Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs will be made on TSMC N6

Intel shared more details about Xe-HPG, the graphics architecture that will power the upcoming Arc Alchemist gaming GPUs. Set to be released in Q1 2022, this will make Intel the third major player in today's discrete video card market. First up, Intel confirmed that Arc Alchemist will be manufactured by TSMC using a 6nm process.

Top model gets 512 EUs

There's official confirmation that the Arc Alchemist flagship will feature 512 execution units. The top configuration will feature eight "render slices", each render slice features four Xe cores and four ray-tracing cores. A single Xe core equals 16 execution units, it consists of 16 256-bit vector engines and 16 1024-bit matrix engines.

The picture below shows the layout of the top configuration:



And here's an illustration of what's inside a single Xe core:



Below is a picture of Intel graphics chief Raja Koduri holding a wafer with Xe-HPG GPU chips.

Druid will be a next-gen architecture

Some details about the future Xe-based gaming GPUs were revealed too. Arc Alchemist is the first model and it will be succeeded by Arc Battlemage, which will be a second-generation Xe-HPG design. The third-generation Arc Celestial will continue to build upon the Xe-HPG. The next major jump will be Arc Druid, which will use a next-generation Xe architecture.

XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) to rival NVIDIA DLSS

Intel is cooking up its own AI-based supersampling technology to compete with NVIDIA's DLSS technique. The XeSS from Intel is a temporal upscaling technology that promises to make video games rendered at 1080p look as good as native 4K.

XeSS will work exclusively on Intel's Xe GPUs. The tools and SDK will be open source, but XeSS uses the DP4a and XMX instruction sets, which are unique to the Xe GPUs. The SDK will ship later this month.

This XeSS demo in 4K shows high-quality super sampling in action on Xe HPG. XeSS uses deep learning to synthesize images that are very close to the quality of native high-res rendering. This reconstruction is performed by a neural network trained to deliver high performance and great quality. The contents and game levels shown in this demo were created by Rens. Rens is a 3D artist, environment artist and technical art director. He is known for his outstanding photogrammetry techniques and high-end rendering skills, and has worked with top game development studios like DICE, Epic Games and Sony.