Intel to go deep on Xe GPU info at GDC

Intel is getting ready to make a big splash with its Xe graphics cards, but the company has mostly spoken in broad terms about how it'll scale from exascale needs down to integrated mobile chips and everything in between. Now, though, Intel is ready to talk in detail about Xe at GDC 2020 this March.

Antoine Cohade, Intel's Senior Developer Relations Engineer, will give a presentation called a "Primer on Intel Graphics Xe Architecture" at the Game Developers' Conference.

Here's the official description of the presentation from the GDC 2020 Session Scheduler, spotted by Tom's Hardware:

Intel's brand new Xe Architecture, has been teased for a while, and is scheduled for release later this year! This update brings a significant compute, geometry and throughput improvements over todays widely used Gen9 and Gen11 graphics.

This talk will provide a detailed tour of the hardware architecture behind Intel's upcoming GPUs - unveiling the structure behind its building blocks and their performance implications. Special consideration will be taken to explain how graphics engineers can best exploit the new Xe Architecture. We will then take an in-depth look at the powerful new features being introduced with this new architecture.

This show is for developers

Intel's developer-only Xe DG1 discrete graphics card

GDC is, as the name suggests, a show for developers. Even so, we should likely be able to glean some interesting stuff from it. Cohade responded to questions on Twitter, too. He promised that the presentation would cover things like how Xe differs from previous generations of Intel graphics, different optimizations for discrete and integrated chips, and how Xe supports ray tracing.

It's hard to imagine Intel making a huge splash with discrete Xe cards immediately. Integrated Xe graphics, though, will cover a huge range of laptops at a variety of power levels. That kind of market penetration could make optimizing for Xe a necessary part of game development. If Intel is aggressive about pricing and marketing, it could light a fire under Nvidia, too.

We're looking forward to seeing what Intel has to say about Xe at GDC; maybe we'll even get a better idea of what Xe means for gaming in the process.

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