Inside the Intel Haswell Microarchitecture

New 3D Engine

The Haswell microarchitecture comes with a new DirectX 11.1 graphics engine, and its main block diagram can be seen in Figure 4. The exact number of execution engines (“EU,” in Figures 4 and 5) varies according to the CPU model. Also, building blocks can be duplicated in order to achieve CPUs with higher 3D performance, as shown in Figure 5. Internally, Intel calls the three configurations they will offer “GT1,” “GT2,” and “GT3.” The commercial names are listed in Figure 6. The “GT3e” part (Iris Pro Graphics 5200) will be a “GT3” part with 128 MiB of L4 memory cache for use as video memory integrated in the package as the CPU, but not constructed inside the CPU chip. This part should be targeted to the mobile market.

Figure 4: The 3D video engine

Figure 5: The 3D video engine

Figure 6: Commercial names of the available engines