Ads
Ads
All about Graphics Cards
 Latest Graphics Cards articles
Best Graphics Cards For The Money: November '09

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: November '09
There's actually a lot to discuss in this month's column: the introduction of AMD's new Radeon HD 5000-series GPUs, Nvidia's new GeForce GT 220 and GeForce 210, availability of previous-gen high-end cards, and the state of the graphics war in general. Read More

  • Next-Gen 3D Rendering Technology: Voxel Ray Casting
    A little while back, we discussed some of the benefits and disadvantages of ray tracing. Today, we're going to be talking about another potential successor to triangle rasterization: voxel ray casting, the subject of much research by id's John Carmack. Read More
All Graphics Cards articles

Newsletters


  • Ask your question about IT issues
  • Post

Partners

The Games selection

crazy : Xiao Xiao 7 A great fight scene from the animation movies Xiao Xiao.
crazy : Interactive Boogy Pick one of the 3 songs, hit on the correct keys matching this boy's dance moves.
Ads

Sponsored links

Intel's 'Larrabee' to Be "Huge"

Next news
3:51 PM - June 7, 2009 by Tuan Nguyen

Earlier in the week, we posted about Intel's Larrabee GPU and its future-looking performance.

This information comparing Larrabee to Nvidia's GTX 285 was preliminary, and given to us by a company close to Intel and Nvidia. After posting, we received more information on what Larrabee could shape up to be from one of Intel's very close and large partners. The following information should be taken as "current-known" information, and may very well change when Intel ships Larrabee.

According to current known information, our source indicated that Larrabee may end up being quite a big chip--literally. In fact,we were informed that Larrabee may be close to 650mm square die, and to be produced at 45nm. "If those measurements are normalized to match Nvidia's GT200 core, then Larrabee would be roughly 971mm squared," said our source--hefty indeed. This is of course, an assumption that Intel will be producing Larrabee on a 45nm core.

Our source also indicated that Intel is looking to ship Larrabee two years later, putting us in summer of 2011. Of course, by that time, we will have GPUs that are 2 to 4 times faster than current GPUs from both AMD/ATI and Nvidia. However, at that time Larrabee may not be what it is today either.

One critical point we were told was that 1st and 2nd generation Larrabee GPUs will not be compatible with 3rd generation Larrabee. This is of course, highly speculative and very far out. According to the data, Intel's 3rd generation part will have an emulation mode for backwards compatibility. If this is true, then developers would have a hard time programming for Larrabee.

We contacted Intel for comment in regards to the above information. Intel denied that any of the above is true.

Despite the above red-flag, there's an assumption that Larrabee will have to be compliant with Microsoft's DirectX, which will make it compatible with any existing technology on the application level. Games and application would be programmed for DirectX and not coded at the GPU level. However, in a recent Intel Larrabee slide, Larrabee's rendering architecture was suggested to be a successor to DirectX, possibly replacing the DirectX standard.

Image: courtesy of www.pcgh.de

Source : Tom's Hardware US

Talkback
Add your comment
dman3k 06/07/2009 10:18 PM
Hide
-2+

Intel's Larrabee will also be a graphic library rivaling Microsoft's DirectX???

Yes! The monopolies at war! The small guys win!

Daeros 06/07/2009 10:19 PM
Show
Ciuy 06/07/2009 10:21 PM
Hide
-0+

bah useless ....

mcbowler 06/07/2009 10:22 PM
Hide
-8+

What happened to "Intel Confirms 'Larrabee' First Half 2010; No Delay"?

master exon 06/07/2009 10:24 PM
Hide
-7+

Quote :We contacted Intel for comment in regards to the above information. Intel denied that any of the above is true.


That train-wrecked my whole train of thought.

td854 06/07/2009 10:46 PM
Hide
-19+

Daeros :
"...Larrabee may be close to 650mm square die, and to be produced at 45nm. If those measurements are normalized to match Nvidia's GT200 core, then Larrabee would be roughly 971mm squared--hefty indeed."I'll say; 971mm is ~38 inches. The editing on Toms is certainly not what it used to be.



Wouldn't 971mm squared be roughly 31x31mm...?

haze4peace 06/07/2009 11:19 PM
Hide
-6+

And the excitement is fading...

stuart72 06/07/2009 11:31 PM
Hide
-20+

td854 :
Wouldn't 971mm squared be roughly 31x31mm...?


My thoughts exactly - the readership on toms is slipping a bit recently too..

Regected 06/07/2009 11:31 PM
Hide
-4+

New hardware + new software = epic fail

mlcloud 06/07/2009 11:52 PM
Hide
-4+

Hehe. Daeros's strong point isn't math apparently.

cruiseoveride 06/08/2009 12:01 PM
Hide
-7+

Replace DirectX? In Intel's dreams

gabeherb345 06/08/2009 12:06 PM
Hide
-9+

intel intel just stop.... ok stop it now

apmyhr 06/08/2009 12:07 PM
Show
apmyhr 06/08/2009 12:16 PM
Hide
-2+

I think Tom's measurements of the size are based on flawed assumptions. If Larrabee is not released until 2011 (a full 2 years from now), I strongly doubt they will be producing it with 45nm core. More likley, it will be 32nm core. I'm not going to try to do the math for fear of being powned by the next comment, but I'll go ahead and assume that would shrink the chip by a lot.

Anonymous 06/08/2009 12:20 PM
Hide
--1+

I would just like to say that I was part of that .1% of people who called bullsh1t whenever Larrabee was the "Terascale Project", and they claimed to get 1 tFlop performance out of a 65w, 200million transistor chip... The key to catching these things is to assume that everytime Intel makes a ridiculous claim, that they are just lying to try to sell a product...

Cuddles 06/08/2009 12:59 PM
Hide
-13+

Called BS too. Intel and Graphics go together like Spandex and Fat Women.

Dustpuppy 06/08/2009 1:01 AM
Hide
-13+

I'll pre-order it if they change the name to larrabee forever

Ciuy 06/08/2009 1:14 AM
Hide
-3+

hahaha, "Tobe HUGEEE" Now i get it :)))

anyway by 2011 we`ll have something new and it will be called XCGPU, a 1cm SOI incorporating 60x 495GTX+++ plus 120 8890IceQ9+ in Xfire with 221 i9 Intels and 223 Phenomenom XVI CPUs and will be able to play Crysis at a wooooping 60+ fps on an anti-mater Screen of 80000" diameter. And it only needs 128 SD Ram to work so it`s not a cost burden. Work with a Nokia Power Adapter. Get the optional ThinkPad so you move everything in Windows 9 without moving a muscle. Also recomend a gun to shoot ureself after buying it cause its out of this worlddddddddd.

kami3k 06/08/2009 1:44 AM
Hide
-6+

Please Intel, You think developers will switch to a different workhorse then DirectX? Programing for computers is hard enough and you want to them to adapt a completely different middleman for the GPU and software?

I mean Microsoft does have the developers, developers, developers on their side.

Regulas 06/08/2009 1:54 AM
Hide
-2+

I say death to direct X, long live Open GL.

jaydeejohn 06/08/2009 2:00 AM
Hide
-0+

32 cores @ 45nm , 600+ mm squared sounds about right. Power shouldnt be a problem, but it depends on how high they crank the Ghz.
Im hearing theyll be having trouble with getting the drivers to work in all games, meaning alot of the older games wont work so well.
Doing everything in SW may cost them in some games as well, and itll be interesting to see when their SW resolve wins, and when its alot of latency.
As for the libraries, eliminating DX etc, DX itself is moving away from a HW fixed scenario, so, by then (2011?) , the new DX may be totally library/SW dependent anyways, which coincides with the articles statements, tho, I wouldnt give the credit to Intel here

apache_lives 06/08/2009 2:24 AM
Hide
-0+

Toms Bullshit Hardware - same news bs as the inquirer - who knows what to expect

They fail to mention here that this baby isnt primarily for gaming etc - more scientific/ray tracing etc - alot of extra horsepower to cram into a system/workstation/server

jaydeejohn 06/08/2009 2:32 AM
Hide
-2+

While this may be true, its cgpu ability may turn out to be huge, tho it wont be alone in that, Intel itself is promoting LRB to be a rendering device, and isnt a true RT HW.
To spend all that money, and sell for just a few niche markets doesnt make sense, since, as I said, they wont be alone to dominate, nor should we discount nVidias and ATI's response in this particular area

jaydeejohn 06/08/2009 2:44 AM
Hide
-2+

Basically, its the same argument nVidia fans use, but in reverse. Theyll say, its got phsx, gpgpu abilities, but what really matters there, and here is, how well does it play games? Thats the market, and therell be alot more monies to be made there than gpgpu, for now anyways. This could change in the future as we see fusion happen between cpu and gpu tech, but just like MT, it takes time

anamaniac 06/08/2009 3:25 AM
Show
falchard 06/08/2009 3:29 AM
Show
ProDigit80 06/08/2009 3:32 AM
Hide
-0+

Am I missing something? I mean it seems to me the processors are about 2,5 by 2,5 to 3 by 3 CM.

2,5 by 2,5 looks like a regular CPU to me; they're about that size too (or even larger).

Anonymous 06/08/2009 3:37 AM
Hide
-1+

Let's discuss how these "Larrabee" chips are basically a bunch of Atom processors on a single die, then let's discuss how Larrabee measures up per-core/per-clock to Atom, and then to Nehalem... The Gflops per core/clock are a bit unrealistic for Larrabee, so basically, we will come to the conclusion that Intel is lying through their teeth on these performance claims, and that we can expect less... MUCH less in the real-world... not to mention that everything that makes GPGPU tech hard to implement in real-world code will pretty much still apply to Larrabee, there is still PCIe latency to deal with, and only those apps that truly lend themselves to parallelism are going to benefit.

Matt_B 06/08/2009 3:38 AM
Hide
-2+

Intel is trying way too hard on this, they need to simplify things and come back down to earth. The number one thing they need to keep in mind is adopt-ability. If this thing becomes what most sources are saying now that this is going to be a mother to design for, who will want to pick it up and program for it?

I'm all for DirectX being battled head-on, it's about time we have something not tied to/within an operating system (that becomes a standard of course) in order to play a game! OpenGL couldn't do it, hopefully Intel can???

moozoo 06/08/2009 4:44 AM
Hide
-0+

Realize that all 32 cores don't have to be working.
They disable the non-working cores and target the different number of working cores at different markets. Every chip bar the ones with critical faults in shared hardware can be sold.

What Intel is trying to do is amazing. Larrabee is probably 10 years ahead of its time. It isn't just a graphic chip. If anyone can pull this off it has to be Intel.

randomizer 06/08/2009 4:47 AM
Hide
-4+

Daeros :
I'll say; 971mm is ~38 inches. The editing on Toms is certainly not what it used to be.


Reading FAIL


Sponsored links

Related articles

  • Larrabee: Intel's New GPU

    With the launch of Larrabee only a few months off, here’s a look at the architecture of Intel’s much-talked-about discrete GPU. How does it look on paper? In what ways is it similar to, and different from Nvidia’s and AMD’s GPUs?

  • Two's Company, Four's a WOW! Sneak Preview of NVIDIA Quad GPU Graphics

    Dual graphics solutions using SLI are yesterday's news - quad rendering is in! Asus' muscle-card combines two GeForce 7800 GT chips on one board. Pair two of these cards up in SLI mode, and you get a "Quad GPU" system. Of course, not everyone has $1,600 to spend just on their graphics subsystem.

  • Are Intel's Integrated Graphics Processors Good Enough for Gaming?

    Intel claims its integrated graphics processors are now good enough to play your favorite 3D games. With the launch of Intel's GMA950, are Intel's boasts based on reality - or simply the stuff of marketing pipe dreams?