In recent years, Intel has integrated graphics processors into its CPUs. Though they are useful for simple graphics effects and don’t use the graphics card to maintain the autonomy of a laptop PC, these processors are not really appreciated by players because of their limited performance. However, Intel continues to improve them and is preparing the eleventh generation of these integrated processors.
As expected, the new generation delivers better performance. Thanks to a tripled number of execution units (from 24 for the ninth generation to 64), Intel is targeting the teraflops (positioning itself at the level of a GeForce MX150). Another special feature is that the new chip contains a pipeline that enables the implementation of tile-based rendering. In addition, Intel’s slice decomposition enables it to parallelize tasks, enabling it to manage multiple video streams and finally decode 8K video. Of course, the eleventh generation of integrated processors includes an HEVC encoder/decoder.
Intel’s document offers us a comparison between current processors and the new generation:
In summary, the new GPU offers improvements at all levels. Additionally, players will be happy to learn more about adaptive update support (also known as G-Sync or FreeSync). As a result, Intel is expected to compete with AMD’s APUs or NVIDIA’s MXs.
Intel also has a technology called Coarse Pixel Shading. This allows developers to tell the GPU not to execute shaders for every image and pixel. By reducing the number of shader executions for poorly updated image parts, you can increase performance. In short, under this name is the Variable Rate Shading support recently added to DirectX 12.
Ice Lake CPUs with the eleventh generation of integrated graphics processors are expected to arrive in late 2019 (or sooner 2020).