intel Xe cards on Macs?

[askunk]

Ok.. Intel apparently is coming up with the new platform and might come out with a high performance version as well.

We all hoped (hopelessly) to see nVidia GPUs coming back to the Mac and it is not gonna happen.
What about Intel cards/APUs?

After all, Apple already uses Intel along with AMD GPUs. Will we see Intel discreet cards on the new iMac?

What do you think?

 

[deconstruct60]

Ok.. Intel apparently is coming up with the new platform and might come out with a high performance version as well.
....

After all, Apple already uses Intel along with AMD GPUs. Will we see Intel discreet cards on the new iMac?

What do you think?

The "might come out with a high performance" really isn't in the 'might' category at this point. The $500M supercomputer waiting on the top end high performance model. It is coming. That specific one just is highly unlikely coming to any Mac though. ( it has a noticable skew to FP64 work which Apple isn't going to bend over backwards for at all. ).

Xe doesn't just cover discrete. The iGPUs are going to be a variation of Xe also. For the 21.5" iMac there is a decent chance Intel will squeeze out AMD either with a iGPU or a on package dGPU ( so Apple buys a chip package and gets both.). The latter set up would allow for 14nm CPU die and a 10nm GPU die to be combined in the same package. Xe iGPUs ( and/or packaged GPUs ) are on 2020 roadmaps.

How good Intel's GPU's will be in the "middle" ( past small enough to iGPUs and too big to in an iMac ) Intel hasn't really shed any substantive light on yet. Intel may start at each end and work toward the middle which means the middle won't get fully flushed out until 2021-2022 time frame. I wouldn't bet on any 2020 iMac 27 ( or iMac Pro) going Intel dGPU. Intel has left that area the most fuzzy so they probably don't have much there.

As long as Apple hasn't completely dumped Intel from the entire Mac portable line up, Xe will probably see daylight in one of those Macs first. 21.5" next most likely. Mini depending upon how Apple iterates on the case design and Intel on die packaging.