SC09: Architecture Evolution on a Collision Course with Intel's Larrabee

[yarahahrwe]

R.I.P.

[BaCkuPFDTos]

there is a rumor going on that nintendo's next console ( wii 2 or another name ) will use the Larrabee processor

[DobarDabar]

Goes down the drain :/

[thefirstcritter]

Hahaha, viel zu langsam! War ja klar dass Intel nicht einfach aufschließen kann, vorallem nicht mit Kernen eines x86 Prozessors.

Dazu fällt mir ein, warum ist die DDR in die Knie gegangen? Sie wollte gerade zum Sprung ansetzen um den Westen zu überholen. *zw*

[StarcraftTerran]

Intel should just stick with CPU, Inter was NEVER good at GPU, and their driver support is not so great. And I think Intel should just give up Larrabee, the nexe Larrabee will be still behind

[allofyousuckla]

@StarcraftTerran Im agree.Intel only sucks for making gpu.

[abd1984]

Dead !

[iD0NUTZ]

So no Larrabee for consumers? That sucks, well hey Intel was too behind on the specs for the GPU. By the time it was had released it was going to be 3-4 times less powerful than what Ati will come out with next year

[Capeau]

thats because you're a naughty girl and god is punishing you

[chumbucket843]

pathetic. ascii red got 1tflop on dgemm.

[Capeau]

you're an idiot

[WS6Zep89]

big deal, there is a lot more to competing in the GPU market than teraflops, it's not that simple.

[BCEMCOCATb]

Did you hear a word about rasterization in this presentation? It is all about HPC!

[tamenga88]

Actually I hoped Larrabee would bypass rasterization and go straight to realtime raytracing.

Unfortunately from the latest news that won't be the case in the foreseeable future.

[Capeau]

indeed, but combining the best of raytracing with the best of rasterisation isnt bad at all, right? ;)

Its just that making content for a pure raytracer is much easier, but an hybrid solution should be able to give the same output quality

[tamenga88]

I think Larrabee in the consumer GPU market seems finished from the latest news.

The delays were too severe.

The best Investment is Hybrid to streamline transition from Ras to Raytracing.

Intel learned that the hard way with the Itanium to come up with a all new faster solution that isn't backwards compatible.

Good for progress. bad for customers who need to reschool themselves in the new language and invest billions in resolving compatibility issues with old data.

[Capeau]

indeed and larrabee is more than just a GPU. You can program it to do things a Nvidia or ATI/AMD gpu only can dream of.

It can run x86 functions perfectly.

So you could even run windows on it if you wanted

[tamenga88]

I think Larrabee will stay in the HPC realm according to cnet.

Will be a software development platform only...

Which is sad though.

I kinda looked forward to the competition.

[tamenga88]

I read that Larrabee's cores are modified 32 bit Pentium cores.

So it should run windows.

But gamers want sheer speed not so much versatility.

Versatility is a secondary priority.

No point in playing a Game that can do realtime Photonmapping because the architecture supports it, but it runs the game at 3 FPS.

Hence Larrabee should feel more at home in the HCP for the moment until they can get the speed up significantly.

That's why consumer Larrabee got canned.

[Capeau]

Honnestly gamers dont know what they want. They only know whats good once its out and they tried it out.

Just look at all those stupid remarks they make about raytracing vs rasterising.

95% of them dont understand what they are talking about (even though they are convinced they do).

Devoloppers know what they are talking about and they LOOVE larrabee. Especially since they can do lots of voxels etc on it ;)

[tamenga88]

Which developers love it?

The HPC developers?

Not the consumer oriented developers otherwise they would riot for Intel canning the consumer oriented Larrebee.

I've been checking forums here and there about the cancellation and I haven't noticed that much sympathy or excitement for it.

Maybe you could show me a blog or site of developers who love it so much.

To give me a better insight of the matter.

(BSN for one hates the hype around Larrabee.)

[Capeau]

To name a big one... Tim Sweeney (unreal) for example.

[tamenga88]

The same guy who quoted this in 2008?

"Intel's graphics just don't work. I don't think they will ever work. [Intel] always says 'Oh, we know it has never worked before, but the next generation ...' It has always been the next generation. They go from one generation to the next one and to the next one. They're not faster now than they have been at any time in the past."

[Capeau]

yes, but he was talking about the integrated graphics then. Big difference ;)

[tamenga88]

Any more except him?

He is right about the "Next generation" complaint of Intel.

Seems to be happening for Larrabee too.

(No consumer oriented Larrabee any time soon.)

And with Itanium.

If Itanium keeps up this pace a 32 threaded Xeon will surpass it in the near future.

At the Marketing side the worst thing that can Happen is that Larrabee might compete against Xeon in the HPC devision much like Xeon competes against Itanium.

Best option. Take Larrabee and fuse it with Core.

[Capeau]

Zelex from ID software (he's got a video on youtube showing of some voxelrendering of a zbrush model),

the developers of the Vray renderer, the developers of Maxwell renderer, Sony had plans of putting it in the ps4, etc ...

Theres tons of important ppl who know what they are talking about who liked its tech, but obviously i dont memorise such a list and i have better things to do to have another useless discussion on here.

[guderiancol]

They are making gpus 2 years ago, ati 20 years and nvidia 18, then intel can launch a descent gpu next years, only wait the next generation of the next generation lol

[erocker414]

The more competition the better! If Intel has a winner on their hands it's lower prices for all of us!

[wsbygt]

I own:

i7-920 @ 4.2GHz

5850 @ 1.1GHz

And my system will pown the Larrabee! Etherway its nice to see this kind of iniative.

[Iuliancik]

well, considering 5870 has almost 5 teraflops, ill say they are a bit short of power )

[Noctifer22]

No it doesn't, those "almost 5TFLOPs" are a theoretical value of its single precision. I heard that the SGEMM performance of the Radeon 5870 is around 1.8TFLOPs.

[GDIH100]

@Noctifer22 the 4870 is abou 2.4 tflops

[BCEMCOCATb]

Performance depends on application, e.g. Tesla C1060 with a price ~$1200 performs only 370 Giga-flop in SGEMM.

You won't see more than 200 Giga-flop with HD 5870 in this test.

In another words, 5 Tera-flops is not an absolute value, just a peak performance in the simplest possible and best suitable for the hardware number of floating point operations. It has nothing to do with real world HPC applications.

[FXSEBAS]

intel rulez!

[Tuzioya]

BUT STILL, really cool intel. Very very nice.

[Tuzioya]

One word for intel, WATCH OUT FOR nVIDIA! ;D HAHA. Oh do they hate you. I don't though! :P

[lordgeorgemaster]

holy crap thats some power..:P

looks nice but whats the chances intel do not make 3D programming like Nvidia or ATI but still 1 tera flop is niiiiceee =D

[Xigmatek]

Very Cool!

How many Larrabee Cores are there on that thing?

Very Cool to see Intel Bumping up there GPU's