Intel Ice Lake-U iGPU May Feature 48 EUs

Intel Ice Lake iGPU Leaked

Over the past couple of years, CPU performance has largely stagnated. Instead, the new area of focus is the iGPU. Graphics are increasingly important to users as graphical demands increase. Nowhere is the need for improved graphics more poignant than for mobile laptops. To meet this new demand, Intel is reportedly working on improved iGPUs for Ice Lake CPUs. The new iGPUs will feature up to 48 EUs for the U-series of chips.
The information from a SiSoft Sandra online database entry for a new prototype Ice Lake chip. The new iGPU is a UHD graphics with Gen 11 graphics. That should a major architecture upgrade over the current Gen 9.5 graphics in Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake. Due to the new architecture, performance should see a good bump. The bigger improvement should come in the increased number of execution units. The count jumps up from the 24 EUs in current U-series chips to a total of 48 EUs for Ice Lake U.

Ice Lake iGPU Features Double Base Clockspeed

Intel is really banking on improved performance for the new chip. With 48 EUs, that gives a total of 384 unified shaders. Supported memory is 6GB from the system with 768 KB of cache.  Furthermore, the base clock speed is doubled from 300 MHz to 600 MHz. There is no word on the boost clock but it should be at least 1100 MHz but we may never know. Due to the new 10nm process, it should provide for notable performance improvements overall.
Finally, it is important to note that we don’t know where this U series chip sits. There are exceptions to the 24 EU cap for U series chips. Kaby Lake and Skylake U series chips can and do use Iris Pro and Iris Plus with 48 EUs sometimes. This means this Ice Lake chip could be one of the exceptions. However, it does make sense for Intel to improve the iGPU, as evidenced by the base clock bump. Hopefully, we won’t have long to wait until we get more details for the chips.