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.
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.
