Intel announces high-performance consumer GPU brand Intel Arc

Next in line after Alchemist would be Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid.

Intel Arc: Chipmaker Intel has announced its new brand – Intel Arc – for discrete high-performance consumer GPUs along with accompanying software and services. The new brand is largely looking at gamers as its target end consumer. The first laptops and desktops on Intel Arc products are expected to be released in 2022. At present, Intel has revealed the first of its codenames for upcoming products – Alchemist. Alchemist was previously known as DG2, and it would be based on Xe HPG architecture, currently scheduled for release in early 2022. The series would be named alphabetically and would progress as such. Next in line after Alchemist would be Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid. A marketing campaign containing promotional videos and sneak peaks would be kicked off soon.

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Earlier, the tech company had confirmed that Xe HPG would be supporting hardware ray tracing and GDDR6 memory. A third-party foundry would be developing the GPUs. In the new promo videos, variable rate shading, video upscaling, AI-accelerated game supersampling and mesh shading have been demonstrated. Among the Gameplay demos were Forza Horizon 4, PUBG, Psychonauts 2, Riftbreaker, Crysis Remastered, and Metro Exodus, even as there was no immediate information on the test settings and environment.

Graphics have been the focal point for Intel for a few years now, and it had earlier also promised to ship discrete GPUs by 2020. With the focus on graphics, Intel is hoping to take on Nvidia and AMD and break their duopoly. The GPU market, however, has been shaken lately as cryptocurrency miners have been increasing the demand and there has been a global microprocessor manufacturing shortage, both the factors causing prices to go up.

It is important to note that at the current stage, no specifications or prices have been revealed. It is also not currently known how many models each generation would have.