Intel is already working on support for its Xe3 GPU architecture in Linux, even though Xe3, codenamed Celestial, won’t be used in chips until late 2025 (at the earliest)
Battlemage, Intel’s 2nd-generation Arc graphics, has only just arrived (in Lunar Lake laptops as the integrated GPU), so it’s still very early days for the 3rd-generation Celestial.
Intel engineers are reportedly currently laying the groundwork for enabling Xe3 in the Linux kernel.
So far, we don’t know how Xe3, which will debut next year as the integrated graphics in Panther Lake processors, the successor to Lunar Lake on the laptop side of the PC fence, will improve upon its predecessor.
The Linux driver code may eventually give us a clue, but that hasn’t happened yet. It builds on existing Xe2 code and focuses on Xe3 LPM (low-power mode).
What about the discrete Celestial?
While this is Xe3 for laptops, the prospect of discrete graphics cards built on Celestial seems much further off. As we’ve already noted, Battlemage discrete GPUs haven’t even arrived yet, only the implementation of integrated graphics for Intel’s Lunar Lake mobile chips. It may be a while before we see standalone Battlemage graphics cards for desktop PCs, but hopefully they’ll arrive relatively early in 2025, with any luck.
In the meantime, Intel is certainly making progress in terms of how powerful its integrated graphics are, especially with Lunar Lake, and now Arrow Lake mobile processors are also on the way, and look pretty cool too.