Intel Nova Lake with a mix of Xe3 and Xe3p GPU architectures
If there’s someone who likes to dig deep into open source data and analyze every bit, it’s Coelacanth’s Dream. This site provides regular updates on what Intel and other companies are doing with open-source kernels and drivers. However, there had been no updates from this site for months. The last one came in June, that is until today’s update.
Recent Linux graphics patches suggested that Intel’s Nova Lake processors would ship with Xe3P graphics, a step above the Xe3 iGPU confirmed for Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake. Kernel and Mesa entries for Xe3P mentioned Nova Lake device families, which many read as proof that Intel was moving its client iGPU straight to the same architecture as the Crescent Island data center GPU .
A new analysis from Coelacanth’s Dream points to a different picture. Compiler changes in Intel’s cm-compiler map Nova Lake device IDs ( nvl-u, nvl-h, nvl-s, nvl-hx, nvl-ul ) to versions GMD 30.4.4 and 30.5.4, and tag them with the release ID xe3-lpg . The GMD stands for “Graphics Media Descriptor”, bascially an device ID. Xe3P support appears in a separate patch with GMD 35.11.0, a different hardware generation. That lines up with earlier leaks that already described Nova Lake mobile parts as using Xe3 graphics rather than Xe3P.
LLVM Compiler, Source: Intel (Github)
For Xe3P, Intel adds new XMX instructions to the DPAS (matrix multiply and accumulate) path, covering FP8, FP4 and microscaling formats such as MXFP4 and MXFP8 . Those AI-focused formats are present in the Crescent Island Xe3P GPU, but the Nova Lake entries do not list support for them. That suggests Nova Lake reuses the Xe3 core used in Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake, while Xe3P remains targeted at data center and possibly future discrete GPUs.
Nova Lake uses both Xe3p and Xe3
This confusion has led us to ask our sources about Nova Lake GPU tiles. Apparently the next-gen CPUs from Intel will use a mix of Xe3 and Xe3p, so both reports were true. The reason why the compiler patches do not suggest Xe3p support is because they are for specific variants of Nova Lake.
Nova Lake series is indeed split between U/H/S/HX/UL variants and generally this should be the rule for the GPU support. Most will use Xe3 GPU, while Xe3p will go into Nova Lake-H with a 12 Xe3p config, successor to the upcoming Panther Lake 12 Xe3 version.
Nova Lake-U (low power), H (for gaming laptops with discrete GPUs), HX and S series (desktop-class) will all use Xe3 non-P version. Information from the compiler suggests that at least some variants of the U-series may also feature Xe3p.
Obviously the first question we had in mind was, how will Intel name these integrated graphics? The Xe3 is using B-series naming, while the Xe3p is already confirmed as C-series. If Intel is to keep at least some kind of sense in their naming, then Nova Lake could use a mix of Arc B & C iGPUs.
Source: VideoCardz, Coelacanth’s Dream
