While Nvidia and AMD duke it out to be supreme GPU champion in the PC gaming world, Intel is also here. Just smiling and waving. The chip firm entered the GPU arena back in 2022, and now it’s a little closer to completing the next iteration of its Arc brand.
In an interview with PC World (as spotted by PC Gamer) at CES 2024, Intel Fellow Tom Petersen said that Arc Battlemage (the follow-up to Alchemist) “is coming.” Around 30% of engineers are working on the GPU right now, “mostly on the software side.” Ideally, this all wraps up before CES in January 2025.
On top of this, the hardware portion of the team is now moving onto Celestial, the next graphics card from Intel. Petersen says Battlemage has “already had its first silicon in the lab,” and “more good news is coming.”
A story arc that perhaps needs to pick up
As for when we can expect the next line of Arc GPUs, Petersen is unable – or unwilling – to go into details, but is hopeful we may get to see something at next year’s CES event. That’s not a given, but it might give some indication of perhaps when it could be released. That’s all just pure speculation, for now.
Intel doesn’t seem to have quite found its feet in the dedicated graphics card industry. With Nvidia and AMD flexing every muscle they have, Team Blue seems to be trailing behind. This could be because the Alchemist experienced delays, but it could be because the other two have just been in the game for much longer.
However, the upcoming Claw device from MSI is being powered by Intel hardware, including an Arch chip, so that’s something. This time next year, things might be different, but it sounds like progress on Battlemage is coming along.
