Intel has been keeping the Intel Xe Graphics under wraps besides announcing that they'd be entering the market next year, 2020. An EEC filing by Intel reveals key points regarding the DG1 reveals vital information such as having 96 Execution Units (EUs), the same number as the integrated graphics of Intel's Tiger Lake Processors.
Intel DG1
While it has been rumored for a while now, the EEC filing by Intel, revealed by Twitter user @KOMACHI_ENSAKA in a tweet, confirms the rumors regarding the Intel DG1s hardware and its possible performance. This confirms that the DG1 will have 96 E.U.s, the same number likely to be present in Tiger Lake's integrated graphics, and also implies that the DG1 will have a similar design principle. Given that current Intel UHD Graphics have eight shader units per E.U., and that the Tiger Lake integrated graphics likely will too, the DG1 will probably have 96 * 8 or 768 shader units total.
This tells us two things so far, the DG1 is likely the Tiger Lake graphics in discrete form factor, and that the DG1 will likely be an entry or budget-level graphics card. It has more shading units than Ryzen integrated Vega 11 graphics' 704, and the same number as Nvidia's GTX 1050ti's 768. Of course, the number of shading units is only a small part of the equation and doesn't necessarily spell out the GPUs performance.
Tiger Lake Graphics vs. Ice Lake Iris Plus
The DG1 is often compared to Intel's Tiger Lake's integrated graphics because of similar hardware details and so far similar design principles. The DG1 and the Tiger Lake will both use the same Xe L.P. architecture. These will both be sporting 96 Xe E.U.s, 1.5 times the 64 E.U.s of Ice Lake processors. These 64 EU Iris Plus Graphics have been able to stand toe-to-toe with the Vega 10, and will likely put up a good fight against some discrete graphics card models such as the MX150. So far, the 96 E.U. Tiger Lake integrated graphics seems promising and will hopefully put Intel on the radar in the integrated graphics field.
ALSO READ: Intel Announces Ice Lake Mobile Processors With Big Improvement In Graphics
Performance Speculation
Since the Tiger Lake's integrated graphics so far seems to be promising when compared against the Vega 11 or even budget discrete laptop graphics models, the DG1 will likely have similar performance pound-for-pound, or Hz-for-Hz in this case. But since the DG1 will be a discrete GPU, it will likely able to boost to the same clock as the likes of the GTX 1050ti with 1392 MHz. Assuming a linear scaling, while it won't be quite as simple as that in reality, the DG1 will be able to stand toe-to-toe with the 1050ti, the RX570 and under budget cards.
Release Date and More Speculation
While all of this has been interesting speculation so far, what we do know is that the GPU is slated for release by mid-to-late 2020, especially since an ECC filing usually precedes the release by about six months. For now, we're going to have to keep waiting for more news regarding the DG1, and possibly the DG2. After all, the performance we're speculating seems to be relatively promising, as long as Intel prices things right and enters the right (read: budget or entry-level) market, Intel will finally shake up the Nvidia vs. AMD stalemate.
After all, Raja Koduri, the former AMD executive whom Intel hired to head their discrete GPU project, has been very optimistic in a tweet where he listed multi-teraflop GPUs "[the] vast majority of them portable thin and light with Vega, Gen11, Navi, Xe and more..."
