Intel’s Next-Gen Arc Battlemage GPUs Are “Substantially Better” Than Where Alchemist Was In Its Current Stage

While Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs are now officially rolling out and heading for launch next week, the bulk of AXG is already hard at work on their next-gen Battlemage GPUs.

Yesterday, we got our first taste of Arc Alchemist GPUs for the mainstream segment and while the potential is there, the main bottleneck right now for Intel is the driver stack. In short, Intel's actual work begins now as Arc Alchemist GPUs will be rolling out to consumers in the coming week & the gaming audience will be the ones who help develop the Arc software ecosystem by testing it out & providing valuable game performance and stability data to Intel.

But while Intel continues to improve upon its drivers, Intel is already at work on its next-gen GPU architecture known as Battlemage. In fact, sitting in an Arc graphics roundtable, the leader of the Arc GPU division himself, Raja Koduri, spilled the beans on what we can expect from their next-gen Arc lineup.

Raja said that the bulk of the silicon team is already moved to Battlemage's development and also the platform engineering while they are also working on early software resources.

The bulk of the silicon team is working on Battlemage and platform engineering and some amount of the software resources have also been [...]

Raja Koduri, Head of Intel AXG & Executive VP

Talking about comparisons with the Alchemist GPUs, since Intel already has its 1st generation of Arc GPUs out now, they have a reference point to compare. Compared to where Alchemist was at the same point as where Battlemage is right now, the next-gen GPU is substantially better & if we combine that with the second statement about the engine getting bigger and better, we can surely expect Intel to enter the high-end space that sits next to NVIDIA's and AMD's next-gen GPUs (Ada & RDNA 3).

We are in the second generation. For the first generation, there wasn't a good reference point for you to compare so now that you have a reference point, we do have comparisons.

Like we track the number of open bugs and when we start a project, we set some performance goals and we do pre-silicon verification.

So when we look at all of those vectors, it's (Battlemage) substantially better at this point in time than where Alchemist was around.

Raja Koduri, Head of Intel AXG & Executive VP

Raja Koduri also mentioned that they have to really focus on the driver and software stack because as the engine gets bigger and bigger, there needs to be a driver ecosystem that also ensures it gets to the fullest potential.

Last month, Raja Koduri squashed all the rumors floating on the web that the Arc brand was getting canceled and it looks like instead of cancellation, the reality is entirely different with Intel's design teams already working on the next-gen Battlemage DG3 and Celestial GPUs.

We're not going anywhere on our discrete business. And our discrete business is the basic technology development that goes both into the data center and integrated GPUs. I feel like there's a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) out there. I'd just like to be clear: we're not going anywhere," he continues.

The thing I happen to believe—Pat, and I, and Roger, and Lisa, and Ryan, everybody is aligned on the idea—that graphics is a critical technology to the client, is a critical technology to the data center, and we want to start competing in the mainstream area where our competitors are making a tonne of money. So all three of those things are critically important for Intel.

Most of our ASIC team is on Battlemage. A small portion of it is on our future, which is Celestial. And then there's a very small portion on Alchemist today, but they're kind of different function sets. So like a board and, what I'll call, chip teams are on Alchemist right now. Kind of think of it as getting our board just right, getting our BIOS just right, making all the final tuning. But the bulk of our design team is on Battlemage.

Our plan is to start here. And then we add on top and then we add on top. And it's not a really hard strategy to understand because we're starting with the volume segment of the market, and then we'll grow into more high-performance segments over time.

Intel's Tom Peterson viia PCGamer

Intel also lays out its plan of reaching out to the mainstream and volume market first with Arc Alchemist GPUs then heading into the high-performance and enthusiast segment with the Arc Battlemage GPUs and beyond. Of course, we first have to wait and see the Arc 7 series in action before we get to talk about next-gen stuff but it is exciting for gamers and content creation that Intel has a lineup that aims to bring more competition to the graphics market.

News Source: RedGamingTech