And from a marketing PoV, Intel spends a lot more in MDF in the channel from a cubic dollar metric. Intel is good at getting design wins as they pay for many of the designs with OEM R&D dollars. I was pleased to see so many OEMs sign on to Arc notebook graphics, and I’m interested in SKU count and how the OEMs market versus AMD and NVIDIA solutions.
Both AMD and NVIDIA have had a hard time fulfilling demand with the chip shortage, and PC gaming is at an all-time high. Intel’s 24-year discrete PC graphics hiatus couldn’t have come at a better time for gamers and OEMs.
Although Samsung is not known as much for its notebooks as it is for its smartphones, the Galaxy Book2 Pro builds on Samsung’s credibility within the laptop market. Samsung is the first of Intel’s partners with Intel Arc 3 to market in the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro. I am happy to see that many OEMs have signed on to Arc notebook graphics, including Acer, Asus, Dell, Haier, HP, Intel NUC, LAVIE, Lenovo, MEDION, MSI, Samsung, CLEVO, iP3, Lengda, and WingTech. Long term, I believe this should be a competitive advantage for Intel, especially on the mobile front, where upgradeability suffices for storage and memory upgrades. Intel will have a complete GPU, CPU, and I/O offering as opposed to NVIDIA’s GPU offering and AMD’s CPU and GPU offering. However, while the number of GPU and CPU combinations has now doubled, I believe the reality of the combinations has gotten narrower in that it would be most beneficial for a notebook to have exclusive GPU and CPU offerings. Eventually, as we see the rollout of Intel Arc across the higher end of mobile graphics and discrete desktop graphics, pricing and availability should result in a “golden era” of high-performance graphics, and that is what we all look forward to. While I do not believe there will be an immediate drop in price, as Intel will not make enough to make a difference, I believe innovation and availability should increase over the long haul as long as Intel remains competitive. I believe that three HPG vendors are better than two, and Intel’s presence in the HPG market should relieve NVIDIA and AMD, both of which have had difficulty fulfilling demand. Intel A-Series mobile graphics specifications and dates for the Intel Arc 3, 5, and 7 mobile. Keep in mind that Intel DeepLink and other Intel Arc features are exclusive to Intel systems. Targeting the Intel Evo thin and light notebooks allows Intel to keep its Intel Arc GPUs close to its CPU wins, ensuring that Intel should sell everything it makes. The Intel A-Series mobile graphics will come with XeSS, DirectX12, XMX AI acceleration, Xe Media Engine, PCIe 4.0 support, and Intel Evo support.
Intel introduced the Intel Arc 3, 5, and 7 mobile graphics cards with core counts and specifications, although only the Arc 3 mobile graphics will be available now, with Arc 5 and 7 coming this Summer (2022). Positionally, Intel DeepLink targets all of the same qualities of the Intel Evo Platform, looking to improve performance and battery life while maintaining a thin and light footprint. While Intel’s DeepLink technology is not a new concept, It is something to be taken seriously as Intel is making it a feature within its Arc graphics at launch.
While I do not know the competitiveness of Intel Arc within the gaming space fully, I do know that it takes gaming very seriously with its CPU offerings.
The PC gaming market is a huge opportunity for Intel and one of the driving markets for discrete, high-performance graphics (HPG). Low-end(Intel Arc 3) mobile graphics should be easier to implement into an Evo-based laptop without unbalancing the Evo Platform itself while also providing better than integrated graphics gameplay. As I mentioned earlier, many consumers who bought laptops for school and work also planned on gaming. Intel is strategically starting in notebook mobile graphics, targeting the Intel Evo thin and light notebooks. However, I believe it allows Intel to jump into the HPG market while setting the expectation within the boundaries of supply constraints. The chip shortage is not going to last forever.