Intel: Channel Is ‘Key’ For Arc Pro GPU-Based AI Inference Workstations

Intel says it’s working with select systems integrators for the initial launch of Project Battlematrix, an ‘all-in-one inference platform’ that combines ‘full-stack validated hardware and software,’ including up to eight of its new 24-GB Arc Pro B60 GPUs.

Intel said channel partners will be “key” to a new push by the chipmaker to deliver AI inference workstations powered by its latest Arc Pro GPU with the goal of providing simple, low-cost and secure AI solutions for SMBs.

Announced at Computex 2025 last week, the semiconductor giant is calling Project Battlematrix an “all-in-one inference platform” that combines “full-stack validated hardware and software,” including up to eight of its new 24-GB Arc Pro B60 GPUs.

Intel told CRN in an email that it is working with select systems integrators for the initial launch of Project Battlematrix workstations next quarter, which begins in July. The company plans to expand its coverage to OEMs and ODMs “over time.”

“Project Battlematrix inference workstations are designed for professionals who prioritize data privacy and seek to avoid high subscription costs associated with proprietary AI models but require capabilities to deploy large language models,” the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company wrote in a blog post last week.

The leader of Richmond, Va.-based PC system builder Velocity Micro, a longtime Intel partner, said while he hasn’t seen the Project Battlematrix hardware or engaged with Intel on the platform yet, he believes there is a market for AI inference workstations in the SMB segment—as long as the software is easy to use and supported by developers.

“There’s definitely a market for it, but I need to see more of the software stack. If the hardware is affordable and readily available but nobody is coding for it, it doesn’t matter. The software stack will be what dictates it,” Randy Copeland, president and CEO of Velocity Micro, told CRN on Wednesday.

Intel To Push For 8-GPU, 192-GB VRAM Workstations

Intel said its “vision” for Project Battlematrix workstations is to pack up to eight Arc Pro B60 GPUs and up to 192 GB of combined VRAM that can hit a maximum of 1,576 trillion operations per second of dense 8-bit integer (FP8) performance in a workstation-class PCIe Gen 5 Intel Xeon platform running on optimized Linux software.

These workstation solutions will be “built with concrete applications of AI inference in mind,” such as software development, where AI agents can be deployed to reduce the time it takes to debug software and eliminate test failures, the company said.

Intel said it aims to “simplify” adoption of Project Battlematrix with a “new containerized solution” built for a Linux environment that is optimized to take advantage of multi-GPU scaling and PCIe P2P data transfers. The container will also feature “enterprise-class reliability and manageability features such as ECC [error correction code], SRIOV [single-root I/O virtualization], telemetry and remote firmware updates.”

The company plans to deliver a baseline Windows and Linux driver for the containerized solution before July. It is then expected to provide AI acceleration updates such as improved parallelism, vLLM serving support, baseline GPU telemetry and baseline SRIOV support in the third quarter. The latter two capabilities will expand when Intel delivers a “fully enabled” solution in the fourth quarter, which will also include passthrough virtualization and an XPU manager with ECC toggle and firmware update support.

Based on Intel’s Xe2 architecture, the Arc Pro B60 features 160 Xe Matrix Extension Engines for AI acceleration and 20 ray tracing units for realistic lighting simulation as well as 20 Xe cores, 160 Vector Engines and five render slices. Its 24 GB of GDDR6 memory has a bandwidth of 456 gigabytes per second and maximum speed of 19 gigabits per second.

This makes the Arc Pro B60 capable of performing 197 trillion operations per second of INT8 and nearly 12.3 trillion operations per second of 32-bit floating-point math (FP32).

The Arc Pro B60 has a total board power of 200 watts, but Intel said the board can drop to as low as 120 watts depending on how partners configure the product.

Add-in board partners that plan to release their own version of the Arc Pro B60 include ASRock, Gunnir, Maxsun, Sparkle, Onix Technology and Lanner.