Intel Xe DG1 unveiled: A 75 W GPU with 96 execution units?

Intel was surprisingly quiet about its upcoming Xe GPUs the other day, besides a short run-through of Destiny 2 and a demonstration of some Tiger Lake-powered laptop form factors. The company is set to reveal more details about the series at CES 2020 though, including photos and renders of one of its first reference cards.

Spotted by Videocardz on Guru3D before the latter pulled its article, the slides below confirm that Intel will split the Xe series into three divisions that are based on one architecture. Xe HPC will, as the name implies, cover High Performance Computing (HPC), Exascale, DL, Training and Cloud GFX solutions, while Xe HP will be for workstations and media transcode analytics. Presumably, HP refers to High-Performance. Finally, the Xe LP division will manage gaming, PC mobile and ultra-mobile GPUs. Wccftech purports that LP stands for Low-Power too, which makes sense.

Apparently, Xe LP GPUs will have between 5 W and 20 W TDPs that can scale up to 50 W, while Xe HP cards will have between 75 W and 250 W capabilities. Presumably, Xe HPC will extend beyond 300 W or 350 W, but there is no information on this at the time of writing.

The photos of the DG1, a card that Intel is "sampling to ISVs (Independent Software Vendor) worldwide", confirm that Xe GPUs will have PCIe x16 interface, likely PCIe 4.0. Moreover, the DG1 has no visible power connectors, meaning that it must draw all its power from its PCIe connection. PCIe 4.0 can deliver up to 75 W, potentially making the DG1 a low-end Xe HP card, although test drivers spotted last year suggest that it is a Xe LP GPU instead. According to a recent EEC entry, the DG1 will have 96 execution units (EUs) or 768 shader units. Meanwhile, DG2 variants will sport 128, 256 and 512 EUs.

Finally, the DG1 appears to have either four DisplayPorts or three DPs and one HDMI. The DG1 looks remarkably small too, although it is still a dual-slot GPU.