[Osiris]

Intel says 48 core graphics just over the horizon

Intel is releasing the Larrabee graphics chip for high-end PC gaming in late 2009 or 2010, but the company is already talking up the chip’s capabilities in a new paper.
Depending on the model, Larrabee will feature between eight and 48 cores, each of which will have super-fast inter-communication and increase the chip's ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
For example, Intel argues that by having greater numbers of smaller cores, instead of single or dual cores, Larrabee will be able to support better experiences for gamers – a key target audience.
It's purely coincidental that the update comes just days before AMD updates journalists on its graphics strategy and unveils some new silicon at its CTO summit in Iceland.
Larry Seiler, a senior principal engineer at Intel, told journalists at the unveiling of the paper - dubbed Larrabee: A Many-Core x86 Architecture for Visual Computing - that the chip overcomes the limitations of current graphics processors. He added that it provides “the full programming abilities of a CPU” alongside “the parallelism that is inherent in graphics processors”.
Larrabee supports Microsoft's DirectX and OpenGL APIs, which will help software developers to create visual and graphics intensive applications that take full advantage of the chip.
Larrabee will support IEEE standards for single and double precision floating-point arithmetic, which is already featured in AMD and Nivida GPU models.
Jon Peddie Research (JPR) told Bloomberg that success in the high-end graphics market could add up to $4bn to Intel's sales in 2010 - provided it performs as well as rival chips from Nvidia and AMD.
JPR’s latest figures show that 94.4m GPU units were shipped during the first quarter of this year, representing a drop of 0.5 per cent from the previous quarter. However, shipments grew 16 per cent from the same period in 2007.
Intel took pole position in Q1, with 47.3 per cent of the market, whilst Nvidia – which today denied it’s leaving the chipset market – and AMD took 31.4 per cent and 18.1 per cent market shares respectively.

Intel says 48 core graphics just over the horizon | Register Hardware

[Drizzt]

Does anyone feel like a shadow is passing over the magical land of GPU's? It just gives me a bad feeling...

BUT HEY! My wallet is not going to die if nvidia + ati + intel produce new gpu's... those prices are going to be sweeeeet! I just hope no one leaves the market

[Poizen22]

im really curious as to what intel measn by cores, we see our gpu's today as single core but they are multi core, my 8800gts g92 has 128 unified shader units each of which is a processor of its own and in essence is a core. now if intel is speaking in that sence and is marketing the fact that there gpu is multi core to make it look that way, when nvidia and ati dont. im wondering if intel is only doing it to make them look good, but really there the same as everything else.

an esier example of companies doing this is, monitors branded hd. anything over 1096x720 is hd, that resolution specificaly is 720p. now a monitor of 1900x1200 has a much higer res then a 1080p monitor, but some companies will be like well ours is hd while other companies wont market that as they consider it unimportant. seems to me like intel is going to be doing this with the gpu market, and nvidia and ati will be the companies with higher specs, also multi core like they are now, they just dont market it.

i think im preaty acurate on our gpu's allready being multi core, there just all on one die. each sp has its own transistors handles its own process, and has it own access to the available memory. sounds to me like a running core, and im preaty sure if herd it mentioned before that a sp is a gpu core. anyway if this is so intels larabe is going to be unimpressive.

[Ste]

Only 48 cores? meh..

[Poizen22]

is my theory correct ste? you made it sound that way i think, as you arent imprsesed byt it.

[Puddle Jumper]

Here is a pretty detailed article om larrabee.

AnandTech: Intel's Larrabee Architecture Disclosure: A Calculated First Move

It's 48 cores that are loosely based on a Pentium at 45nm.I'm curios to see how this approach competes against ati and nvidia.

[maroon1]

Originally Posted by Amd gt player

im really curious as to what intel measn by cores, we see our gpu's today as single core but they are multi core, my 8800gts g92 has 128 unified shader units each of which is a processor of its own and in essence is a core. now if intel is speaking in that sence and is marketing the fact that there gpu is multi core to make it look that way, when nvidia and ati dont. im wondering if intel is only doing it to make them look good, but really there the same as everything else.
.

Intel Larrabee is built with many X86 CPU cores to run graphics. There is a radical difference between the architecture of Larrabee and the current video cards

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. What's the difference? Well, there is very little fixed function hardware, and the hardware is targeted to run general purpose code as easily as possible. The bottom lines is that Intel can make this very wide many-core CPU look like a GPU by implementing software libraries to handle DirectX and OpenGL.

It's not quite emulating a GPU as it is directly implementing functionality on a data-parallel CPU that would normally be done on dedicated hardware. And developers will not be limited to just DirectX and OpenGL: this hardware can take pure software renderers and run them as if the hardware was designed specifically for that code.

You can see more info from about the architecture of Larrabee from here
AnandTech: Intel's Larrabee Architecture Disclosure: A Calculated First Move

PC Perspective - Intel's Larrabee Architecture

[Drizzt]

maroon... what articles will you start using when larrabee is out? Pro nvidia or Pro Intel-gpu? Or both?

[maroon1]

Originally Posted by Drizzt5

maroon... what articles will you start using when larrabee is out? Pro nvidia or Pro Intel-gpu? Or both?

Thats a silly question.

The article I posted is neither pro-Intel nor anti-intel. The articles I posted just give details about Larrabee architecture. Pure and simple.

[gurusan]

Originally Posted by Ste

Only 48 cores? meh..

read the anandtech article and you will not be so meh

I'm scared for nvidia and ati