All Proceeds According to Plan: Intel Provides Updates on the Progress of Battlemage and Celestial Graphics

Intel’s Development of Battlemage Architecture

Intel’s Tom Petersen, the former NVIDIA Director of Technical Marketing, confirmed in a PC World Interview that the company’s development of graphics based on the Battlemage architecture is on track. There’s even a possibility of unveiling new products at CES 2025.

Learning from Past Experience

Having learnt from experience, Intel refrained from setting specific product launch dates— the Arc A7 products on Alchemist architecture were delayed by over six months. During this time Intel found itself in a tough competition with both AMD and NVIDIA, who possess superior architecture and better software optimization. As a response Intel reduced it’s A7 graphics prices to $200 for models with 8GB memory, and $250 for versions with 16GB.

Intel’s Current Preparations

Intel is presently preparing graphics on the new Xe2-HPG architecture, codenamed Battlemage, set to appear in the next generation Arc Bxxx graphics cards. Details are kept under wraps presently, however, it is known the graphics cards will have up to 56 Xe cores, new generation memory subsystem and improved ray tracing acceleration.

Software Development for Xe2 Battlemage

According to Petersen, more than 30% of the Arc GPU department’s staff is currently occupied with software development for Xe2 Battlemage. For the Alchemist series, the software part was the weak point. But Intel managed to make progress in driver development and, in collaboration with MSI, launched the first portable console, Claw. Hardware engineers are already working on next-generation graphics – Xe3 Celestial. The speculation is that the Xe2 architecture will coincide with the release of the Lunar Lake chips. Xe3 will accompany Panther Lake series processors.