Arc A-Series GPUs are now supported within the Intel Extension for PyTorch (IPEX), offering faster AI capabilities in deep learning & LLMs.
Intel's Arc A-Series GPUs based on the Alchemist architecture have loads of on-hardware potential that are getting realized day after day. The software division has done a great job in optimizing the game performance of these GPUs and now the focus is on the emerging AI market where the XMX units featured onboard these chips will get fully utilized.
In an update, Intel has confirmed that IPEX (Intel Extension for PyTorch) now offers support for Arc A-Series GPUs across Windows, Linux, and WSL2 platforms. With this newly added support, Intel's A Series GPUs would not only boost the acceleration of deep learning models such as LLMs but also bring new optimizations for Intel hardware, enabling faster performance & giving users the ability to run PyTorch models on the Alchemist line of GPUs.
For those of you who have an Intel Arc A-Series GPU and want to take advantage of their XMX AI engine within PyTorch, the company has posted a full blog on how to run the Llama 2 interface on Windows and WSL2 here. According to Intel's AI software team: