Intel Xe DG1 Silicon Not Meant for Desktop Add-on Cards, Only as an MGPU

[btarunr]

Intel's 10 nm Xe DG1 silicon made its first public appearance as the DG1-SDV (software development vehicle), a desktop PCIe graphics cards that Intel shipped out to its ISVs (independent software vendors), allowing them to begin preparing software for the Xe architecture. Argonne National Laboratory, the organization behind the Aurora Supercomputing Project that implements Xe HP "Ponte Vecchio" super-scalar compute processors, in its presentation, took a brief technical detour talking a bit about the DG1-SDV.

In the presentation, it is revealed that Intel will indeed monetize (or "productize") the silicon at the heart of the DG1-SDV, only not as a desktop graphics card. The chip will be sold as a mobile GPU, not even as an MXM, but as a GPU meant to be hardwired along with its dedicated memory onto notebooks' mainboards. We predict Intel is attempting to tap into the market segment where NVIDIA sells its GeForce MX300 line of entry-level discrete GPUs. Earlier this week, we spotted a discrete GPU with the specs of the DG1 having significantly increased 1.50 GHz GPU clocks, resulting in a FP32 throughput rivaling the AMD Radeon RX 560 or the "Vega" based iGPU of "Renoir." The Xe architecture will also be released as an iGPU solution, powering Intel's "Tiger Lake" Core mobile processor. Find the Aurora presentation here (PDF).



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[ZoneDymo]

Sooooo yeah, rather boring then, gotta wait a bit longer for that RTX2060 / RX5700 rival

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

likely due to un(der?)developed drivers, desktop by intel has no timeline now.

 

[londiste]

The chip will be sold as a mobile GPU, not even as an MXM, but as a GPU meant to be hardwired along with its dedicated memory onto notebooks' mainboards. We predict Intel is attempting to tap into the market segment where NVIDIA sells its GeForce MX300 line of entry-level discrete GPUs.

Mobile GPU on the laptop motherboard is still all SDV (software development vehicle). Based on the same slide, the second part of that quote with prediction is wrong. Intel is not planning to sell this a discrete mobile GPU, not in line with that MX300 comparison. This type of use is SDV only and the real product will be Tiger Lake (and Xe in wider sense).