Arctic Sound – 1T and 2T
At this point I can already confirm that Arctic Sound relies on HBM 2E,
However, if you look at the variants listed now, it seems that Intel either ran out of courage, or the chips simply weren’t completely feasible that way.
But that only applies to the consumer chips, because this one is definitely bigger. If you stick to the name and the 1T as an indication for the number of tiles, then 1 tile (chiplet) in Intel’s Arctic Sound contains up to 512 EUs, which is quite huge. If one independently uses the known scheme for the distribution of EU and shader, this would mean 8 shader units per EU, so a total of 3072 shaders for the 1T card shown here, because one has activated only 384 EUs instead of 512 for this card.
The smaller of the two cards has a total of 16 GB HBM 2E and a bandwidth of up to 716 GB/s. What is interesting now, however, is the specified TDP for the card, which is 150 watts. This is interesting, because 75 watts per consumer tile with 128 EUs each were reported and one could have expected 225 watts if there had been three small tiles. The fact that there are now only 150 watts suggests that lower clock rates are (have to be) used here and a maximum expansion with 512 EU could not be implemented or the yield rate simply does not allow it. Or both, for that matter.
Intel specifies FP32 and FP64 (non-systolic) as well as BF16/FP16, Int8 and Int4 as supported numeric formats for both cards. PCIe 4.0 is also set as interface for communication with the CPU, other ATS cards or ATS nodes, but there are no video outputs.
The configuration of the large card in the dual-slot design (DW), which Intel specifies with “480 x 2 execution units”, also shows that there is still a bit of a problem with the full configuration. You bet on 2T here, so 2 tiles if you follow the logic. But again, you don’t use the full number of 512 EUs available per unit. Instead of the theoretically possible 512 EUs in total, in practice there are only 480 per unit. But this still results in 2x 3840 shaders or 7680 EUs in the sum of both tiles. The memory expansion is stated as 32 GB HBM 2E, so probably 2x 16 GB to be quite accurate.
Intel specifies the TDP with only 300 watts, which suggests even lower clock rates and again problems with the implementation. What you can see here on a photo is the 8-pin EPS connector, which NVIDIA also uses for the 300 watts of the Quadro RTX A6000 and which should be enough. You can also see that the card in the picture was mounted in a special PCIe cage and is not directly on the motherboard.
https://www.igorslab.de/en/exclusiv...two-existing-models-total-specs-and-pictures/And what conclusions can be drawn from this? Speculations are of course always such a thing, because one must also remain fair and not intentionally badmouth anything. But it really does seem by now that Intel has already internally given up on Arctic Sound, at least in its broad variability. Neither card exploits the full potential and comes across as a compromise that has become necessary, but not as a euphorically brandished spearhead that testifies to a new self-confidence. This is a rather modest concession and the obvious realization that they probably wanted more at the beginning than they could then manage in reality. Because the announced 3T or 4T cards are completely missing from the current list.
The slide also confirms the individual expansion stages with the different EU numbers of the respective SKUs, as well as the package used, of which one expects a total of 2 different sizes with different pin numbers (BGA 2660 and BGA 1379). Whether the largest version with 512 EUs will be available right away and in which order Intel will then launch the large SKUs on the dedicated graphics cards in 2022, on the other hand, is still completely unclear. The launch of the two smaller versions was already planned for the end of 2021 together with Alder Lake-P and the launch of SKU1 to SKU3 then gradually in Q1 2022.
Intel has a special website dedicated to Iris Xe SKU, where it currently shows two models: ASUS DG1 and GUNNIR Blue Halberd.