Intel product manager teases Xe Next ARC Druid GPU launch in 2025

@theBryceIsRt, an "Intel ARC Community Advocate" a product manager recently teased potential timeframes for the company's next-generation successors to the Intel Arc Alchemist. Replying to a joke tweet about an 800W GeForce RTX 6090 coming out in 2025, @theBryIsRt claimed that "that could be when Intel Arc Druid cards come out." 

Looking at Intel's official GPU roadmap, that's actually a remarkably ambitious target to achieve. Arc Druid is supposed to be Intel's 4th generation "Xe Next" desktop GPU architecture, set to succeed Arc Celestial and Battlemage. Arc Alchemist, Intel's first crack at the desktop market, is only expected to arrive in Q1 2022, assuming no further delays due to the worldwide silicon shortage. 

This would imply that Intel's planning on churning out new GPU architectures at a rate that's faster than anything we've seen since the mid-2000s, where a 6-month upgrade cadence was the norm.

Considering Intel's own track record - the company initially planned to have 10nm desktop parts out by 2015, but only launched 10nm Alder Lake chips early this month, it might be a good idea to take @theBryceIsRt's tweet with a pinch of salt. However, if Intel is indeed on track to deliver 4th-gen Arc graphics cards by 2025, it could put pressure on NVIDIA and AMD alike to innovate and target more reasonable price points. 

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