Intel Gen 12 & Gen 13 Discrete GPUs: Company confirms It’s Possible

Intel is currently using a semi-custom graphics chip from AMD in their recently-launched 8th generation mobility processors. Now reports are in that the company will soon stop relying on third parties as they are in the process of developing their own discrete GPUs to power the coming generations.

Intel developing Its Own Discrete GPUs to replace Radeon Graphics on Core Processors

This doesn’t come as a surprise, especially after the appointment of the former Radeon boss Raja Koduri as Intel chief architect and Senior VP of the newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group. In this position, Raja is tasked to expand Intel’s graphics business with high-end discrete GPUs for a broad range of computing segments.

The latest scoop comes from Ashraf Essa of The Motley Fool, who tweeted recently that Intel currently have two dGPU solutions in development that they intend to use in their future Core processors. These will be 12th Generation and 13th Generation discrete GPUs, codenamed Arctic Sound and Jupiter Sound, respectively.

For those who don’t know, Intel’s current Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake chips use the Gen 9 and Gen 9.5 Graphics, while the upcoming 10nm Cannonlake processors will have Gen 10 Graphics.

The report further suggests that the Gen 12 Arctic Sound dGPU will be connected to an Intel CPU through their Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB). This is the same tech used in the current 8th Gen Core processors with Vega M Graphics, which means we can expect to see a similar Multi-chip Module (MCM) design for their new mobility processors.

That being said, it takes a significant amount of time to develop a new graphics architecture from ground. And then, at the moment, codenames is the only bit of information we have regarding these alleged discrete GPUs from Intel. So don’t expect to see the respective products any time soon, possibly not earlier than 2020 or even further.

Update, Jan. 18, 2018: We have since learned that codenames for Intel dGPUs surfaced after Gregory Bryant, senior VP of their Client Computing Group, talked about the company’s entrance into the discrete graphics sector during J.P. Morgan’s CES Technology Investor Forum. In reply to a question about the performance of Kaby Lake-G featuring Vega integrated graphics, Bryant said:

Obviously we’re trying to improve the performance of our integrated graphics and ultimately we would like to be in discrete graphics as well.

He further revealed that Koduri was already “working with our IP and our engineering teams to build out the roadmap as go out in the future.” Seems like Intel is pretty serious about the graphics side of things. Though it may take some time but the company is committed to finally emerge as a third player in the high-end graphics market.