Intel has disclosed to the press that their upcoming 7nm Xe GPU is codenamed Ponte Vecchio. This is the first GPU to be named officially, but we expect other Xe GPUs to be released sooner.

Intel’s 7nm Xe GPU: Ponte Vecchio

The name “Ponte Vecchio” came from an old stone bridge located in Florence, Italy. The bridge basically refers to the interconnection between the GPUs, or as Intel calls it – CXL (Compute Express Link) – which Ponte Vecchio GPUs will use.

Intel Ponte Vecchio is not a gaming GPU. The first Xe graphics are for exascale computing. On November 17th Intel will share details on the project “Aurora”. This exascale computer features Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs, Ponte Vecchio GPUs and Intel’s new initiative called oneAPI (unified programming model).

In the new press deck (that we have totally not seen) Intel claims that Ponte Vecchio will use Foveros packing technology and will utilize CLX interconnection (this was already known). What’s new is that they confirmed that the Xe graphics feature: ultra-high cache and high memory bandwidth. Intel Ponte Vecchio will also have high double-precision FP throughput.

There is supposedly a slide in Ponte Vecchio pressdeck where Intel lists all markets where Xe graphics will be used: HPC/Exascale, DL/Training, Cloud GFX, Media Transcore Analytics, Workstation, Gaming, PC Mobile and Ultra Mobile.

Project Aurora:

TWO Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Sapphire Rapids)

SIX Intel Xe Ponte Vecchio GPUs

OneAPI

Intel Aurora will be released in 2021.