Intel Arc desktop GPUs are coming in Q2, but don’t expect them to end the GPU shortage

Intel’s Arc GPUs keep getting close to release. At the investor meeting yesterdayIntel has confirmed that it will ship Arc mobile GPUs based on the Alchemist architecture in the first quarter of 2022 and that desktop GPUs will follow sometime in the second quarter. Workstation GPUs will follow next in the third quarter.

Intel has released few official details about any of the Arc GPU’s configurations or performance targets Leaked specifications and standards It gave us a pretty broad idea of ​​what we could expect. Intel’s VP Raja Koduri VP Graphics has tweeted an image of an Arc GPU in a file “Best Canyon” enclosure NUC Run 2018 Shadows of the Tomb Raider, which means that at least one of the GPUs will be physically small enough to fit in this case. But prices, availability and even what the cards will look like are unknown.

The company plans to ship at least 4 million GPUs across its desktop, laptop, and workstation product lines in 2022, but that will only represent a small portion of the dedicated GPU market. Data from Jon Peddie Research (as compiled by Tom’s Hardware) indicates that Nvidia and AMD sold approximately 47 million desktop GPUs in the calendar year between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2021, before accounting for laptop GPUs. . Having another viable option in the GPU market would be nice, but such a small number wouldn’t put much of an impact on the current GPU shortage.

As for the future of the graphics department, Intel has shared approximate release schedules for the next generation Battlemage and Celestial GPU architecture, which will be released in “2023-2024” and “2024+” respectively. Each architecture has a slightly higher performance target than the previous one, although how competitive these products will be will also be determined by the GPUs shipped by Nvidia and AMD in the next few years. Battlemage GPUs will also be integrated into Intel’s “Meteor Lake” processors, which is the architecture that will be used in Intel’s 14th generation processors (assuming no lags occur and Intel’s current naming conventions continue).

Intel has also teased a mysterious GPU-related initiative called “Project Endgame,” a service that will provide Arc GPUs “with a service for an always-accessible, low-latency computing experience.” Whether Endgame is a cloud gaming service like Nvidia’s GeForce Now or a more workstation service that offers GPU computing capacity remains to be seen.