Just as we’re deep in thought pondering the true character of the Xe3 iGPU in Intel’s new Panther Lake laptop chip and what the heck the “Xe3P” thing is that popped up in the marketing slides, here comes a left-field announcement. Intel will launch a new GPU later next year that’s purpose built for AI inferencing. And guess what? It’s using that Xe3P graphics architecture.
Specs-wise, other than the simple fact that the new GPU, codenamed Crescent Island, is using that next-gen Xe3P technology, there’s little to go on. The only other detail is 160 GB of LPDDR5X memory.
Actually, that’s a relatively revealing spec as it implies this GPU will be a value play, at least in the context of megabucks AI chips. Were it aiming at top-tier AI performance, it would more likely use something along the lines of HBM or High Bandwidth Memory over a huge memory bus. Notably, there’s no mention at all of Celestial, the graphics architecture that was supposed to follow Intel’s current Battlemage tech, which was previously presented under the Xe3 brand and was equally absent from the Panther Lake launch, despite that chip getting Xe3 graphics.
Anyway, Intel says that Crescent Island won’t be out until the second half of next year, so this is an uncharacteristically early mention for a product so far off in the future. However, given that Intel doesn’t really have an existing product in this part of the market, if you assume that the existing Intel Arc Pro B-Series GPUs are probably much lower performing, there’s no spoiler effect of announcing Crescent Island now.
