In the race for dominance in the AI chip space, Intel has added to its AI accelerator portfolio with a new data centre GPU – codenamed Crescent Island.
“AI is shifting from static training to realtime, everywhere inference – driven by agentic AI,” says Sachin Katti, CTO of Intel. “Scaling these complex workloads requires heterogeneous systems that match the right silicon to the right task and powered by an open software stack. Intel’s Xe architecture data centre GPU will provide the efficient headroom customers need – and more value – as token volumes surge.”
As inference becomes the dominant AI workload, success depends on more than powerful chips – it requires systems-level innovation.
From hardware to orchestration, inference needs a workload-centric, open approach that integrates diverse compute types with an open, developer-first software stack – delivered as systems that are easy to deploy and scale.
Intel says it’s positioned to deliver this end-to-end – from the AI PC to the data centre and industrial edge – with solutions built on Intel Xeon 6 processors and Intel GPUs.
By co-designing systems for performance, energy efficiency, and developer continuity – and collaborating with communities like the Open Compute Project (OCP) – Intel is enabling AI inference to run everywhere it’s needed most.
Crescent Island is being designed to be power and cost-optimised for air-cooled enterprise servers and to incorporate large amounts of memory capacity and bandwidth – optimised for inference workflows.
Key features include:
- Xe3P microarchitecture with optimised performance-per-watt.
- 160GB of LPDDR5X memory.
- Support for a broad range of data types – ideal for “tokens-as-a-service” providers and inference use cases.
Intel’s open and unified software stack for heterogeneous AI systems is currently being developed and tested on Arc Pro B-Series GPUs to enable early optimisations and iterations. Customer sampling of Crescent Island is expected in the second half of 2026.