For the first time, there are now GPUs called Battlemage and Celestial, along with CPUs called Panther and Nova Lake.
In a recent update, the HWiNFO team announced that the well-known system information and diagnostic tool will support next-generation Intel GPUs in a future version. This is the first time the tool has mentioned Intel’s upcoming hardware, suggesting that they have probably moved “out of the fab and into the lab,” as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger likes to say.
The website of the software utility has a note about changes made to the most recent version and what is coming up in the next one. The note discusses future GPU and CPU architectures from Intel, with the most recent version supporting Arrow Lake CPUs and providing “preliminary” support for their successor, Panther Lake. The note also mentions “upcoming changes” to the utility, which include support for its future GPUs, both discrete and integrated, named Battlemage and Celestial. Beyond these two, the only GPU architecture on Intel’s roadmap is called Druid, which is likely to be released after 2027.
The utility reports that integrated GPU support for Panther Lake and Nova Lake will be replaced with discrete GPU support for Battlemage and Celestial. Wccftech reports that Intel will introduce new discrete GPUs with its Battlemage architecture in 2024, and that this same architecture will also be inserted into its upcoming CPUs with a reduced version. The timeline is as follows: in late 2024, Arrow Lake will replace the Raptor Lake refresh on desktops; in the following year, Lunar Lake will replace Meteor Lake on mobile devices; in the future, Panther Lake and Nova Lake will replace both of those roughly around 2026, but these details are unclear.
When it comes to the integration of these architectures, Intel plans to use its current Alchemist GPU for both Meteor Lake on mobile and Arrow Lake on desktop. However, Arrow Lake may receive an updated version called Alchemist+. The Xe2 Battlemage platform will launch as a discrete GPU in 2024, and the iGPU version of it will then be slapped onto Lunar Lake. Panther Lake, the follow-up to Arrow Lake, will reportedly have Xe3 “Celestial” graphics. Nova Lake will also likely get this iGPU, or the company might already have the fourth-generation Druid architecture ready by then.
It will be interesting to see Intel’s second bite at the apple, given all the lessons it is learned with its fledging effort. For now, the world waits anxiously for Intel’s second-generation graphics, Battlemage. The company made solid inroads with Arc Alchemist and has provided significant uplift since launch due to improved drivers.