Intel Officially Names its First 7nm Xe Graphics Card

All going well, 2020 is shaping up to be a pretty exciting year as a new player officially enters the arena of graphics card manufacturing. Well, yes, Intel isn’t technically new. It has, however, been a very long time since they expressed any significant interest in the GPU market. Albeit, that can differ slightly if you take the more commercial releases into consideration.

With their upcoming releases expected to be based on a 7nm design and featuring hardware dedicated ray tracing, however, it seems that Intel is planning on coming out swinging big time by essentially picking off some of the biggest selling points that both AMD and Nvidia have, but not together! Well, at least not yet.

Intel Reveals the Code Name for An Upcoming 7nm Xe Graphics Card

While Intel is currently keeping somewhat quiet as to the details of their upcoming ‘Xe’ graphics card range, they have decided to at least reveal one little nugget of information.

In a report via Videocardz, at least one of the upcoming releases has the code name ‘Ponte Vecchio’. Seemingly named after a well-known landmark in Italy, however, having the rather less exciting English translation of ‘Old Bridge’.

What exactly is Ponte Vecchio, though?

What Will This Represent?

The naming specifically refers to Intel’s CXL (Compute Express Link) technology, which in itself (in very basic terms) is a system of interconnecting GPUs.

The bottom line is, Ponte Vecchio is not going to be a gaming graphics card. It is, instead, likely being designed for use in extreme high-end systems. In other words, think within the realms of ‘supercomputers’.

With Ponte Vecchio not expected until 2021, it is perhaps somewhat curious that Intel has been willing to share details on this design while still keeping relatively tight-lipped about their desktop releases which are (all going well) expected next year.

It does, however, prove that if nothing else, Intel is taking this dip into the GPU market very seriously!

What do you think? Are you excited by the Intel graphics card releases? Do you think they have the potential to beat both AMD and Nvidia? – Let us know in the comments!