Larrabee: Intel's New GPU

Larrabee Versus Itself?

At first glance, Larrabee seems to come out on the winning end of comparisons with its direct competitors. More parallel than the Cell and more flexible than a GPU, it seems to have everything going for it. But let’s keep our excitement in check. A product that exists only on paper necessarily has all qualities and no defects. For a long time, the Itanium seemed to be the future of processors before one of its flagrant faults became painfully obvious: while it’s not easy to reorganize a program’s instructions dynamically on the processor, it’s just as complicated to do it statically in the compiler.

So it’s not a good idea to blindly accept each announcement of a new technology. In certain forums, for each question concerning rendering or a particular algorithm, somebody will eventually mention Larrabee as the ideal solution, which is ridiculous for the time being. Larrabee won’t suddenly solve all problems of real-time 3D, though it should make some good progress possible.

Larrabee undeniably has the benefit of positive hype, and Intel needs to take care that that doesn’t result in blowback if the first generation of products doesn’t live up to expectations (the Merced syndrome).

In a few days, we’ll be giving you a look at Larrabee’s thorny software side, so stay tuned.

  • thepinkpanther
    very interesting, i know nvidia cant settle for being the second best. As always its good for the consumer.
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    Yes interesting, but intel already makes like 50% of every gpu i rather not see them take more market share and push nvidia and amd out although i doubt it unless they can make a real performer, which i have no doubt on paper they can but with drivers etc i doubt it.
    Reply
  • I wonder if their aim is to compete to appeal to the gamer market to run high end games?
    Reply
  • Alien_959
    Very interesting, finally some more information about Intel upcoming "GPU".
    But as I sad before here if the drivers aren't good, even the best hardware design is for nothing. I hope Intel invests more on to the software side of things and will be nice to have a third player.
    Reply
  • crisisavatar
    cool ill wait for windows 7 for my next build and hope to see some directx 11 and openGL3 support by then.
    Reply
  • Stardude82
    Maybe there is more than a little commonality with the Atom CPUs: in-order execution, hyper threading, low power/small foot print.

    Does the duo-core NV330 have the same sort of ring architecture?
    Reply
  • "Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT). This technology has just made a comeback in Intel architectures with the Core i7, and is built into the Larrabee processors."

    just thought i'd point out that with the current amd vs intel fight..if intel takes away the x86 licence amd will take its multithreading and ht tech back leaving intel without a cpu and a useless gpu
    Reply
  • liemfukliang
    Driver. If Intel made driver as bad as Intel Extreme than event if Intel can make faster and cheaper GPU it will be useless.
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    Hope for an Omega Drivers equivalent lol?
    Reply
  • phantom93
    Damn, hoped there would be some pictures :(. Looks interesting, I didn't read the full article but I hope it is cheaper so some of my friends with reg desktps can join in some Orginal Hardcore PC Gaming XD.
    Reply