Intel has provided more details on the upcoming Lunar Lake processors, which will come with an impressive sounding bump in graphical power.
From what details Intel provided they’re claiming “60%” better battery life for these mobile processors in “real-life usages”. Impressive if true, but just as exciting is the huge advancement of the graphics side with Xe2 which they claim will bring improved “gaming and graphics performance by 1.5x over the previous generation”.
Sounds like they are preparing to “pull an Apple” with more than just pricing there.
Part of the benefit of Apple’s M series is the unified memory model. They’re able to convert that into increased GPU performance because you no longer have to transfer data in and out of VRAM.
But Apple can only pull that off because they control the CPU, GPU, and the OS (specifically the graphics SDK). Writing graphics code in a unified model is quite a bit different from the conventional x86 model.
Intel would need their own equivalent to Metal if they wanted to do a similar move.
I don’t know enough about Vulkan to say if it’s compatible with this kind of approach, but if not then is Intel really up to starting from scratch?
If they got Unreal and Unity on board, I guess that would give them a good chunk of the market right off the bat for new titles, but what about legacy ones?
Writing graphics code in a unified model is quite a bit different from the conventional x86 model.
It isn’t. The difference is pretty small, and it’s just optimizations for when copies can be skipped and not a radical change in the approach of how rendering is done.
Intel would need their own equivalent to Metal if they wanted to do a similar move.
Not at all. If big-ish changes were required, they could be exposed as Vulkan extensions.
I don’t know enough about Vulkan to say if it’s compatible with this kind of approach
Of course Vulkan, the graphics API used on all modern phones except Apple’s, supports using integrated graphics efficiently.
Sounds like they are preparing to “pull an Apple” with more than just pricing there.
Part of the benefit of Apple’s M series is the unified memory model. They’re able to convert that into increased GPU performance because you no longer have to transfer data in and out of VRAM.
But Apple can only pull that off because they control the CPU, GPU, and the OS (specifically the graphics SDK). Writing graphics code in a unified model is quite a bit different from the conventional x86 model.
Intel would need their own equivalent to Metal if they wanted to do a similar move.
I don’t know enough about Vulkan to say if it’s compatible with this kind of approach, but if not then is Intel really up to starting from scratch?
If they got Unreal and Unity on board, I guess that would give them a good chunk of the market right off the bat for new titles, but what about legacy ones?
It isn’t. The difference is pretty small, and it’s just optimizations for when copies can be skipped and not a radical change in the approach of how rendering is done.
Not at all. If big-ish changes were required, they could be exposed as Vulkan extensions.
Of course Vulkan, the graphics API used on all modern phones except Apple’s, supports using integrated graphics efficiently.