Intel Preps Linux Support for Battlemage GPUs

Recent reports suggest that Intel’s next-generation discrete GPU, the Xe2-HPG architecture-based Battlemage, is anticipated to debut just before the annual Black Friday shopping festival in the United States, on November 29th, marking precisely two years since the launch of the current Alchemist series.

According to Phoronix, over the past several months, Intel’s open-source Linux graphics driver engineers have been diligently preparing display support for the upcoming GPU, including the Battlemage discrete card and the Xe2-LPG architecture integrated graphics of Lunar Lake. Earlier this month, patches were initiated within the Linux kernel drivers specifically to enable display output processing for Battlemage. These updates reveal that Battlemage will support DisplayPort 2.0 UHBR13.5, with a link rate of 54Gbps.

Currently, AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 series also supports DisplayPort 2.1 at UHBR13.5, while the Radeon PRO reaches speeds up to 80Gbps with UHBR20. Intel’s market-available Alchemist advertises “DisplayPort 2.0 UHBR10”, corresponding to a speed of 40Gbps.

Rumors indicate that the next-generation flagship Battlemage chip, the BMG-G10, features 56 Xe cores, paired with GDDR6X memory, likely offering 16GB of memory capacity and a 256-bit memory width, while maintaining a total power consumption of around 225W. Additionally, there is the smaller BMG-G21 chip, which may have up to 24 Xe cores, with memory capacity reduced to 12GB and a memory width of 192-bit. Intel’s new generation of GPUs continues to be manufactured by TSMC using a 4nm process.