When the announcement of NVIDIA-Intel collaboration hit, it hinted at the future of NVIDIA RTX GPUs integrated inside Intel SoCs. That left us wondering if Intel's own Arc lineup of GPUs—already planned up to Xe4 "Druid"—will continue to be used, or if they will be completely scrapped in favor of the RTX GPUs. According to PC World, an Intel spokesperson confirmed, "We're not discussing specific roadmaps at this time, but the collaboration is complementary to Intel's roadmap and Intel will continue to have GPU product offerings." However, this is very vague and non-specific. If using NVIDIA RTX iGPU in Intel SoC, that will leave only discrete Intel Arc designs to be sold independently. Additionally, maintaining a GPU driver and general support stack is an extremely resource-demanding thing. Intel's active company restructuring could ultimately decide the fate of the Arc graphics division.

As a reminder, Intel currently ships Arc "Battlemage" GPU generation, with the higher-end Arc B770 reportedly planned for the holiday season. The company plans to use a part of its Xe3 "Celestial" for graphics rendering and Xe4 "Druid" for media and display duties in its upcoming "Nova Lake" SoCs scheduled for 2026. We are yet to see when, or if, the Xe3 "Celestial" will make it into the hands of consumers, in any form besides "Nova Lake." For discrete GPUs, maybe that can be the appearance of Arc "Celestial" dGPUs in 2026, but that is all a huge question mark.