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Intel details future -Larrabee- graphics chip
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10005391-64.html
Intel has disclosed details on a chip that will compete directly with Nvidia and ATI and may take it into unchartered technological and market-segment waters. Larrabee will be a stand-alone chip, meaning it will be very different than the low-end--but widely used--integrated graphics that Intel now offers as part of the silicon that accompanies its processors. And Larrabee will be based on the universal Intel x86 architecture. The first Larrabee product will be "targeted at the personal computer market," according to Intel. This means the PC gaming market--putting Nvidia and AMD-ATI directly into Intel's sights. Nvidia and AMD-ATI currently dominate the market for "discrete" or stand-alone graphics processing units. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...ee-2-small.jpg Larry Seiler (standing, middle), a senior Intel engineer, and Stephen Junkins (sitting, right), an Intel graphics software architect, speak at a briefing on Larrabee chip, due in 2009-2010. (Credit: Brooke Crothers) As Intel sees it, Larrabee combines the best attributes of a central processing unit (CPU) with a graphics processor. "The thing we need is an architecture that combines the full programmability of the CPU with the kinds of parallelism and other special capabilities of graphics processors. And that architecture is Larrabee," Larry Seiler, a senior principal engineer in Intel's Visual Computing Group, said at a briefing on Larrabee in San Francisco last week. "It is not a GPU as many have mistakenly described it, but it can do most graphics functions," Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, said in an article he posted Friday about Larrabee. "It looks like a GPU and acts like a GPU but actually what it's doing is introducing a large number of x86 cores into your PC," said Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer, alluding to the myriad ways Larrabee could be used beyond just graphics processing. In addition to the PC, high- performance computing and workstations are two potential markets that were also mentioned. Intel describes it in a statement as "the industry's first many-core x86 Intel architecture." The chipmaker currently offers quad-core processors and will offer eight-core processors based on its Nehalem architecture, but Larrabee is expected to have dozens of cores and, later, possibly hundreds. The number of cores in each Larrabee chip may vary, according to market segment. Intel showed a slide with core counts ranging from 8 to 48, claiming performance scales almost linearly as more cores are added: that is, 16 cores will offer twice the performance of eight cores. The individual cores in Larrabee are derived from the Intel Pentium processor and "then we added 64-bit instructions and multi-threading," Seiler said. Each core has 256 kilobytes of level-2 cache allowing the size of the cache to scale with the total number of cores, according to Seiler. And application programming interfaces (APIs) such as Microsoft's DirectX and Apple's Open CL can be tapped. "Larrabee does not require a special API. Larrabee will excel on standard graphics APIs," he said. "So existing games will be able to run on Larrabee products." So, what is Larrabee's market potential? Today, the graphics chip market is approaching 400 million units a year and has consolidated into a handful of suppliers. "And of that population, two suppliers, ATI and Nvidia, own 98 percent of the discrete GPU business." according to Peddie. "And the trend line indicates a flattening to decline in the business...However, Intel is no light-weight start up, and to enter the market today a company has to have a major infrastructure, deep IP (intellectual property), and marketing prowess--Intel has all that and more," Peddie said. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...lide-small.jpg Larrabee combines aspects of a CPU and GPU (Credit: Intel) Though more details will be provided at Siggraph 2008, some key Larrabee features: Larrabee programming model: supports a variety of highly parallel applications, including those that use irregular data structures. This enables development of graphics APIs, rapid innovation of new graphics algorithms, and true general purpose computation on the graphics processor with established PC software development tools. Software-based scheduling: Larrabee features task scheduling which is performed entirely with software, rather than in fixed function logic. Therefore rendering pipelines and other complex software systems can adjust their resource scheduling based each workload's unique computing demand. Execution threads: Larrabee architecture supports four execution threads per core with separate register sets per thread. This allows the use of a simple efficient in-order pipeline, but retains many of the latency-hiding benefits of more complex out-of-order pipelines when running highly parallel applications. Ring network: Larrabee uses a 1024 bits-wide, bi-directional ring network (i.e., 512 bits in each direction) to allow agents to communicate with each other in low latency manner resulting in super fast communication between cores. "A key characteristic of this vector processor is a property we call being vector complete...You can run 16 pixels in parallel, 16 vertices in parallel, or 16 more general program indications in parallel," Seiler said. |
#2
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Intel details future -Larrabee- graphics chip
NV55 wrote:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10005391-64.html Intel has disclosed details on a chip that will compete directly with Nvidia and ATI and may take it into unchartered technological and market-segment waters. Larrabee will be a stand-alone chip, meaning it will be very different than the low-end--but widely used--integrated graphics that Intel now offers as part of the silicon that accompanies its processors. And Larrabee will be based on the universal Intel x86 architecture. The first Larrabee product will be "targeted at the personal computer market," according to Intel. This means the PC gaming market--putting Nvidia and AMD-ATI directly into Intel's sights. Nvidia and AMD-ATI currently dominate the market for "discrete" or stand-alone graphics processing units. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...ee-2-small.jpg Larry Seiler (standing, middle), a senior Intel engineer, and Stephen Junkins (sitting, right), an Intel graphics software architect, speak at a briefing on Larrabee chip, due in 2009-2010. (Credit: Brooke Crothers) As Intel sees it, Larrabee combines the best attributes of a central processing unit (CPU) with a graphics processor. "The thing we need is an architecture that combines the full programmability of the CPU with the kinds of parallelism and other special capabilities of graphics processors. And that architecture is Larrabee," Larry Seiler, a senior principal engineer in Intel's Visual Computing Group, said at a briefing on Larrabee in San Francisco last week. "It is not a GPU as many have mistakenly described it, but it can do most graphics functions," Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, said in an article he posted Friday about Larrabee. "It looks like a GPU and acts like a GPU but actually what it's doing is introducing a large number of x86 cores into your PC," said Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer, alluding to the myriad ways Larrabee could be used beyond just graphics processing. In addition to the PC, high- performance computing and workstations are two potential markets that were also mentioned. Intel describes it in a statement as "the industry's first many-core x86 Intel architecture." The chipmaker currently offers quad-core processors and will offer eight-core processors based on its Nehalem architecture, but Larrabee is expected to have dozens of cores and, later, possibly hundreds. The number of cores in each Larrabee chip may vary, according to market segment. Intel showed a slide with core counts ranging from 8 to 48, claiming performance scales almost linearly as more cores are added: that is, 16 cores will offer twice the performance of eight cores. The individual cores in Larrabee are derived from the Intel Pentium processor and "then we added 64-bit instructions and multi-threading," Seiler said. Each core has 256 kilobytes of level-2 cache allowing the size of the cache to scale with the total number of cores, according to Seiler. And application programming interfaces (APIs) such as Microsoft's DirectX and Apple's Open CL can be tapped. "Larrabee does not require a special API. Larrabee will excel on standard graphics APIs," he said. "So existing games will be able to run on Larrabee products." So, what is Larrabee's market potential? Today, the graphics chip market is approaching 400 million units a year and has consolidated into a handful of suppliers. "And of that population, two suppliers, ATI and Nvidia, own 98 percent of the discrete GPU business." according to Peddie. "And the trend line indicates a flattening to decline in the business...However, Intel is no light-weight start up, and to enter the market today a company has to have a major infrastructure, deep IP (intellectual property), and marketing prowess--Intel has all that and more," Peddie said. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...lide-small.jpg Larrabee combines aspects of a CPU and GPU (Credit: Intel) Though more details will be provided at Siggraph 2008, some key Larrabee features: Larrabee programming model: supports a variety of highly parallel applications, including those that use irregular data structures. This enables development of graphics APIs, rapid innovation of new graphics algorithms, and true general purpose computation on the graphics processor with established PC software development tools. Software-based scheduling: Larrabee features task scheduling which is performed entirely with software, rather than in fixed function logic. Therefore rendering pipelines and other complex software systems can adjust their resource scheduling based each workload's unique computing demand. Execution threads: Larrabee architecture supports four execution threads per core with separate register sets per thread. This allows the use of a simple efficient in-order pipeline, but retains many of the latency-hiding benefits of more complex out-of-order pipelines when running highly parallel applications. Ring network: Larrabee uses a 1024 bits-wide, bi-directional ring network (i.e., 512 bits in each direction) to allow agents to communicate with each other in low latency manner resulting in super fast communication between cores. "A key characteristic of this vector processor is a property we call being vector complete...You can run 16 pixels in parallel, 16 vertices in parallel, or 16 more general program indications in parallel," Seiler said. Can anyone over 40 read about this without thinking of "Get Smart"? D. |
#3
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Intel details future -Larrabee- graphics chip
Dale E. Pontius wrote:
snip : Can anyone over 40 read about this without thinking of "Get : Smart"? : : D. Ok Dale, I get it. Sort of like the antics in the "cone of silence", eh? Too funny! :-) j. |
#4
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Intel details future -Larrabee- graphics chip
On Aug 6, 3:20*pm, "Dale E. Pontius"
wrote: NV55 wrote: *http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10005391-64.html Intel has disclosed details on a chip that will compete directly with Nvidia and ATI and may take it into unchartered technological and market-segment waters. Larrabee will be a stand-alone chip, meaning it will be very different than the low-end--but widely used--integrated graphics that Intel now offers as part of the silicon that accompanies its processors. And Larrabee will be based on the universal Intel x86 architecture. The first Larrabee product will be "targeted at the personal computer market," according to Intel. This means the PC gaming market--putting Nvidia and AMD-ATI directly into Intel's sights. Nvidia and AMD-ATI currently dominate the market for "discrete" or stand-alone graphics processing units. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...ee-2-small.jpg Larry Seiler (standing, middle), a senior Intel engineer, and Stephen Junkins (sitting, right), an Intel graphics software architect, speak at a briefing on Larrabee chip, due in 2009-2010. (Credit: Brooke Crothers) As Intel sees it, Larrabee combines the best attributes of a central processing unit (CPU) with a graphics processor. "The thing we need is an architecture that combines the full programmability of the CPU with the kinds of parallelism and other special capabilities of graphics processors. And that architecture is Larrabee," Larry Seiler, a senior principal engineer in Intel's Visual Computing Group, said at a briefing on Larrabee in San Francisco last week. "It is not a GPU as many have mistakenly described it, but it can do most graphics functions," Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, said in an article he posted Friday about Larrabee. "It looks like a GPU and acts like a GPU but actually what it's doing is introducing a large number of x86 cores into your PC," said Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer, alluding to the myriad ways Larrabee could be used beyond just graphics processing. In addition to the PC, high- performance computing and workstations are two potential markets that were also mentioned. Intel describes it in a statement as "the industry's first many-core x86 Intel architecture." The chipmaker currently offers quad-core processors and will offer eight-core processors based on its Nehalem architecture, but Larrabee is expected to have dozens of cores and, later, possibly hundreds. The number of cores in each Larrabee chip may vary, according to market segment. Intel showed a slide with core counts ranging from 8 to 48, claiming performance scales almost linearly as more cores are added: that is, 16 cores will offer twice the performance of eight cores. The individual cores in Larrabee are derived from the Intel Pentium processor and "then we added 64-bit instructions and multi-threading," Seiler said. Each core has 256 kilobytes of level-2 cache allowing the size of the cache to scale with the total number of cores, according to Seiler. And application programming interfaces (APIs) such as Microsoft's DirectX and Apple's Open CL can be tapped. "Larrabee does not require a special API. Larrabee will excel on standard graphics APIs," he said. "So existing games will be able to run on Larrabee products." So, what is Larrabee's market potential? Today, the graphics chip market is approaching 400 million units a year and has consolidated into a handful of suppliers. "And of that population, two suppliers, ATI and Nvidia, own 98 percent of the discrete GPU business." according to Peddie. "And the trend line indicates a flattening to decline in the business...However, Intel is no light-weight start up, and to enter the market today a company has to have a major infrastructure, deep IP (intellectual property), and marketing prowess--Intel has all that and more," Peddie said. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...e-explanation-... Larrabee combines aspects of a CPU and GPU (Credit: Intel) Though more details will be provided at Siggraph 2008, some key Larrabee features: Larrabee programming model: supports a variety of highly parallel applications, including those that use irregular data structures. This enables development of graphics APIs, rapid innovation of new graphics algorithms, and true general purpose computation on the graphics processor with established PC software development tools. Software-based scheduling: Larrabee features task scheduling which is performed entirely with software, rather than in fixed function logic. Therefore rendering pipelines and other complex software systems can adjust their resource scheduling based each workload's unique computing demand. Execution threads: Larrabee architecture supports four execution threads per core with separate register sets per thread. This allows the use of a simple efficient in-order pipeline, but retains many of the latency-hiding benefits of more complex out-of-order pipelines when running highly parallel applications. Ring network: Larrabee uses a 1024 bits-wide, bi-directional ring network (i.e., 512 bits in each direction) to allow agents to communicate with each other in low latency manner resulting in super fast communication between cores. "A key characteristic of this vector processor is a property we call being vector complete...You can run 16 pixels in parallel, 16 vertices in parallel, or 16 more general program indications in parallel," Seiler said. Can anyone over 40 read about this without thinking of "Get Smart"? You have a track record of successful predictions about significant developments in technology? It's probably not as big as microcomputers, but the signs are the same: everybody's building one. I'm way over forty, and I thought I understood microcomputers as soon as I saw Visi-Calc running on an Apple II. I foresaw that graphics would gobble cycles and bandwidth essentially forever and that the most ordinary of users would need it. I missed on Itanium; or rather, I missed on the value of exploiting predictability. If nothing else, I'm apparently outnumbered on building "supercomputers" with vanishing bisection bandwidth (which "scales"--to zero). I've got Larrabee wrong? Possibly. Why are you so sure of yourself? Robert. |
#6
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Intel details future -Larrabee- graphics chip
Robert Myers wrote:
On Aug 6, 3:20 pm, "Dale E. Pontius" wrote: NV55 wrote: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10005391-64.html Intel has disclosed details on a chip that will compete directly with Nvidia and ATI and may take it into unchartered technological and market-segment waters. Larrabee will be a stand-alone chip, meaning it will be very different than the low-end--but widely used--integrated graphics that Intel now offers as part of the silicon that accompanies its processors. And Larrabee will be based on the universal Intel x86 architecture. The first Larrabee product will be "targeted at the personal computer market," according to Intel. This means the PC gaming market--putting Nvidia and AMD-ATI directly into Intel's sights. Nvidia and AMD-ATI currently dominate the market for "discrete" or stand-alone graphics processing units. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...ee-2-small.jpg Larry Seiler (standing, middle), a senior Intel engineer, and Stephen Junkins (sitting, right), an Intel graphics software architect, speak at a briefing on Larrabee chip, due in 2009-2010. (Credit: Brooke Crothers) As Intel sees it, Larrabee combines the best attributes of a central processing unit (CPU) with a graphics processor. "The thing we need is an architecture that combines the full programmability of the CPU with the kinds of parallelism and other special capabilities of graphics processors. And that architecture is Larrabee," Larry Seiler, a senior principal engineer in Intel's Visual Computing Group, said at a briefing on Larrabee in San Francisco last week. "It is not a GPU as many have mistakenly described it, but it can do most graphics functions," Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, said in an article he posted Friday about Larrabee. "It looks like a GPU and acts like a GPU but actually what it's doing is introducing a large number of x86 cores into your PC," said Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer, alluding to the myriad ways Larrabee could be used beyond just graphics processing. In addition to the PC, high- performance computing and workstations are two potential markets that were also mentioned. Intel describes it in a statement as "the industry's first many-core x86 Intel architecture." The chipmaker currently offers quad-core processors and will offer eight-core processors based on its Nehalem architecture, but Larrabee is expected to have dozens of cores and, later, possibly hundreds. The number of cores in each Larrabee chip may vary, according to market segment. Intel showed a slide with core counts ranging from 8 to 48, claiming performance scales almost linearly as more cores are added: that is, 16 cores will offer twice the performance of eight cores. The individual cores in Larrabee are derived from the Intel Pentium processor and "then we added 64-bit instructions and multi-threading," Seiler said. Each core has 256 kilobytes of level-2 cache allowing the size of the cache to scale with the total number of cores, according to Seiler. And application programming interfaces (APIs) such as Microsoft's DirectX and Apple's Open CL can be tapped. "Larrabee does not require a special API. Larrabee will excel on standard graphics APIs," he said. "So existing games will be able to run on Larrabee products." So, what is Larrabee's market potential? Today, the graphics chip market is approaching 400 million units a year and has consolidated into a handful of suppliers. "And of that population, two suppliers, ATI and Nvidia, own 98 percent of the discrete GPU business." according to Peddie. "And the trend line indicates a flattening to decline in the business...However, Intel is no light-weight start up, and to enter the market today a company has to have a major infrastructure, deep IP (intellectual property), and marketing prowess--Intel has all that and more," Peddie said. http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/200...e-explanation-... Larrabee combines aspects of a CPU and GPU (Credit: Intel) Though more details will be provided at Siggraph 2008, some key Larrabee features: Larrabee programming model: supports a variety of highly parallel applications, including those that use irregular data structures. This enables development of graphics APIs, rapid innovation of new graphics algorithms, and true general purpose computation on the graphics processor with established PC software development tools. Software-based scheduling: Larrabee features task scheduling which is performed entirely with software, rather than in fixed function logic. Therefore rendering pipelines and other complex software systems can adjust their resource scheduling based each workload's unique computing demand. Execution threads: Larrabee architecture supports four execution threads per core with separate register sets per thread. This allows the use of a simple efficient in-order pipeline, but retains many of the latency-hiding benefits of more complex out-of-order pipelines when running highly parallel applications. Ring network: Larrabee uses a 1024 bits-wide, bi-directional ring network (i.e., 512 bits in each direction) to allow agents to communicate with each other in low latency manner resulting in super fast communication between cores. "A key characteristic of this vector processor is a property we call being vector complete...You can run 16 pixels in parallel, 16 vertices in parallel, or 16 more general program indications in parallel," Seiler said. Can anyone over 40 read about this without thinking of "Get Smart"? You have a track record of successful predictions about significant developments in technology? It's probably not as big as microcomputers, but the signs are the same: everybody's building one. I'm way over forty, and I thought I understood microcomputers as soon as I saw Visi-Calc running on an Apple II. I foresaw that graphics would gobble cycles and bandwidth essentially forever and that the most ordinary of users would need it. I missed on Itanium; or rather, I missed on the value of exploiting predictability. If nothing else, I'm apparently outnumbered on building "supercomputers" with vanishing bisection bandwidth (which "scales"--to zero). I've got Larrabee wrong? Possibly. Why are you so sure of yourself? Robert. You're reading way the heck too much into this. I'm pretty sure you're over 40, so evidently unlike me, you didn't watch way too much TV as a kid. I was making no technology prognostication whatsoever, I was merely commenting on the code name itself. The sad thing is that I can't even remember much specifically about the "Larrabee" character in "Get Smart", but the whole thing was funny. D. |
#7
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Intel details future -Larrabee- graphics chip
On Aug 7, 7:12*am, "Dale E. Pontius"
wrote: You're reading way the heck too much into this. *I'm pretty sure you're over 40, so evidently unlike me, you didn't watch way too much TV as a kid. *I was making no technology prognostication whatsoever, I was merely commenting on the code name itself. The sad thing is that I can't even remember much specifically about the "Larrabee" character in "Get Smart", but the whole thing was funny. I'm sorry for misreading the intent of your post. "Get Smart," like "Man from Uncle" was, among other things, a showcase of stupid technology tricks. "Get Smart" made the joke obvious. In "Man from Uncle" the joke was more often on the viewer, as the technological silliness was pursued with a very straight face. There are already those who are dismissing larrabee as a stupid technology trick because manufacturers can't think of anything else to do with all that cache. The idea of using many much more simple cores on a chip is at least as old as the mid-nineties. My apologies for reacting so strongly. Robert. |
#8
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Intel details future -Larrabee- graphics chip
On Aug 7, 10:52*am, Robert Myers wrote:
There are already those who are dismissing larrabee as a stupid technology trick because manufacturers can't think of anything else to do with all that cache. Should have been "all those transistors." You can, of course, always expand cache, and there might be at least a few who are wondering why the manufacturers haven't done that (or added another level of cache). Robert. |
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