Intel's new graphics control center is online: after Gen11 integrated graphics, Xe independent graphics card shows its strength

Today (19), Intel launched a new graphics control center on the Microsoft Mall in China. This new graphics control center interface was revealed at Computex last month. At that time, Intel announced the technical details of the Ice Lake processor based on the 10nm process. In addition to the new process technology and architecture, Ice Lake has a very important new feature - it integrates the Gen11 core graphics, and the display performance has almost doubled. The graphics control center has also been refurbished. However, the Gen11 core graphics is just the beginning. It is reported that subsequent versions of Ice Lake will also apply Intel's upcoming Xe architecture to achieve a greater leap in display performance.

What is the Xe architecture? This new GPU computing architecture is designed for high-performance computing. If you want to give it a nickname, then the "exponential acceleration partner" of graphics processing is the most appropriate. At the Intel Investor Conference in early May, Intel Chief Engineering Officer Murthy Ren announced that the company's first 7nm product to be launched in 2021 will be a general-purpose GPU based on the Intel Xe architecture. With a new architecture and a new process, this Xe architecture cannot be underestimated.

GPUs currently on the market are facing some architectural challenges, such as too little video memory and performance that cannot fully meet the needs of fine graphics parallel rasterization. In order to achieve the most realistic effects, studios perform complex physical processing on fabrics, liquids, and hair, as well as tracing rays to imitate the physical form of light. These algorithms benefit from a combination of parallel computing and vector computing, while requiring increasingly larger memory. Therefore, the best solution should include a holistic platform design that can assign computing tasks to the most appropriate processing resources.

The newly launched Intel Xe architecture can help solve these challenges. At the "Architecture Day" event in December last year, Intel introduced the company's strategic shift in design and model engineering. Based on Moore's Law and the six major technology pillars strategy, Intel will continue to advance product development and lead future innovation to meet the evolving computing development and industry needs. These six major technology pillars include process and packaging, architecture, memory and storage, interconnection, security, and software. They are the foundation of Intel's future products, and each one is equally important. In this bold new engineering vision, the Intel Xe architecture is a very critical element. It will help meet the increasingly complex needs of the graphics processing market and make a name for itself in the field of high-performance computing.

Intel Xe architecture also offers two unique microarchitectures, optimized for data centers and clients to create a wider range of products. Scalability is its core advantage, and its applications involve multiple computing and graphics market segments, from mainstream laptops and enthusiast-level gaming systems to high-performance computing in data centers, meeting a wide range of market and workload requirements.

The Xe architecture is accelerating the Intel Xeon processor family, “making every transistor count” by creating a holistic software and computing environment that fully leverages workflows to achieve exponential benefits. In cloud-optimized rendering scenarios, its roadmap now has new progress, including ray tracing hardware acceleration and support for the Intel® Rendering Framework family of APIs and function libraries. For users of current graphics and rendering solutions based on Intel Rendering Framework open source products, these flexible acceleration platforms will bring exponential performance advantages. In addition to rendering, ray tracing technology is also developing rapidly as a general computing technology for various simulation calculations.

To ensure that advanced graphics and visualization capabilities are widely available to the professional rendering, scientific visualization, and virtual design communities, Intel is supporting the establishment of the XeLLENCE Intel Graphics and Visualization Institute (Intel GVI) to collaborate with world-class related research institutions to enable all creative and scientific communities to better utilize platforms powered by the Xe architecture.

In addition, in the field of high-performance computing, the Xe architecture will also support exponential computing performance. Intel's first exascale computer system, which will be delivered in 2021, will use future Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, Intel Optane Data Center Persistent Memory, Intel Xe Computing Architecture, and Intel OneAPI Programming Framework. Based on these innovations across six major technology pillars, computing will achieve truly "exponential" growth.