Alleged Intel ARC Alchemist Graphics Card Renders Leak; Launching In Q2 2022

Alleged renders of Intel’s soon-to-be released ARC Alchemist graphics cards have seemingly made their way online. Well, artistic impressions of the cards, to say the least.

Potential renders of the ARC Alchemist’s was first posted by prominent speculator, leakster, and YouTuber, Moore’s Law Is Dead, who says that they had made a request to their friends. Asking if they could do a simple animation of the Intel graphics card’s cooler shroud, based on the accummulated information around it.

Now, this isn’t the first time the YouTuber has leaked details of the Intel’s unreleased consumer-ready GPU. Back in April and when the card was still referred to by the Xe-HPG moniker, the channel had managed to procured images of what was supposedly engineering samples of the GPU’s cooler shroud.

In this case, the renders show the card’s cooler shroud in silver, rather than black. In addition, the 8+6 Pin PCIe connectors can be seen situated at the end of the card’s PCB, although the cooler extends a little further past it; a design trait that both NVIDIA and AMD have adopted for some time now.

In addition to the renders, Moore’s Law Is Dead also speculated that Intel could be gearing up to launch its first-ever ARC Alchemist lineup sometime during the second quarter of 2022, which is also the expected launch window for the chipmaker’s 12th generation Alder Lake mobile CPUs and next-generation gaming laptops.

As always, this is alway merely speculation and as such, take this news with a large grain of salt.

Intel ARC Alchemist Cards To Use “Arc aXXX” Naming Methodology

It appears that Intel’s ARC Alchemist graphics card will be named in a rather surgical manner, with each card bearing an “Arc aXXX” label. Alleged details of Intel’s naming guidelines for its upcoming GPUs were first leaked by the leakster, 188号 (@momomo_us), who somehow managed to get their hands on the details.

According to the guideline, the “a” in the “aXXX” moniker refers to the Alchemist GPU. This actually clears up two details for us: Firstly, we now know that Intel isn’t going the way of NVIDIA or AMD, with the two GPU makers slapping the RTX and RX moniker to their respective GeForce and Radeon GPUs. Instead, Intel just wants to keep it simple.

The second detail is Intel’s categorisation of its GPUs, now and in the future. We know that the next three generations of ARC GPUs are known as Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid. Therefore, we can at least deduce that, assuming this naming guideline holds, the next round of graphics cards will be launched with the “bXXX”, “cXXX”, and “dXXX” label.

It’s also clear that Intel is being pretty strict with itself and even goes so far as to even list down an incorrect use of its product’s names.

Intel’s ARC Alchemist graphics cards are expected to debut sometime during the first quarter of 2022, but reports have been unable to pinpoint an exact launch date. Another rumour suggests that Intel will be launching not one, but three different SKUs when the time comes, but do take that bit of news with a large grain of salt.

Intel Goes On Hiring Spree Of Game Developers For ARC Alchemist GPU

Intel appears to have jumped head-on into a hiring frenzy of late. The chipmaker has reportedly managed to fill four positions within the company, with each new member having a background in game development, in one form or another.

It should be noted that Intel’s new hires are being brought in to work on “gaming and graphics”, making it obvious that the company is recruiting hard for the development of its ARC Alchemist GPU. As mentioned, the list of individuals who have a gaming background but more specifically, they made their bones over at companies like Electronic Arts and AMD.

First of is Andre Bremer, who joins Intel as the Vice President (VP) and General Manager (GM) of Gaming and Graphics Workload Engineering, and previously worked EA, LucasArts, and Amazon. Next on the list is Michael Heilemman, who comes in as the Senior Director of Game Developer Tools and Technologies.

The third hire is Ritche Corpus, who now heads Intel’s Game Ecosystem Business Development and Developer Relations as Vice President and General manager. Prior to his latest appointment, Corpus was a member of the PC Gaming Alliance, working as its Treasurer.

Last on the list is Steve Bell, who joins Intel directly from AMD as the former’s new Senior Director of Gaming Developer Relations. Bell reportedly spent more than 13 years at AMD, working in exactly the same capacity as his current position.