A leaked timeline of Intel Celestial development reveals the launch of Xe3-based discrete GPUs is imminent.
Intel Completes Xe3 Celestial GPU Design and Enters the Pre-Silicon Validation Phase for Early OEM Testing
The rumors of Intel canceling Celestial discrete GPUs have been debunked again and again. A few months back, we reported that Intel’s hardware team had already moved on to the Xe4 project after finishing the Xe3-based GPUs. Today, another report confirmed the existence of Celestial discrete GPUs, suggesting Intel might be entering the Tapeout phase very soon.
As per a leaked timeline of Intel’s Celestial development (probably from an Intel employee’s LinkedIn profile), it appears that Intel has reached the Pre-Silicon Validation phase of Xe3-based Celestial graphics cards. The leak explicitly mentions “discrete” GPU, which was previously rumored to be cancelled. Apparently, Intel has already completed some major developments for these GPUs, enabling the Celestial GPUs to be tested without having physical chips.
This means the core design of the GPU has been finished, including the development of Xe cores, XMX matrix engines, Ray Tracing units, etc. The power efficiency and performance per watt are right now getting fine-tuned for further optimizations.
In the Pre-Silicon Validation phase, the OEMs and IBVs can test the new architectures through cloud-based simulation tools. Intel will be providing its partners with this cloud-based platform that provides tools that mimic the physical GPU for firmware testing. Since the development reveals that low-level software has already been developed for the Celestial, it’s likely that the testing is already in progress.
Once this phase is over, Intel will proceed with the tape-out of Celestial GPUs, which is going to be the actual process of chip production. While the exact start date of the tape-out phase is yet to be disclosed, from the leaked timeline, it is confirmed that the launch of Celestial discrete GPUs is imminent. Intel has been pretty silent on Celestial dGPUs but hasn’t denied their existence.
From the recent leaks, we also heard that Intel might utilize the advanced Xe3P architecture, which is being produced by Intel itself. Moreover, the GPUs are also rumored to use GDDR7 memory, which was spotted in a job posting. Stay tuned for more updates as we receive additional insider details on the development of Celestial dGPUs.
News Source: @Haze2K1
