Intel presents its response to DLSS technology from NVIDIA

The new Arc brand from Intel is its first foray into gaming GPUs, coming in the first quarter of 2022.

During the Architecture Day 2021 event, the company provided some additional details for the upcoming graphics cards. Including a first look at AI super-accelerated sampling, now known as XeSS.

XeSS appears to be poised to compete with NVIDIA's DLSS deep learning supersampling technology, debuting alongside the first Arc GPU architecture, known as Alchemist, in early 2022.

And just like DLSS, XeSS upscales games from lower resolutions to provide smoother frame rates without noticeable compromising image quality.

The company is also using custom Xe cores in upcoming GPUs to power its XeSS technology, with custom Xe Matrix eXtensions engines inside to deliver hardware-accelerated AI processing.

Similar to DLSS, XeSS works using machine learning to reconstruct details from nearby pixels and previous frames, with the company promising nearly twice as much performance improvements.

On the other hand, AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution is taking a different path. It uses spatial augmentation techniques instead of the AI-based reconstruction methods used by Intel and Nvidia.

In addition, the company promises that XeSS will not be limited to products with only custom Xe Matrix eXtensions engines.

The company plans to offer XeSS across a wide range of devices in the future. Including integrated graphics, with a version that also supports the DP4a instruction set.

A brief demonstration showed what XeSS looked like in practice. The company provided a real-time demo rendered in native 4K and 1080p upscaled to 4K using XeSS. But it works at twice the frames per second thanks to lower demand.

The company also confirmed that Alchemist offers full support for DirectX 12 Ultimate. Combined with hardware-based ray tracing with support for both DirectX Raytracing and Vulkan Ray Tracing.

In addition, the company also announced that Unreal Engine 5 runs via the Alchemist SoC. The company has made it clear that it will not make an Alchemist SoC on its own.

As part of its IDM 2.0 strategy, it is using TSMC to manufacture its own Arc products. With Alchemist build via corporate node N6.