South Korean tech treasure hunter Coelacanth’s Dream (opens in new tab) has dug up some attention-grabbing details about the built-in GPU that comes with Intel’s Meteor Lake processors. From sightings of latest code patches for the Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC), the fishy tech poster has revealed that Meteor Lake iGPUs may have ray tracing help in {hardware}. Sadly, a possible destructive is that the iGPU could lack Intel XMX (Xe Matrix eXtension) models.
Intel’s thirteenth Gen Core processors, codenamed Raptor Lake (RPL), are subsequent up – and due fairly imminently. Nevertheless, in 2023, we predict Intel’s 14th Gen Core processors, dubbed Meteor Lake (MTL), will trigger fairly a stir with a number of daring, superior steps taken. Common readers will know that the transition from thirteenth to 14th Gen Core processors will transfer from Intel 7 to Intel 4. That isn’t all, although, as we are going to see Intel’s first disaggregated design with a TSMC N3 tile below the warmth spreader. It is going to be the GPU portion of the chip, and because of detective work from individuals like Coelacanth’s Dream, we’ve got an ever-growing clearer image of this iGPU.
In July this 12 months, Coelacanth’s Dream found some Intel Linux patches, which prompt MTL’s graphics tile would characteristic the Xe-HPG/Xe-LPG structure and as much as 128 EUs produced by TSMC utilizing its N3 fabrication course of. Now we’ve got sight of the new code patches for the Intel Graphics Compiler (opens in new tab)(IGC), some extra deductions will be made relating to the GPU tile.
Most likely most attention-grabbing is the patch indicator that means Meteor Lake’s iGPU could have ray tracing {hardware}. Intel LGA1700 CPUs, like Alder Lake and Raptor Lake, include as much as 96 Xe-LP EUs. Nevertheless, Meteor Lake could have a Xe-HPG structure GPU with extra in widespread with the Alchemist / DG2 discrete graphics playing cards and may characteristic as much as 128 and even 192 of those EUs. The ray tracing help characteristic was picked up in IGC, the place it units ray tracing help to enabled if iGFX_meteorlake is detected. Furthermore, Meteor Lake additionally appears to help {hardware} ray tracing in any app that helps the characteristic in Alchemist / DG2 or Ponte Vecchio.
Including ray tracing help to its iGPUs is a welcome transfer from Intel, however it should solely play catch-up with AMD, which has had its Ryzen 6000 (Rembrandt) processors with RDNA2 iGPUs on sale all through most of 2022.
Transferring alongside to the problem of Meteor Lake’s iGPU structure lacking XMX models. It’s noticed by way of the IGC patches that MTL doesn’t help DPAS (Dot Product Accumulate Systolic) directions that depend on XMX models. It hints that the iGPU doesn’t have XMX models, which may negatively influence the acceleration of Intel XeSS, for instance. On the desktop, a Xe-core options 16 XMX models which might do 128 FP16/BF16, 256 INT8, or 512 INT4/INT2 operations per clock. In addition they speed up XeSS, however this scaling tech has a fallback to DP4a directions mode.
Lastly, it’s price remembering that Meteor Lake CPUs are fairly a major change for Intel and will face some teething bother. A couple of fortnight in the past, we reported that Meteor Lake’s 3nm GPU Tile manufacturing at TSMC may need been postponed. It may very well be that Intel has determined to modify to the newer N3E course of, however it’s exhausting to say from the sources whether or not that is certainly the case or some bother is brewing.
