Sandy Bridge And Blu-ray
Intel hosted a series of media technology sessions, and we managed to sit in on a session titled “Building Blu-ray 3D Systems.”
Stereoscopic 3D is all the rage in the consumer electronics world. It’s unclear how many people are actually buying into the 3D movies in the home concept (as opposed to simply buying the latest HDTV, which happens to support 3D.) Still, a lot of marketing and engineering effort is being put into 3D HDTV.
Sandy Bridge graphics, in addition to building in programmable Execution Units (EUs), includes full dual high definition decode capability in a fixed-function unit. This Multi-Format Decoder natively understands H.264, VC1, and MPEG-2, completely offloading from the graphics engine and the CPU when decoding two simultaneous high definition streams.
The two streams are composited, along with any other layers (like subtitles). The EUs come into play here, doing the heavy lifting on the compositing side, assembling the frames into a format that the display device can then take and render into a pair of left-right frames.
What this means in the end is that you’ll be able to buy a laptop with Intel HD Graphics (or whatever the company decides to name Sandy Bridge's graphics engine) and watch 3D movies. Intel was showing off the capability of using a Sandy Bridge laptop attached to a 1080p HDTV via HDMI for 3D viewing.
Note that the entire focus of this effort is on 3D stereoscopic video playback. It’s very unlikely that Sandy Bridge will offer enough 3D horsepower to render 3D games stereoscopically, so Nvidia’s 3D Vision is still safe for the time being--at least when it comes to gaming.
Good coverage, but is it justified to bring in "zacate" to IDF ?
I think the article is right on the money when it says the Sandy Bridge based laptops will be marketed as premium mobile PC's, while the AMD Zacate will be cheaper.
I personally think AMD will win out in the cheap laptop with integrated graphics battle. AMD just has a great chance to put a big dent in this market in their favor.
It is very sad to see half of the 'local students' trying out the Classmate PCs are overweight or obese. There may be some more fundamental programs these kids need, like healthy living.
I like the Boxee idea but seriously... Where the &%$# is anyone gonna fit a device shaped like that?
@azcoyote, based on looking at the rear side of the box, I gather it sits flat, albiet, skewed, but is small enough that fitting it on a shelf won't be a problem. It's just "out of the box," in shape, so to speak. :-)
You'll want to take a look at Anandtech's updated notes on the Zacate chip. It appears that the "psychedelic" benchmark wins were due to the OEM driver for the Intel GPU. When updated, they scored basically the same. However, Zacate still trounced it in CoH and also Arkham Asylum.
I don't want a Boxee. I want a flatee.
What? I thought the new AMD HD 6800s were going to be southern island. Is northern island actually coming out earlier like 1H11 or in the beginning 2H11. The same time that Bulldozer and AM3+ comes out.
2nd why is the "cpu" so important in fusion chips.I think that the AMD version, priced as mainstream, will be better than the sandy bridge. More and more software is being off loaded to the GPU, even MS is making software run from the gpu i.e. internet explorer 9.
When is Intel going to do a SSD refresh I wonder?? Me want!!
Good coverage, but is it justified to bring in "zacate" to IDF ?
Why not? IDF is not just for Intel. Sure Intel started it and is the main attraction but its for developers everywhere to show stuff off.
I like it that way. Lets Intel and AMD see whats coimng.
AMD IGP verse Intel IGP will always yield the same results since Intel IGP is crap. Zacate verse Sandy-bridge in anything that involves the GPU will always result the same.
Problem with all IGP's is they use the local system memory. Its already been demonstrated that a GFX cards memory bandwidth is critical to performance, it needs faster access to that data in order to crunch it. DDR-3 may be good and all for general memory access but its no where near fast enough for high performance / high demand graphics processing. All IGP's will be limited to the same performance as what their memory allows, upgrade the system memory to higher bandwidth and suddenly the IGP jumps up in performance too.
AMD IGP verse Intel IGP will always yield the same results since Intel IGP is crap. Zacate verse Sandy-bridge in anything that involves the GPU will always result the same.
Head over to AnnadTech and look at the updated benchmarks, Intel IGP is not that crap, and Sandy Bridge graphics will be twice as good.
I hope the new Intel SSDs are priced reasonably.
I confirm it: "hitching" is a major annoyance, that is not reflected on FPS averaged over a second.
Any chance you can have an expanded segment on the mobility emphasis? Thanks for the coverage.
er I thought the Boxee box was using a ce4100 processor....? as per other sites....including anandtech?
AMD made Phenom II to comnpete against core2duo but intel was already shipping i7s by then as the core2 successor.So, AMD priced its new products according to the prices of Core2Duos and Core2Quads and the prices kept getting lower as intel lowered its prices on c2d.
noted. I'm quite impressed with SSD.