Last week, it was reported that Intel may have delayed the launch of its 1st Gen Arc “Alchemist” graphics cards to the second quarter of 2022. Without any prior announcement, the chipmaker quietly changed the launch date on its official website to “2022” from “Q1 2022”. The fact that no concrete details regarding the Xe-HPG lineup were shared at Intel’s CES 2022 keynote made this even fishier.
According to Prohardver, however, Intel and its partners are on track to launch the Arc GPUs later this quarter, starting with the mobility and OEM SKUs. The GPUs will be shipped to Intel’s mobile partners in the first quarter, thereby delivering on its promise. However, we may just see a paper launch in Q1, as the bulk of the supply will hit retail in the second quarter of 2022. This applies to both mobile and desktop lineups.
To sum it up, Intel will ship its first wave of Arc GPUs to partners in Q1, but OEMs may not necessarily announce laptops featuring them in the same quarter. This likely means that we’ll see a paper launch with a few select partners releasing SKUs with Arc GPUs, with the rest following next quarter.
Intel is, unsurprisingly, focusing on the notebook and pre-built segments which makes sense given the sheer volume and its deep partnership in the PC ecosystem.
Source: Prohardver
