Intel Battlemage GPUs support DisplayPort UHBR13.5, an upgrade over Alchemist UHBR10
Intel is adding patches that enable display support for next-gen Battlemage series.
Intel has issued a series of patches that enable display support for the Battlemage GPU series. These patches introduce several renames and rearrangements and remove patches that have already been implemented elsewhere. However, the most interesting detail is that Battlemage will not support DisplayPort (2.1) UHBR20 mode.
The patches list the following lines:
Removed UHBR20 support
drm/i915/xe2hpd: Set maximum DP rate to UHBR13.5
Battlemage Display Patches, Source: Freedesktop
This confirms that the Ultra-High BitRate (UHBR) of 20 Gbps has been removed from the display driver, and Intel has specifically set UHBR 13.5 mode as the maximum rate. The DisplayPort 2.1 specs outline three transmission rates: UHBR10 (10 Gbps per lane), UHBR13.5 (13.5 Gbps per lane), and UHBR20 (20 Gbps per lane). The 10 Gbps transmission rate is mandatory (and already available with DP 1.4 specs), while 13.5 and 20 Gbps speeds are optional. The latter also uses different cable specs called DP80.
The DP 2.1 specs are already supported on AMD Radeon 7000 GPUs, with RX (Gaming) models supporting 13.5 Gbps and PRO (workstation) series supporting up to 20 Gbps modes. Ultimately, it shouldn’t really matter right now because there are hardly any monitors supporting the full 20 Gbps speed at the moment. In fact, only three have been announced thus far, and they are unlikely to be affordable.
For Alchemist GPUs, Intel advertised their new cards as “1.4a, DP 2.0 10G Ready” and confirmed that they do not support UHBR13.5 and 20 modes. With Battlemage support for 13.5 Gbps transmission rate, it is still an upgrade over Alchemist.
The most recent rumors suggest that the Battlemage GPU architecture should launch around Black Friday. However, Intel is not planning to use this architecture only for the discrete GPU market but also for the next-gen integrated solutions. The company has already confirmed that the Intel Core Ultra 200V “Lunar Lake” series will launch this year. This product features Xe2-LPG architecture featuring up to 8 Xe-Cores.
Source: Phoronix
