Intel Nova Lake Tipped For Xe3 And Xe3P GPU Tiles To Boost Graphics And AI

Intel has already established that the graphics parts of Panther Lake are using the Xe3 architecture, but that they will be branded as part of the Arc B-series. The given rationale is that the first-generation Xe3 graphics products utilizing the "Xe3-LPG" architecture will be something more like an evolution of the Xe2 architecture used in "Battlemage" than a full step change in hardware architecture. Earlier leaks suggested that Nova Lake would use Xe3P, the "true" Celestial graphics architecture, but Coelacanth's Dream isn't so sure.

For those unfamiliar, The Coelacanth is a Japanese hardware enthusiast with the uncommon patience to crawl through open-source software commits and find interesting details about upcoming hardware. On his site, he just posted his findings that the latest Linux kernel patches indicate that Nova Lake will use Graphics Media Descriptors 30.4.4 and 30.5.4. These numbers are similar to the "gfx" numbers you may have seen for Radeon GPUs; they indicate the exact hardware design of the GPU for architectural and feature identification.

This is notable, because others have already established that Xe3P is 35.11.0, or at least, that's the number used in reference to Intel's rumored Crescent Island datacenter GPUs, which are thought to be based on Xe3P. So saying, it seems like The Coelacanth has confirmed that Nova Lake will use Xe3-LPG, the same as Panther Lake.


Videocardz seemingly wasn't satisfied with this explanation, and so site owner Whycry went to his own sources for an answer. The response he apparently got is interesting: Nova Lake will use a mix of Xe3-LPG and Xe3P graphics tiles. According to him, the current compiler patches that The Coelacanth was referencing are only for specific variants of Nova Lake, those being the low-power -U chips, the majority of the BGA -H chips, the desktop-on-laptop HX series, and the desktop-class S-series. All of those will indeed use Xe3-LPG, but supposedly a small number of mobile parts in the "H" series will use a graphics tile based on Xe3P with 12 Xe3P cores.

What does this mean for end-users? It's impossible to say at this time, because we don't really know how Xe3 performs. Xe2 is impressive, and gives AMD's RDNA 3.5 a run for its money in core for core comparisons—as long as you compare Xe2-cores against Workgroup Processors. That's the comparison that makes the most sense, since both are the most atomic building blocks of their respective architectures; you can't implement anything smaller than that. If Xe3 offers the gains that Intel claims over Xe2, then Panther Lake may end up being a monster chip for gaming handhelds. We'll know when they launch at CES, and that'll tell us what to expect from Nova Lake.