Intel's 'Larrabee' to Be "Huge"
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
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Intel's Larrabee will also be a graphic library rivaling Microsoft's DirectX???
Yes! The monopolies at war! The small guys win!
"...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.
bah useless ....
What happened to "Intel Confirms 'Larrabee' First Half 2010; No Delay"?
That train-wrecked my whole train of thought.
"...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...?
And the excitement is fading...
Wouldn't 971mm squared be roughly 31x31mm...?
My thoughts exactly - the readership on toms is slipping a bit recently too..
New hardware + new software = epic fail
Hehe. Daeros's strong point isn't math apparently.
Replace DirectX? In Intel's dreams
intel intel just stop.... ok stop it now
Intel's Larrabee will also be a graphic library rivaling Microsoft's DirectX???Yes! The monopolies at war! The small guys win!
By "small guys" I assume your talking about us consumers. How do we win if game developers have to spend more money and time developing their games to work on two competing standards?
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.
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...
Called BS too. Intel and Graphics go together like Spandex and Fat Women.
I'll pre-order it if they change the name to larrabee forever
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.
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.
I say death to direct X, long live Open GL.
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
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
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
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
I have hopes for Intel on this one, and really hope it pans out.
Intel, please don't epic fail, do a barrel roll instead and crush nvidia. >
Intel said screw you to ATI and nVidia, so if it doesn't pan out for them. They are going to be in a world of hurt as not many people will buy their hardware if it cannot game well.
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).
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.
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???
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.
I'll say; 971mm is ~38 inches. The editing on Toms is certainly not what it used to be.
Reading FAIL