Intel's Larrabee Architecture Disclosure: A Calculated First Move
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on August 4, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Awesome Potential of Fully Programmable Graphics
Certainly we can't judge the applicability and impact Larrabee will have until we see how it handles real-world applications. But we absolutely cannot write off such a giant as Intel when they throw their chips into the pot. Some of the current graphics hardware establishment have tried to suggest to us that Intel is not in touch with the current development community and that the only reason some developers are excited about the extensive low level programmability of Larrabee is because they are nostalgic for the old days of graphics programming where it was all about the software renderer.
I don't think anyone is under the illusion that DirectX and OpenGL performance are irrelevant for Larrabee. If Intel fails at delivering equivalent or greater price/performance in games and applications that use these programming APIs, then no matter how well the hardware could be used for any software engine it will fail. But the potential to customize every part of the rendering pipeline, the capability of supporting a software renderer with the same level of performance as if the hardware was customized to it, adds a level of value to the development community that will absolutely blow away anything NVIDIA or AMD can currently (or will for the foreseeable future) offer.
Re-opening the door for Tim Sweeney, John Carmack, Michael Abrash, and other pioneers and visionaries in the field of 3D graphics to once again have the freedom to take a piece of hardware that can offer the kind of data parallel speed that has heretofore been limited to the GPU and literally do anything they want with it is something to be excited about. Limited much less by the physical design of the hardware to once again only be limited by the performance of any given segment of code could help speed up the transition from SIGGRAPH to games. Larrabee could help create a new wellspring of research, experimentation and techniques for real-time graphics, the likes of which have not been seen since the mid-to-late 1990s.
We have absolutely been seeing the current graphics hardware giants move toward more flexibility and programmability. But if Intel is able to effectively leap-frog their slow trudge toward true general purpose programming DX version by DX version, we will see the end of an era where games are feature limited by hardware. No longer will we need new hardware to handle a new DX version with new techniques and effects: we would only need a driver update to add support for the new API. The only obstacle to running games using future APIs will be performance. The only reason to upgrade in the future will be speed. It will be a different world, altogether different than anything we've known or experienced before yet incredibly similar to the roots from which the industry was born.
It is an exciting time to be in the field of computer graphics.
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erikespo - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_%28geometry%29">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_%28geometry%29helpful page to take you back to first grade
and excuse my decimal point.. it is 204.49mm total per core or 14.3mm^2
erikespo - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
Explain.lets use smaller numbers for you 2mm^2 is 2mm by 2 mm or 4 total mm
double that and it is 4mm^2 or 4 mm by 4 mm or 16mm total..
we are talking about area or 2 dimensions not 1 dimension.
Same math applies to the article
MamiyaOtaru - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
No, you're way off. 2mm² is TWO square millimeters. (a rectangle 1x2 for example). Double that would be 4mm², which could either be 1x4 or 2x2.NUMBERmm² doesn't mean NUMBERxNUMBER mm, it means exactly what it says: NUMBER mm².
Using your smaller numbers: 2mm² is not "4 total mm"; it is TWO mm². Saying it is 4 total mm doesn't even make sense. You _can't_ measure area in millimeters. You measure it in square millimeters, and there are two of them (_2_mm²).
Here's an mspaint visual (if links work: http://img105.imageshack.us/my.php?image=squaremma...">http://img105.imageshack.us/my.php?image=squaremma...
You're so sure you're right on this, it's really depressing :(
darkequitus - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
I did not appriciate the writer creaming over every digital page they wrote. especially when Larrabee's performance is mainl at the moment based on INtel hype and nothing real.ZootyGray - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
THANK YOU.Somebody finally said it.
The others prefer Eutopian illusion - aka the curse aka ntel antitrust. ntel has no grafx and the fools in the public buy "inside' and nvid and ati aren't exactly friends of the curse.
welcome to the matrix. wakey wakey
ZootyGray - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
and a 16 pager on maybe might could be should be = wannabe "employ-boy"- payday ? hooyeh. This is so disappointing for me. Credibility sags to a new low.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - link
Someone whose two posts contain about 10 complete words and no complete thoughts says Anandtech's credibility has sagged to a new low?ZootyGray - Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - link
haha yeh - lots of room for thinking.or - if no thinkeez - ya gots der 16 pg inundation (that's a big word like marmalade) all based on nothing-is-real - you like that kind of brainwash? we don't know anything; but here's the tekspex?
btw - did u get it? the matrix idea? watch the movie. cos here it is. pardon my loaded cryptic literacy.
thx
if you don't get it - well, that's what they want - a world of sleeping mob. never mind, that's just my concern.
The Preacher - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
I don't really care about how good it will be executing some software renderer but I feel it is going to kick ass in scientific calculations. Matrix operations, FFT/convolution, tremendous bandwidth, double precission... I may write C++/x86 assembly code directly for it and I may put this into a rack of servers and use it through MPI. Give me a compiler with vector intrinsic functions for it and my dreams just came true! :)elerick - Monday, August 4, 2008 - link
I have been a daily reader of another hardware review site for years. I ready nearly every articles that headlines and find many of them quite lacking. Today I got wind of your review for the Larabee. It was very well written and produced an amazing amount of tech knowledge not really commonly reviewed. I'm glad to have found you this site, and I never create an account but today I felt obligated to. Great work.PS: any news on that AMD / Fusion? or is that just them being intimidated by Intel's Larrabee?