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This week, Intel announced its new graphics solutions brand, Intel® Arc™, the umbrella name that will include high performance graphics hardware, software and services. Intel Arc will form a major new graphics product line for the company, and reinforces its strong commitment to the gaming market. Intel Gaming Access caught up with Roger Chandler, VP and GM of the Intel Graphics Product Team, to find out what Intel’s upcoming entry into the discrete graphics market means for gamers.
Why is Intel entering the discrete graphics card market right now?
Gaming is a critical segment for Intel. There are 3 billion gamers around the world, and more than a billion and a half of them play on PCs. Gaming is such an important use case for Intel, but one of the things that we’ve been missing for years has been a high-performance graphics roadmap. With high performance graphics, we complete our platform with all the ingredients we need to deliver gamers amazing experiences. 
I’ve been at Intel for 23 years. When I first joined, we launched a product called the i740, the last actual discrete card we shipped. Ever since then there’s been a ton of discussions and interest at Intel about getting back into this market. Three years ago, we said let’s go, and we started to build the products and capabilities we needed internally to do this in a big way.
Gaming is what got me into the tech industry. When I was a kid, I had a Commodore 64 and I was making games in BASIC. Gaming is a convergence of relentless technical advances in all aspects of the creative arts, and there’s nothing else quite like it. Graphics products are at the heart of delivering these experiences, and our customers and end users have been asking for more choice and alternative solutions. 
We made huge advances in our integrated graphics roadmap, effectively doubling performance two years in a row, with leadership performance in many segments of integrated graphics. We also benefit from our great foundation of graphics IPs, deep experience with game developers, and expertise with graphics hardware and software. That’s why we’re getting into the high performance market now, and we’re ready to take it to the next level. Our first Intel Arc processors, codenamed Alchemist, will be our initial step, and we’re super excited to get them into the hands of PC gamers and creators around the world.
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When and where are gamers going to start seeing these products, and in what kinds of hardware?
Over time, you’re going to start seeing Intel delivering graphics solutions that address both traditional graphics workloads and compute workloads, but the first Arc-based graphics products will be available in Q1 of 2022 in high performance desktops, add-in-cards, and notebooks. We will share a lot more details on these products in the near future as we work with our software and hardware partners to get ready for this exciting launch.
What does the Arc brand represent, and what is your mission for gamers?
There is a lot of passion going into these products. We wanted the brand to be meaningful and capture the essence of our long-term vision, which is to bring together the best of Intel to answer the needs of gamers and provide a frictionless gaming experience. An important part of this is delivering incredibly smooth frame rates across all form factors, and providing the performance and capabilities that let gamers do all the things they want to do on top of a great gaming experience, for example multitasking, streaming, watching video walkthroughs, and so on. 
Intel is investing a lot in AI which we think could be a game changer — if you’ll pardon the pun — in terms of making games look, feel, and act real. For example, AI could help give us more natural ways to interact with lifelike characters in games. Finally, when you look at all of the technology Intel has and where the industry is going, we’re working on how we can contribute to storage, memory, connectivity, and the cloud — all so gamers can play the games they want, when they want. The combination of these aspects is the brand promise.
The Arc name itself is important in representing what the brand stands for. In a story, the narrative flow and structure is often called the story “arc”. Every game, gamer, and creator has a story, and every story has an arc. The brand represents our commitment to helping gamers experience ever more amazing stories in games, and empowering creators to tell theirs.
How did you choose the names for the different generations of products on the Arc roadmap?
When we started, our first discrete graphics product was DG1, and our second one we codenamed DG2. We thought, OK, maybe we can be a little bit more creative. A lot of us play games and I personally like role-playing games, so we started brainstorming names that were more relevant to the genre and gamers in general. We also wanted the sequence of names to be in alphabetical order, which is how we came up with the name Alchemist for DG2, our first performance graphics product, followed by Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid. We thought something fun and creative was better than alphabet soup. 
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What has the feedback been from developers on this new product line?
At Intel, we’re no strangers to working closely with the games ecosystem. We’ve been working with the major studios and engine providers — as well as many indie developers — for decades. Performance graphics gives us the opportunity to engage with a lot of these partners on features and capabilities that have a significant impact on the gaming experience. Our partners are extremely excited that we’re getting into this market with Intel Arc. 
The commitment and scale that Intel brings when we get into something like this is huge, and they understand the impact we can have. They’re also pleasantly surprised with the features we’re bringing. Even though we’re relatively new to high performance graphics, we’re coming in with support for state-of-the-art features and capabilities. A lot of feedback I’m getting is that this is really going to help them deliver fantastic experiences to players.
Our platform engineering expertise is another strength. We’re known in the industry for the things we’ve done on the platform level with CPU, XPU, GPU, memory, interconnect, and so on. From that perspective, and with our developer-first approach and commitment to listening to the community, I think a lot of our partners are seeing the opportunity to work with us to help shape the future of PC gaming platforms. That’s exciting too. 
The first Intel Arc product, codenamed Alchemist, is built on the Intel Xe Architecture. Why is the relationship between Intel Arc and Intel Xe architecture significant for gamers?
The vision is to deliver scalable graphics and architecture that span from entry level to the highest performance products. When you have that scalable architecture, it makes it easier for developers because they don’t have to target a number of different architectures. I think the PC platform is the most thriving gaming market out there. That said, it’s fragmented, so anything we can do that helps developers deploy games to a platform more effectively is a good thing. 
Intel Arc is being engineered with a software-first approach so we can be sure it has scalability and allows us to introduce features across these architectures more easily. When developers can use a single architecture, they have the opportunity to give users access to features that would otherwise require a higher-end card. 
The other thing is the Xe architecture itself. It’s for both graphics and compute, so it can scale across the client as well as into the data center, which gives us the ability to innovate and scale what we are doing in a wide range of segments. 
When can we expect more details from Intel on specification, performance, and pricing?
More details will be coming out as we head towards launch. We know there is a lot of excitement and demand out there today, and the current market conditions only amplify that. We will definitely be sharing new information on a more regular basis from this point forward, but to set the right expectations, we will also be holding certain information — like detailed specifications, performance, and pricing — until nearer launch. I know that isn’t what people want to hear, but I would rather be up front about it rather than leave everyone hanging.
What final words would you like to say about Arc to the gamers reading this?
Intel is passionate about gaming. We want to make a difference in the world of technology and we’re excited by the opportunity to help solve gamer problems. This new family of products gives us a chance to do that in ways that haven’t been possible before. You’re going to start seeing how games can take full advantage of the complete platform Intel brings to bear, which we’re super excited about.
Lastly, please talk to us <a href="https://twitter.com/IntelGraphics">@IntelGraphics</a>. We want to hear more from the community about what you want to see from us as we come into this exciting market. We don’t just want to ship you products, we want to listen and learn from you, and evolve as we go. We’re excited to get Intel Arc products into your hands.

Following the Intel® Arc™ brand announcement, product VP Roger Chandler tells us what it means for graphics in games.

Intel® Arc™ Q&A: Intel’s Roger Chandler Explains the Company’s Vision for Discrete Graphics Hardware, Software, and Services 