Intel spills the beans about its Gen11 Ice Lake GPU

Intel detailed its Gen11 integrated graphics architecture at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. This will be the biggest update since 2015's Skylake generation, it will be introduced with the upcoming 10nm Ice Lake architecture later this year.

Techpowerup checked out the whitepaper and offers some commentary over here.

An illustration in the whitepaper points to the GT2 trim of Gen11. GT2 tends to be the most common variant of each Intel graphics architecture. Gen9.5 GT2, for example, is deployed across the board on 8th and 9th generation Core processors (with the exception of the "F" or "KF" SKUs). The illustration confirms that Intel will continue to use their Ring Bus interconnect on the mainstream implementation of "Ice Lake" processors, despite possible increases in CPU core counts. This is slightly surprising, since Intel introduced a Mesh interconnect with its recent HEDT and enterprise processors. Intel has, however, ensured the iGPU has a preferential access to the Ring Bus, with 64 Byte/clock reads and 64 Byte/clock writes, while each CPU core only has 32 Byte/clock reads and 32 Byte/clock writes.

Gen11 is expected to be a major leap ahead for Intel's integrated graphics. Early rumors and leaks indicate it will rival the capabilities of AMD's current APUs.