We’ve been treated to another leak around Intel’s Arrow Lake processors – next-gen chips expected to arrive in around a year’s time – with details being spilled about the integrated graphics.
Coelacanth Dream, a known leaker (hat tip to Tom’s Hardware), flagged up that Arrow Lake’s integrated graphics will be Xe-LPG Plus, meaning a honed version of current-gen Alchemist GPUs. (This is according to patches relating to the Intel Graphics Compiler).
That will allow for better performance than Xe-LPG – which is the integrated graphics for Meteor Lake, the laptop chips that are about to come out in just a few weeks – naturally, but Intel is also adding something else into the mix: XMX support.
XMX stands for eXtended Matrix eXtensions and this additional feature will be helpful in making AI workloads more performant – and also XeSS, more excitingly for gamers relying on integrated graphics.
XeSS is Intel’s take on upscaling, a rival to Nvidia’s DLSS (and AMD’s FSR), so better performance here will be helpful for some PC games.
Analysis: Powering up gaming laptops a bit more
It should be noted that XeSS still works with fine with Xe-LPG (Meteor Lake) integrated graphics, it just won’t run quite as well. So, XMX isn’t something that’s needed for XeSS upscaling, it’s just that it’ll be very helpful for getting the smoothest results.
And when it comes to beefy Arrow Lake CPUs for gaming laptops which stay more affordable by doing away with a dedicated graphics card, these mobile processors are going to have some added pep – a small but handy trick up the sleeve, in short, for supported games (like DLSS, XeSS requires the game to be coded to support it).
Intel keeps assuring us its future processors all remain on track as per its roadmap, and we should see Arrow Lake debut later in 2024. For Intel, it really is a case of the sooner the better, seeing as AMD could have its next-gen Zen 5 CPUs out much earlier next year (including some seriously promising APUs for laptops, it must be noted).