Intel Arc C-Series will use Xe3P

Yesterday Intel revealed its GPU roadmap for Xe architectures, which, unfortunately for the company and for fans, only brought more confusion.

At the Intel Tech Tour (ITT), the company revealed a slide titled GPU IP & Product Family Roadmap , which briefly outlined upcoming releases. The slide listed all Xe architectures, starting with Alchemist discrete GPUs, followed by Meteor, Arrow, and Lunar Lake series, as well as the future Panther Lake.

What caught everyone’s attention was the confusing naming scheme, particularly regarding Xe3. A few years ago, when Intel announced its roadmap, it clearly stated that Xe was Alchemist, Xe2 was Battlemage, Xe3 was Celestial, and Xe-Next was Druid. These names referred to discrete GPUs (HPG) that Intel was known to be working on at the time. Currently, Intel no longer talks about discrete GPUs, focusing all marketing efforts on SoCs (consumer CPUs with integrated graphics).

Source: Intel

The new slide didn’t even mention Celestial, which obviously didn’t go over well. It also didn’t separate SoCs and dGPUs, creating the impression that Intel is either moving away from discrete graphics or simply bad at making slides.

However, the main issue wasn’t the absence of a discrete GPU roadmap. The company placed the Panther Lake series, which uses the new Xe3 architecture, under the B-series, where “B” normally means Battlemage. As a result, the upcoming Panther Lake chips will likely feature integrated graphics such as Arc B240V or similar, yet they will use Xe3-LPG architecture.

During a PCWorld interview with Intel Fellow Tom Petersen, he was asked about this specifically. Petersen confirmed that Panther Lake will indeed remain under the B-series because it’s not yet the right time to move to the C-series:

“The way to think about it, Xe3 is our next-generation architecture. We launched it here at Intel Tech Tour 2025, and we’re using it in Panther Lake. So there’s no question about the architecture. Now, the naming within our SoCs is a bit of a complex question. We decided to keep the B-series name for Panther Lake to build on all the good work we did with Battlemage. People know the B-series, they know the B580, and they’re familiar with our naming. We’re not ready to move to ‘C’ yet—it’s just not the right time. When we move to our next architecture, which we’ve also teased a bit—Xe3P—that will be when we make the naming change.”

— Tom Petersen, Intel

Petersen admitted that Intel has a complex (and clearly confusing) naming scheme for its SoCs. The marketing team appears to keep changing names, forcing the graphics team to follow along. Another possible reason is that if Intel still plans to launch Celestial dGPUs, it may not want a large time gap between SoC iGPU and dGPU naming. Those discrete GPUs may still launch next year, if they launch at all.

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