Intel is preparing to release its Arrow Lake architecture by year-end. Arrow Lake marks the company’s first comprehensive client architecture, featuring entirely new CPU and GPU designs in years. The series succeeding the Meteor Lake launch, which introduced new GPU cores named Xe-LPG, will also incorporate this architecture with some variants referred to as LPG+. However, it turns out that not all Arrow Lake products will feature this additional LPG+ enhancement.
According to Coelacanth’s Dream, LPG+ will be exclusive to Arrow Lake-H, whereas the desktop versions, specifically ARL-S (Arrow Lake-S), will utilize Xe-LPG instead. Intel implemented the following modifications to the code of the “C for Metal Compiler (cm-compiler).
According to an Intel engineer, only specific SKUs will include Xe-LPG+, identified by Intel as GFX version 12.74. To distinguish between these variations, Intel will need to list distinct PCI Device IDs in the software to accurately indicate the supported version.
Some SKUs of Arrow Lake use a slightly newer Xe_LPG+ graphics IP (version 12.74). Add some additional PCI IDs and extend the code to support this newer IP version. The general code flow should continue to match existing MTL and Xe_LPG code paths.
— Haridhar Kalvala, Intel engineer
According to rumors and leaks, Xe-LPG+ is rumored to have support for DPAS (Dot Product Accumulate Systolic) instructions. Although this instruction is already utilized by the Xe-HPG architecture, it was disabled in the LPG variant. DPAS aims to facilitate FP16, BF16, IN4, and INT4 multiplication with 16 or 32 bits accumulate, enabling the GPU, through the XMX core, to execute a higher number of operations per clock.
The launch of Intel’s Arrow Lake-S is anticipated this year, with the subsequent release of the mobile Arrow Lake-H and the low-power Lunar Lake-MX series expected to follow shortly.
Source: Coelacanth’s Dream