Intel introduced the Intel XE family of discrete graphics chips and showed off a prototype of its first discrete graphics card, DG1, over the past 20 years at the CES 2020 in Las Vegas. The new device will not be sold to public but it will be provided to software developers so that they can optimize their development for working with a video card. At the same time, Intel noted that the first laptops with discrete XE chips will appear before the end of 2020.
Intel attempted to enter graphics card market several times. The first was in 1998, when a division of Real3D released a discrete i740 card with AGP and PCI interface. This card was optimized to work with Intel Pentium II processors.
In 1999-2000, Intel released the i752 and i754, but they could not compete with the graphics cards of 3DFX, ATI and NVIDIA. In 2000, the company stopped producing its own discrete graphics cards, but since 2002 it launched the first chipsets with integrated graphics -the 845G family. In parallel, the company led the development of a discrete video chip, code-named Larrabee, but in 2009 shut down the project. Since 2010, Intel began to release processors with integrated graphics named Intel HD Graphics.
The Intel XE family will include three chips with a common architecture: XE LP, XE HP and XE HPC. They are planned to be used in mobile devices, desktop computers and high-performance machines, respectively. Intel didn’t disclose details about the new XE graphics chip or the prototype DG1. It is only known that the discrete graphics card is equipped with a chip from the XE LP line.
