built that into a sort of development vehicle and OEM dGPU, commercially launched at the end of last year. If that's not baby steps, I don't even know what is!
Seriously, learn some facts, dude. You could start by giving this a good read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphi...
Mikad - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
No matter how good the card is, I'm (maybe more than a) little worried about the drivers. The developers are optimizing their games to play well on NVidia's and AMD's cards and still, NVidia and AMD both regularly release a new driver when a AA/AAA game is released. There must be thousands of game specific profiles/optimizations in their drivers by now.On the other hand, I've often wondered why game specific drivers are released so often in the GPU world. The games are using standards like DX12, Vulkan etc. so what is causing the need to release GPU drivers so often?
mode_13h - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
> I'm (maybe more than a) little worried about the drivers.Intel has been seriously supporting games on their iGPUs since Sandybridge, if not before. Xe looks to be an evolutionary outgrowth of that architecture, and you can already read about driver support on Tiger Lake (which is also Xe-based).
> I've often wondered why game specific drivers are released so often in the GPU world. The games are using standards like DX12, Vulkan etc. so what is causing the need to release GPU drivers so often?
In a never-ending race for the best benchmarks, GPU vendors have resorted to putting game-specific optimizations in their drivers.
Also, those APIs are undergoing continual enhancements and receiving extensions, which means new drivers.
And when new GPUs launch? You guessed it: new drivers!
Also, bugfixes? New drivers.
So, yeah. Lotsa driver releases.
DigitalFreak - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
I wonder if Intel's Bullshitter in Chief Ryan Shart will be shouting from the rooftops about one meaningless benchmark where the HPG beats Nvidia and AMD by a small margin.Kurosaki - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
Aaaand will cost 3usd less...PS123 - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
LOL. Intel’s marketing strategy has been questionable of late. Trying to revenge Apple for divorcing them. They are have literally strangled the life out of 14nm++++++++++++++++ or whatever back port of 5nm they will come up with next. And now they want to join in with Teams Red and Green. Good way to create Team RGB of gaming graphics. Intel are in between a rock and a hard place right now. They MUST merge with AMD to survive the ARM RISC onslaught that is happening right now. All it will take is Microsoft to provide proper ARM compatibility with Windows and Intel’s days are looking to being numbered in the x86 world.mode_13h - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
Such a merger or aquisition would be unlikely to get approved.PS123 - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
There were also geographical coordinates found in the video leading to a spot just west of Goat Island, Niagara Falls.