Intel attempts to clarify whether the new Xe3 iGPU in Panther Lake is next-gen Celestial technology but I'm left confused and fearing for the future of Intel Arc graphics

For we mere PC gamers, unquestionably the most interesting aspect of Intel's new Panther Lake CPU is its Xe3 integrated graphics. It looks like it could be killer, especially for handheld gaming PCs. But is the Xe3 iGPU in Panther Lake based on its much-discussed next-gen Celestial graphics tech? A mild tweak of Battlemage? Or something else entirely?

In an interview with PC World, Intel's long-suffering graphics rep Tom Petersen has tried to clear things up. But we've come away if anything more confused. And worried about Arc more generally.

Along with a hill of other information on Panther Lake, Intel published a very confusing slide showing that the new chip's iGPU represents the first outing for its Xe3 graphics architecture. But that slide also indicated that Panther Lake's graphics will be branded "B Series", just like the Intel Arc B580 which uses Xe2 technology, otherwise known as (and indeed referred to in the slide in question) as Battlemage.

Another oddity is that while the slide refers to both Xe2 and Battlemage, it only calls out Xe3 and not the "Celestial" generational codename that has previously been attached to Xe3. To make things even more baffling, Intel also briefly highlights a future next-gen "Xe3P" graphics generation, again with no mention of Celestial or indeed any other codename.

The final confusion in the slide, however, might just be the best. It's subtitled "Expanding the Battlemage family", which very much implies that this new Xe3 GPU in Panther Lake, which is what is doing the "expanding" if anything is, must be a Battlemage GPU. But surely Battlemage is Xe2, no? So, what's going on?

"The way to think about it is Xe3 is our next-generation architecture and we're using it in Panther Lake. There's no question about the architecture in Panther Lake, it's Xe3," says Petersen.

Au contraire, there is a question. Is Xe3 the same as Celestial and thus is it Celestial that's in Battlemage? His answer is confusing, to say the least. So, here it is in full:

"The naming within our SoCs is a little bit of a complex question. So we've decided to keep the B Series name for Panther Lake, just to kind of leverage all the good work we did with Battlemage. People know about the B Series, they know about B580, they know about all of our naming. So, we're not really ready to move that to "C", because we don't think it's the right time. So, when we move to our next architecture, which we also teased a little bit, 'Xe3P' coming up, then that's the time we'll make our name change," he said.

Clear? Much? When pushed again on what he was talking about at the end of 2024 when he mentioned that the Celestial hardware team was done and how those comments from last year relate to Panther Lake, Petersen added:

"I was talking about the architecture team, the implementation team, and basically those guys, their work is first going to be embodied in Panther Lake," Petersen explained. For my money, that's a fairly opaque, evasive answer. Which isn't to criticise Petersen, he's very likely doing his best to answer the question as straightforwardly as possible. But there very much seem to be unspoken constraints limiting what he can say.

As for what those are, well, they likely involve the future of Intel's Arc graphics and its new deal with Nvidia, in which the latter supplies iGPUs for Intel CPUs. As soon as the Nvidia deal was announced, the immediate question was whether it would spell the end of Arc discrete graphics cards.

For now, that's impossible to say with any confidence. But for my money, and this is a personal take, I suspect Arc discrete graphics is now dead.

For starters, Petersen was asked "is Intel committed to Arc" and the best he could muster was, "I believe so and I will say that for Panther Lake we've built our largest integrated graphics ever with 12 Xe cores. It is our largest commitment to graphics and it's not changing."

Moreover, on the basis of that and the apparent dropping of the "Celestial" codename in Intel's latest messaging, my sense is that the whole generational "Alchemist", "Battlemage", "Celestial", and indeed future "Druid" branding was mostly about discrete GPUs, even if those same architectures went into or were planned for iGPUs, too.

So, if discrete Arc graphics cards are being killed off, that generational naming goes with them. At the same time, Intel bringing the 'A', 'B', 'C' product naming prefix into mobile to differentiate generations of iGPU will be less problematic if discrete GPUs are being cancelled.

Calling the iGPU in Panther Lake "B Series" or indeed the iGPU in a future chip "C Series" won't be a problem in terms of performance expectations when there's no discrete GPU to compare it with or soon won't be. It won't be suggesting to buyers that they're getting a mobile version of some B or C series desktop GPU, like the aforementioned Arc B580, if those don't exist.

Anywho, none of this could be any less clear. Even after this interview, it's really anyone's guess if Xe3 in Panther Lake is actually the full next-gen Celestial tech or something more incremental. Nick thinks it's not and is instead a pretty mild tweak of Battlemage rather than a new architecture worthy of a generational branding and I wouldn't disagree.

Meanwhile, how the mysterious "XE3P" next-gen graphics briefly called out in the now-famous slide above fits into it all is more mysterious still, as is the question of how all this will relate to the Nvidia deal and imported RTX iGPUs. It's all a bit of a mystery. And not hugely encouraging if you want to see more Arc desktop graphics cards.