Aug 20, 2021 17:00:00

Intel announces details of game high image quality technology 'XeSS' and next-generation processor 'Alder Lake'

Intel held an online event ' Intel Architecture Day 2021 ' on Thursday, August 19, 2021. Among the events, details of the next-generation processor '

Alder Lake ', details of the GPU scheduled to appear from the GPU brand 'Intel Arc ' announced on August 16, 2021, game image quality improvement technology 'XeSS', etc. It has been announced.

Intel Architecture Day 2021
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/resources/press-kit-architecture-day-2021.html

Intel, Data Center, HPC-AI, Client Computing Architectural Advances | Intel Newsroom
https://newsroom.intel.co.jp/editorials/intel-advances-architecture-data-center-hpc-ai-client-computing/

◆ Next-generation processor 'Alder Lake'
Alder Lake generation processors are equipped with two types of CPU architectures: 'Efficient-core ', which specializes in power saving, and 'Performance-core ', which specializes in computing performance. Efficient-core is said to demonstrate 40% higher single thread performance with the same power consumption compared to the architecture of 'Skylake' that appeared in 2015. Furthermore, when 4 cores of Efficient-core are used, the performance is 80% higher with the same power consumption as the Skylake core with 2 cores and 4 threads.

Performance-core has improved performance by about 19% compared to the architecture 'Cypress Cove' of the 'Rocket Lake ' series that appeared in 2021, and Intel has described Performance-core as 'the CPU that will drive computing in the next 10 years. It raises the performance level by one level as an architecture. '

Performance-core was developed with data center and machine learning applications in mind, and is equipped with dedicated hardware including

the extended instruction set 'Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX)' for AI. Intel is appealing that this will improve AI-related calculation efficiency by about 8 times compared to conventional CPUs equipped with ' VNNI'.

Alder Lake is equipped with the performance efficiency function ' Intel Thread Director ', 'Programs that require high performance and AI-related calculations are executed with Performance-core' 'Programs running in the background are Efficient-core' The appropriate core thread is selected according to the calculation to be performed, such as 'Run with'.

Alder Lake has a maximum of 16 cores (Performance-core: 8 cores, Efficient-core: 8 cores), a maximum of 24 threads (Performance-core: 2 threads each, Efficient-core: 1 thread each), maximum Last Level Cache (LLC) is 30MB.

The 11th generation Core processor had

two architectures, 'Rocket Lake ' for desktop PCs and 'Tiger Lake ' for notebook PCs, but Alder Lake has one architecture from desktop PCs to mobile terminals. Cover

Products using Alder Lake will be available in 2021.

◆ High-performance GPU brand 'Intel Arc' SoC 'Alchemist' and game high image quality technology 'XeSS'
On August 16, 2021, Intel announced the high-performance GPU brand 'Intel Arc', revealing that SoCs with the 'Alchemist' architecture will be shipped in the first quarter of 2022.

In Intel Architecture Day 2021, the AI-related calculation engine 'Xe Matrix eXtensions (XMX)' is newly installed in Alchemist, and game image quality enhancement functions such as

NVIDIA's 'DLSS ' and AMD's ' FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)' It was announced that it will support ' Xe Super Sampling (XeSS)'. XeSS is a technology that enables high-quality rendering of games while keeping the required calculation processing small by learning the output image of the game in advance, and 4K video with the same load as rendering 1080p video. High-quality rendering close to is possible.

The following demo images are 'images output in native 4K resolution', 'images output in 4K resolution using XeSS', and 'images output in 1080p' in order from the left. If you check the image, you can see that the image output using XeSS is as high quality as the native 4K image.

Intel also announced that Alchemist generation chips will be manufactured on TSMC's 6nm process.

Furthermore, it has been revealed that architectures with code names such as 'Battlemage', 'Celestial', and 'Druid' will be developed after Alchemist.

◆ High-performance computing processor 'Ponte Vecchio'
At Intel Architecture Day 2021, the

High Performance Computing (HPC) processor Ponte Vecchio was also announced. The Ponte Vecchio is equipped with 100 billion transistors and is said to demonstrate computing performance of 45 TFLOPS or higher in single-precision floating-point arithmetic. Also, the memory bandwidth is over 5TBps and the connection bandwidth is over 2TBps.

Intel said of Ponte Vecchio: 'Intel is the most complex SoC Intel has ever developed, taking full advantage of

state-of-the-art semiconductor processors, innovative EMIB technology , and Foveros 3D packaging. It is a product that symbolizes Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy. ' In addition, the performance improvement graph of Intel (blue) and NVIDIA (green) chips for HPC is shown to emphasize the dramatic performance improvement of Ponte Vecchio.