Intel Tiger Lake Spotted With Iris-Branded Xe Integrated Graphics

Things are getting more exciting in the world of Intel's Xe integrated graphics, as every day that goes by brings us closer to launch. We don't yet know when we'll see the first Xe graphics products, but a new listing on SiSoftware showing off an unknown Intel Xe graphics product gives us more potential details.

Spotted by Tum_Apisak, the device's ID string reads  "Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics (768SP 96C 1.3GHz, 1024kB L2, 6.3GB)." That tells us the offering comprises 96 execution units, which translates to 768 ALUs (Intel's CUDA core or stream processor equivalent) that run at 1.3 GHz. Aboard the GPU is 1MB of L2 cache, and it's wired to 6.3GB of memory. 

The string also tells us is that this product falls under the Iris graphics branding. Iris is the marketing name Intel has used for its top graphics hardware since 2013, so it makes sense for that to continue. Intel ditching its Iris branding at this point would be akin to Nvidia ditching GeForce branding.

The listing also states that this Iris Xe graphics is part of the Tiger Lake-U platform, which is set to be Intel's successor to the current-generation Ice Lake-U mobile CPUs. Tiger Lake-U is expected to have both an updated CPU architecture and Xe graphics, so we're very curious what performance they'll bring. 

Mind you, this isn't the first we've heard about Tiger Lake. Over the last couple months, there have been numerous early benchmarks showing Tiger Lake CPUs outperforming AMD's latest and greatest. Given Gen11 Iris Plus' performance in Ice Lake-based ultrabooks and premium laptops,  we're looking forward to what Tiger Lake brings to the table.