Intel's next-gen CPUs may use different iGPUs — data mining reveals Arrow Lake-S paired with Xe-LPG and Arrow Lake-H with Xe-LPG Plus

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By Christopher Harper
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Arrow Lake's integrated graphics seemingly revealed

Raptor Lake CPU
Raptor Lake CPU (Image credit: Intel)

On February 21st, Japanese blogger Coelcanth's Dream did some data mining of existing applications and discovered references to Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake CPUs, as well as Arrow Lake CPUs coming with Xe-LPG or even Xe-LPG+ integrated graphics. We'll discuss the applications and the findings therein in some more detail below, but for now, know that it is primarily relevant due to the breakdown of Xe-LPG and Xe-LPG+ iGPU support and less so about Lunar/Arrow Lake support being added in general.

First, though, let's go ahead and get those basics out of the way. VC Intrinsics and Intel C For Metal Compiler are two applications datamined to find strings referring to Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, as well as Xe-LPG and Xe-LPG+ integrated graphics.

Coelcanth's Dream also consulted the Kernel Mode and User Mode Drivers for Intel GPUs, revealing divided iGPU SKUs for Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-H. Specifically, Arrow Lake-S is slated for the starting Intel Iris Xe-LPG graphics, while Arrow Lake-H CPUs will instead receive the higher-power Intel Iris Xe-LPG+ GPUs.

Both of these Intel Iris Xe graphics are a generation behind the Xe 2 "Battlemage" generation that was discussed by Intel in an interview earlier this month. Similar to AMD's approach, Intel seems to keep its discrete graphics current-gen while integrated graphics use last-gen graphics architecture.

That said, they should still boast a considerable performance boost over Intel's last-gen iGPUs, especially if past Intel Core Ultra 155H iGPU benchmarks are any indication. According to Coelcanth's Dream, Xe-LPG+ is the same as Meteor Lake's Arc graphics, which should provide a very reasonable mid-range experience for Arrow Lake-H CPU users.

Fortunately, the era of Intel producing truly anemic onboard integrated graphics seems to be extended past us— though those wanting the best Intel iGPU performance will wish for an "H" series CPU rather than a low-power "S" series. Finally, it's worth noting that one of the main benefits of Xe-LPG+ is accelerated AI performance— including for XeSS, Intel's AI upscaler ala DLSS, for games that support it.

Christopher Harper
Freelance News Writer
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2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Metal Messiah.
    The heading and title of this article can be a bit confusing and misleading to begin with, although you have provided reference links for both Arrow Lake-S and H topics. Don't get me wrong though.

    I mean instead of saying "Intel's next-gen CPUs may use different iGPUs", it would be better to highlight this, 'Some of the upcoming Intel next-gen DESKTOP and MOBILE CPUs may sport different integrated graphics architecture".
    Because the entries found within VC Intrinsics and Intel(R) C for Metal Compiler only differentiate between the desktop and mobile variant iGPUs, which isn't surprising since Intel has been doing this in the past as well.

    So, the bottom line is that Intel will be using two different Alchemist "Xe-LPG" iGPU architectures for its upcoming Arrow Lake-S Desktop & Arrow Lake-H Mobile line of CPUs.

    Arrow Lake-H mobile processors will use the updated Xe-LPG+ graphics, while the Arrow Lake-S desktop processors will use the same integrated GPU as Meteor Lake, with Xe-LPG graphics. But this doesn't apply to every upcoming next-gen Intel CPU generation though, only ARROW LAKE for now.

    As usually expected, the mobile side is going to have an advantage over the desktop side, because, looking at the current lineup, we can see Intel using 32 EUs on its 14th Gen desktop SKUs, versus the 96 EUs on mobile parts.
    Most of the Desktop "S" SKUs usually feature way fewer GPU cores than the mobile parts, because Laptops are usually paired with powerful integrated graphics, and it makes sense to include less powerful integrated graphics on desktop CPUs, because these are usually paired with high-end discrete GPUs.

    But in Arrow Lake's case, the iGPU architecture is slightly different. So what's the difference between Xe-LPG and Xe-LPG PLUS, you may ask ?

    The "+" there means it supports the DPAS (Dot Product Accumulate Systolic) instructions. These instructions are already used inside of the Xe-HPG architecture, but for some reason were actually disabled in the Xe-LPG variant.

    They support FP16, BF16, IN4, and INT4 multiplication with 16 or 32 bits accumulate, meaning that through the XMX core, the GPU can perform more operations per clock. The laptop variants can benefit from this.

    Specifically, Arrow Lake-S is slated for the starting Intel Iris Xe-LPG graphics, while Arrow Lake-H CPUs will instead receive the higher-power Intel Iris Xe-LPG+ GPUs.

    Both of these Intel Iris Xe graphics are a generation behind the Xe 2 "Battlemage" generation that was discussed by Intel in     an interview earlier this month.

    What is the codename IRIS doing here ? Iris Xe integrated graphics were found within Intel's 12th Gen Core series., Xe-LP architecture. It was integrated in the popular 11th, 12th, and 13th Gen Intel Core i5 and i7 central processors.

    But, powering Intel's integrated graphics for Meteor Lake is a new graphics architecture which Intel calls Xe-LPG. There is no Iris here. Intel included 8 Xe graphics cores with 128 vector engines and 8 samplers, which represented a roughly 1.34 x increase over Intel's previous Xe LP graphics.

    Similar to AMD's approach, Intel seems to keep its discrete graphics current-gen while integrated graphics use last-gen graphics architecture.

    Not correct. There are several products in the market sporting AMD's curent-gen RDNA 3 iGPUs.

    Specifically, Arrow Lake-S is slated for the starting Intel Iris Xe-LPG graphics, while Arrow Lake-H CPUs will instead receive the higher-power Intel Iris Xe-LPG+ GPUs.

    Fortunately, the era of Intel producing truly anemic onboard integrated graphics seems to be extended past us— though those wanting the best Intel iGPU performance will wish for an "H" series CPU rather than a     low-power "S" series.

    As I have mentioned above, the S series are not low-power variants. These are desktop models. Also, the Xe-LPG+ graphics are not higher power either. They are only more powerful as they sport more EUs.

    @TheyCallMeContra
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  • TechyIT223
    Thanks for your input MMessiah as always. Always clears up some of the doubts and errors as usual in published articles.
    👍
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