13/08/2008
Chris Leyton
Could Intel's GPGPU be appearing in the Xbox 720 or PlayStation 4...

Larrabee, Intel's foray into the world of discrete graphics
processors, could be shaping future next-gen consoles, according to
comments from the chip manufacturer in an interview with Develop.

Offering developers a fully programmable pipeline and based around the
popular x86 instruction set, the Larrabee specifications are
considered to be closer to that of a multi-core CPU than traditional
GPU technology. Such a design allows the technology to fluidly handle
tasks not typically assigned to the GPU, helping out the CPU as and
when needed, and unlocking the true potential of parallel computing
offered by multi-core architecture.

Intel's Aaron Coday revealed, "It's definitely something we would want
to discuss with the console vendors, and hope that the architecture
that we're providing is something that is very compelling for them and
be interesting."

A paper released at SIGGRAPH 2008 indicated that 25 Larrabee cores
running at 1GHz could potentially run Gears of War at 60fps at a
resolution of 1600x1200 - this is believed to be a conservative
estimation as the cores are widely expected to run faster than 1GHz.

http://www.totalvideogames.com/news/...643_6321_0.htm