Intel Announces Arc Pro B-Series, "Project Battlematrix" Linux Improvements

Intel is using Computex 2025 to showcase their new Arc Pro B-Series graphics cards that will be available in Q3 for professional use-cases as well as focusing on AI inference workstations and edge computing workloads. Plus they are noting some significant improvements coming to their Linux software stack.

Linux in fact got quite a few mentions during the advanced press briefing for the Intel Arc Pro B-Series ahead of today's embargo lift at Computex.

The Intel Arc Pro B50 is a Battlemage graphics card with 16GB of memory, rated for 170 pTOPS, and has a 70 Watt total board power. Meanwhile the Intel Arc Pro B60 features 24GB of vRAM, rated for 197 pTOPS, and will have a total board power between 120 and 200 Watts. With 24GB of vRAM, the Intel Arc Pro B60 is better suited for AI inference workloads with large language models.

The Intel Arc Pro B50 will have a $299 suggested price and the specs are rounded out quite nicely for the price. Both Windows and Linux support is ready. With 16GB of vRAM, it's much better equipped for modern workloads than the Arc Pro A50 that had a mere 6GB of vRAM or the competing NVIDIA RTX A1000 with 8GB. Intel is talking up 1.2x to 33.1x improvements on a generational basis.

Interestingly with the Arc Pro B60 is where Intel is talking up "Linux Multi-GPU" support, 24GB of memory as a nice attribute and more than what's available with the current Intel Arc B-Series graphics cards, and also will support SR-IOV.

Besides the new Intel Arc Pro B-Series, the other interesting aspect of Intel's Computex announcement is "Project Battlematrix" where they are talking about combining up to eight Intel Arc Pro GPUs for up to 192GB of vRAM to handle 70B+ parameter large language models.

With Intel Project Battlematrix it's Linux-focused with an "LLM Optimized Linux Software Stack". The Project Battlematrix Linux Software Stack will still leverage oneAPI, Level Zero, and the like while featuring vLLM Serving and other features.

Next quarter is when Intel is hoping their Linux software stack will be ready with vLLM staging and container deployments followed by enhancing performance and improving vLLM serving. Going into Q4'2025 is where they hope to have the SRIOV support ready as well as VDI and manageability feature. Some elements of this Project Battlematrix initiative have already been underway for open-source/Linux support and seemingly now under this umbrella. In past months I've covered the PMT telemetry coming for Battlemage as well as the ongoing SRIOV preparations for the Intel Xe driver and related patch series that are aligning with the Project Battlematrix goals.

It will be very interesting to see what all ends up being incorporated into these "Battlematrix" Linux driver stack improvements. This continues building off the Intel Xe kernel driver and other existing open-source driver components maintained by Intel while better equipping their modern Battlemage graphics cards to better handle AI/LLM workloads and more.

The Intel Arc Pro B50 and B60 workstation graphics cards are quite interesting and hopefully in Q we'll be able to test them at Phoronix under Linux. It's not until Q4 though where Intel is talking up "full feature" enablement for the Arc Pro B50/B60 graphics cards. It will also be interesting to see what comes of the Project Battlematrix Linux software driver enhancements so stay tuned to Phoronix as always to hear more about their open-source driver enhancements.