Intel driver leak reveals details about upcoming Xe GPU variants and Gen12 integrated graphics, indicates three new upcoming CPU families

While upcoming 10nm Ice Lake chips will be featuring the new Gen11 GT2 graphics core, a new driver leak has revealed juicy details about Intel's GPU plans for the next couple of years. A test driver version 26.20.16.999, which has now been removed seems to suggest that Raja Koduri's Core and Visual Computing Group is aiming big to compete against top offerings from NVIDIA and AMD.

The test driver contains the following references:

There are references to Gen12 that will form the basis of new integrated and discrete solutions. In the coming years, we could very well see unification of Intel's integrated and discrete solutions under the Xe brand. Gen12 is poised to offer a tight competition to AMD's APUs and will be fabbed on the 10nm process. 

The driver mentions codenames DG1 and DG2, which in all probability are discrete graphics solutions. We see them designated with 'LP' and 'HP, which we guess would indicate 'low power' and 'high power' respectively. DG2 is listed as having several SKUs viz. iDG2HP512, iDG2HP256, and iDG2HP128. If we were to take a guess, these numbers could indicate the number of execution units (EUs) in each SKU and could be mid-range discrete GPUs. 

From the driver, it is clear that Tiger Lake will be using Gen12 integrated graphics. Although not explicitly mentioned, the other 10nm parts such as Elkhart Lake, Alder Lake, and the upcoming Lakefield SoCs with Foveros 3D packaging are all expected to use Gen11. 

Interestingly, we also see three new CPU names being mentioned — Rocket Lake, Jasper Lake, and ATS (Lake?) While we have no idea about the last two, we do know that Rocket Lake is billed to be Comet Lake's successor and will still be a 14nm part (with possible 10nm variants). Rocket Lake SoCs could feature integrated graphics in GT0, GT0.5, GT1, and GT1Pro configurations with GT0 and GT0.5 featuring 16 EUs and GT1 up to 32 EUs.

With Xe GPUs confirmed to support hardware accelerated ray tracing and integrated graphics reaching the 1 TFLOPs mark with Gen11, Intel is clearly looking to position itself as a viable alternative to NVIDIA and AMD in the years to come. The first Intel Xe GPUs are touted to arrive sometime in 2020.