While Intel's
Larrabee might not be a household name for consumers just yet, it's certainly at the table where Nvidia and AMD/ATI eat. The many-core (8 to 48, at least, according to that Intel graphic) x86 chip runs all your existing apps while tossing in support for OpenGL and DirectX thus
eliminating the need for a discrete graphics chip. At least that's the plan. While the exact number of cores remains a secret as does the performance of each core compared to current GPUs, given the importance Intel places on Larrabee, it's reasonable to assume that an 8-core chip will launch in 2009 or 2010 with comparable performance to GPUs on the market at that time. Intel does say that Larrabee cores will scale "almost linearly" (read: within 10%) in games; that means that a 16-core chip will offer nearly twice the performance of an 8-core chip, 32-cores twice that of 16, and so on. Apparently this has already been proven in-house with Intel name-dropping Larrabee-coded titles such as Gears of War, FEAR, and Half-Life 2, Episode 2. It's no coincidence then to hear that Intel's first Larrabee product will target PC gamers. Click through if you're just dying to read about Larrabee's 1024 bits-wide bi-directional ring network and other bits of technical wonderment sure to create at least the hint of a silicon malaise.
[Via
CNET and
Washington Post, Thanks Dan R.]
posted Aug 4th 2008 4:27AM
One chip to rule them all....
Sign me up!
Yeah I agree...but that chip will be Fusion from AMD
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38703/135/
That statement doesn't seem to make sense about Intel shooting themselves in the foot.
I think their challenge is to overcome the skeptics. It's generally a given that any gaming beyond online Flash games you'll need to install an ATI or NVidia dedicated graphics card. Onboard Intel just won't do. PC gaming has diminished due to economics. I love PC gaming but I have to spend twice the dollar amount or more to keep playing the latest games. While on the other hand console pricing has come down. Their online gaming has gotten much better. It's very difficult to pirate console software.
@SoHip thanks I LOL'ed! :P
I think Intel have shot themselves in the foot a bit here. Their lousy chipsets (from a graphics performance perspective) have made PC gaming much less relevant over the last few years. Now that they've worked out how to shoehorn their own architecture into a graphics chip they're going to try to leach off the work that ATI and NVIDIA did to keep PC gaming alive, it sounds very microsofty to me ;-)
When are they going to release Nehalem, that's what I want to know.
If I overclock my P4 any higher it's likely to melt down through the planet core and hit Brendan Frasier.
Wait a month and ask the same question :)
I already did that a month ago. Today is the day I waited a month for.
Oh sweet, bitter irony.
I think Intel have shot themselves in the foot a bit here. Their
lousy chipsets (from a graphics performance perspective) have made PC
gaming much less relevant over the last few years. Now that they've
worked out how to shoehorn their own architecture into a graphics
chip they're going to try to leach off the work that ATI and NVIDIA
did to keep PC gaming alive, it sounds very microsofty to me ;-)
I always thought that if you had something dedicated to a particular job (graphics card), it would probabaly always out perform multi taskers..
Prehaps this will prove me wrong :)
A dedicated graphics card may be capable of performing significantly more work over a certain amount of time compared to CPU/GPU combinations like this, but considering the time required to communicate back and forth over the PCIe (2.0) lane, realtime rendering of graphics for video games could greatly benefit from increasing the rate of communication between the CPU and the GPU. The rendering of large projects such as an HD movie which does not require immediate and frequent updates may continue to use dedicated graphics cards, but the graphics cards targeted to these jobs (ATI FireGL and Nvidia Quadro) are not used for gaming.
a dedicated chip isn't necessarely faster.
however, dedicated chip is likely to do more with less logic gates.
I don't care as much about the scaling of performance whey they make no mention if the price scales as much.
sure, it could be as fast as gpu's on market then(on graphics stuff that parallises well) but who cares if it's also 8-16x pricier.
besides, intel has made wild announcements about how great their next gfx chip is going to be for years and all they keep shipping is gma crap, which is crap.
oh and quadro and firegl cars have previously been pretty much 100% the same cards as are sold for gaming anyways. it's just branding and asking for more money for the same card from clients who can afford it.
I'd like to hear what kind of memory architecture that Intel has come up with that allows them to scale linearly from 8 to 48 cores. Unless each of the cores has it's own dedicated memory or they're working some incredible magic with the memory controllers, I call BS.
Why couldn't they have just given us the frames per second? Telling us how well it performs compared to lower and higher amounts of cores doesn't help....
Because that would ruin the illusion.
Telling us just how lame it performs compared to GTX 280 or 4870 won't help either, my bet is 1/5th :) so you'll need 5 cards for comparable speed. Just kidding, I don't have info. Yes, I agree, fps would have been MUCH better.
I completely agree with you. Giving us FPS would have been a better comparative. By no means is it insignificant though, that performance scales almost completely linearly with the number of cores. Assuming they're being honest (which, admittedly, is a huge if), this is an incredibly important development for the PC gamer market. You simply don't see the same kind of returns with GPUs. You only need to look at the performance of the SLI setups to see that.
It does have frames per second see it starts with 1 fps then almost goes to 6 fps!!!! :p
Good analysis of the architecture here:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=602
The question I am interested in:
do larrabee GPUs have same problem SLI/Crossfire configurations have?
I have SLI config (8800GTX) and its currently disabled for a simple reason. In most cases I get 50-80% additional fps in games, but the picture looks less playable - constant stutters under 40 fps. I noticed that using a single card rocks - there are no stutters on 20+ fps, SLI looks well from double FPS, but it never gets double, so basically SLI hurts performance. Its good for FPS number, but its bad for playability.
If one 8-core Larrabee has similar performance to GTX 280 and no problems from higher number of cards, sign me on. If it has problems or less performance, not interested.
If old games will need patches to support Larrabee, not interested.
According to Intel, no, they don't have that problem. But my guess it will be largely a story of how well they can keep up on the compiler end of things.
One of the later pages on this article has info on that, look for the scaling graph pictured above.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=602
S**T YEAH!
Intel drivers are consistently 100% better for open source software than ati or nvidia.
Or Anandtech.. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3367
"Well, it is important to keep in mind that this is first and foremost NOT a GPU. It's a CPU. A many-core CPU that is optimized for data-parallel processing. "
Until this either gets in the wild, or they start releasing actual setup/FPS numbers then I take anything Intel says with a MOUNTAIN of salt.
Intel has yet to release any sort of decent graphics chip, since the 3D/FX etc showed up on the scene.
I remember when Matrox first came out they were a very decent GPU, and then had what at the time was going to be the best thing in the world, a card that supported 3 screens, it looked good, tested good (with new drivers to come) then when it hit the market it tanked since it never came close to it's promise in speed.
It's hard to know where to place this until we see it, but no matter what it turns out to do Intel has the muscle to "find" a place for it.
Can i play Crysis with this?
Or can I render the whole full length CG movie with this? And how about boiling some water for coffee making while rendering?
It's interesting how this turns up in a time when more and more applications can be sped up tremendously through the use of the GPU as a processor for non-image data. Folding@Home and such do incredible stuff with special tools that use the GPUs processing power. Maybe someone at Intel just shat himself over the idea that the picture could invert entirely and that desktop processors disappear because you can simply swap them for equally powerful cards. It's a long way to there but I think that hypothetical graph someone created from hypothetical numbers tells me nothing. Show me the specs or it never happened. Is there any working 48-core processor at Intel right now? I doubt it.
Hm yeah... well they're a bit secretive about the performance of these things. But if they're competitive with traditional offerings today, they won't be in a year or two when they release it for real. Not sure that Intel's CPU development moves at quite the speed of the graphics market.
Time will tell...
by the time Larabee launches, AMD will have released the 40-nm RV800 graphics chip.
And Fusion too: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38703/135/
by the time Larabee launches, AMD will have released the 40-nm RV800
graphics chip.
And Fusion too: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38703/135/
Yes, but it is only dual core, how would you like that same tech in 8 core? Um idk about your AMD fantasy, but Ill take an 8 core over that dual core anyday.
F.E.A.R. , like the first one from three years ago? so basically, by the time this comes out it will still be shit and will be able to play 5 year old games like the current set of intel integrated graphics chips.
Good point...Hooray for marketing gimmicks!!
I just hope it doesnt cost 600+ dollores when it comes out , as the quad cores did. And Intel, Can I haz good performence this time? So many promises of GPU / CPU, but I see a rocky road ahead with the company that never really made a dent with graphics before. Hmm.
I am firmly against consolidation of hardware like this but I have to admit I was also against putting sound and network hardware on Mobos (thinking it would stagnate incremental advancements). Now I'm a happy convert.
So I will wait and see how this goes. I don't think they're going for nVidia-killers here, just a decent graphics chip built into a CPU to reduce prices on small PCs.
Let's just hope that the SCALED PERFORMANCE in the graph isn't the actual FPS.
Cost? Heat/Form Factor? 10 years ago, you'd pay $300 for top of the line in gaming graphics. Now you pay a grand. 10 years ago, the most powerful card took 1 slot. Now, it takes 2 slots and requires a top-of-the-line power supply.
I want to see some sanity in the PC gaming graphics market.
So?
10 years ago you paid 25 cents for a can of soda, now its $1, you paid a dollar for a gallon of gas now its $4...
sounds like the SUV bizness model:
"are you sure you don't need a 1000HP tank to take your fat ass to starbucks?"
at least, with a GPU, the gaming horsepower is on an optional chip.
I wonder how my mum will use these 100 cores?
the PC is such a mess these days!
"it's reasonable to assume that an 8-core chip will launch in 2009 or 2010 with comparable performance to GPUs on the market at that time"
I gotta disagree. With Intel's track record of integrated graphics performance being sub-par, I would bet against Larrabee offering comparable performance.
also, if the performance was really that great, they would've shown actual numbers not this "scaled performance" nonsense.
The boiling of water for coffee bit is simple: just remove the heatsink whilst doing one of those fierce renders.
So wait... is "scaled performance" frames per second ... or minute?
I used to absolutely hate intel's integrated solution ever since I used a lappy with the xtreme graphics 2, but now they are somewhat decent, especially with the introduction of the x3000. They started to use somewhat efficient unified shaders and actually could get decent fps in some games. The x4500 approaches the performance of an 8400m with only its 10 unified shaders vs 8400m's 16.. They will probably use their integrated graphics tech with this multi-core thing. So it seems, roughly speaking, that their unified shaders seem more efficient than nvidia's and amd/ati's solution(but this is just a quick thought, not comparing clock speeds, specific graphics intensive rendering bla hbalbahl) With the scaling, it may actually be competitive