Maybe you are right and Battlemage is DOA. Perhaps intel know that and just want to dump inventory before announcing they will get out of the GPU business.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My point is that although you might think they are going to divest the GPU business in future, we don't know that for sure and it's kind of weird to present it as having already happened.
Intel's Xe2 GPU architecture works well as an efficient iGPU and has market fit there. The problem is taking it the other way to discrete high end and data center rather than the opposite as NVidia has done with GPUs and AMD with CPUs. Using the low power consumer target to experiment on architecture and new nodes that then scales to the high end has been Intel's strategy ("efficiency" cores) is logical from a foundry perspective for monolithic chips. But Intel has failed to execute in the new AI data center investment reality. Where are the GPUs from Gaudi 3? Pat: "Putting AI into all the chips, not just ones in the cloud, might be more important in the long run" maybe, but failing to win where the money is at now is a huge barrier to surviving in that long run.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My point is that although you might think they are going to divest the GPU business in future, we don't know that for sure and it's kind of weird to present it as having already happened.