The first Arc Alchemist GPUs for the desktop will not appear on the market until the second quarter. Laptops would appear earlier, though.
Intel informs investors that its first Arc Alchemist GPUs are not scheduled until Q2 of this year. For custom workstation graphics cards, it is even waiting until Q3 of this year. The first laptops with the Intel GPUs on board are said to hit the shelves before the end of this quarter, though.
Difficult launch
Intel wants to compete with AMD and Nvidia in the GPU market, but is struggling to get off the ground. At CES, the first laptops with the manufacturer’s Arc Alchemist GPUs were first announced, but barely a day later all mention of a launch date was removed again. With any luck, we will be able to assess the first performance in laptops before the end of this quarter, but a comparison between desktop cards from Intel and the two established manufacturers remains to be seen.
Intel is already enthusiastically building on its GPU roadmap, though. The chipmaker plans to incorporate Arc GPU designs into the graphics component of its CPUs with Meteor Lake: the fourteenth generation of Core. In doing so, Intel follows competitor AMD, which combines its latest Ryzen Mobile 6000 chips with RDNA2 graphics from its GPU portfolio. Meteor Lake should get a large graphics chip set based on Arc Battlemage architecture.
Arrow and moon
It’s not that far off yet. We are only at the twelfth generation of Intel chips with Alder Lake and for now Intel’s GPU ambitions exist mostly on paper. On the sidelines of its investor meeting, Intel still let it be known that the successor to Meteor Lake will be called Arrow Lake. After that will come Lunar Lake. Between dream and deed there are laws in the way and practical objections, so we wait first and foremost for the first Intel GPUs in the wild.