Intel's Larrabee: A killer blow for AMD

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

It's a silly sounding name, Larrabee. But it must fill AMD 's heart with terror. It's the codename, of course, for a whole family of new processors being cooked up by Intel . And it promises to add graphics insult to AMD's existing CPU injuries.

Frankly, things are bad enough for AMD already. Since launch last summer, the Core 2 processor has been pistol whipping AMD's Athlon CPUs into burger meat. Meanwhile, AMD's upcoming quad-core competitor, broadly known as Barcelona, looks like a pretty unambitious effort. It will certainly have to be some chip to take on Intel's upcoming 45nm die shrink of the Core 2 chip. Factor in recent reports of a launch delay for Barcelona and I'm beginning to get the fear about AMD's ability to compete.

Then there's the spectacular fashion in which the wheels have come off AMD's recently acquired ATI graphics subsidiary. ATI's all new flagship graphics DX10 board, the Radeon HD 2900 XT was very late, extremely underwhelming on arrival and possibly a bit broken. The midrange variants of the Radeon HD range don't look much healthier: they've been sent back to the fab for a respin. Not a good sign.

In that context, the emergence of the Larrabee project from Intel is just further proof of how far ahead of the game Intel appears to be at moment. For the uninitiated, Larrabee is an all new multi-core processor design that majors on floating point power.

The full feature set hasn't been revealed as yet, but an official Intel document turned up on a university website recently that reveals several fascinating new details.

Try these specs for size. Larrabee will be available in configurations ranging from 16 to 24 with clock speeds as high as 2GHz and raw performance in the 1TFlop range. The latter figure is approximately 40 times more than an existing Intel Core 2 Duo chip. Yup, you read it right. 40 times. And the first Larrabee chips are pencilled in for as soon as 2009.

Of course, floating point power is just one part of the overall PC processing equation - Intel will be retaining a conventional CPU roadmap for general purpose duties based on the existing Core 2 family.

But Larrabee will take Intel into brand new markets. Significantly, the document confirmed that a variant with full 3D video rendering capability is on the cards. As we reported earlier this week, the rumblings on the rumour mill suggest the chip could be a joint effort with Nvidia.

Either way, the most fascinating aspect of the Larrabee GPU is the expectation that it could be the first graphics processor to combine both traditional raster graphics with more advanced ray-tracing techniques.

Without getting bogged down in the details, suffice to understand that raster graphics are a bit of a kludge when it comes to simulating lighting. Ray-tracing is the real deal. Ask any 3D graphics professional what they think about ray tracing on GPUs and they'll tell it's a matter of when rather than if.

Of course, AMD and ATI will know perfectly well that ray tracing is the future. But what must be really worrying is that it presents Intel with the perfect inflection point to enter the graphics market. ATI and Nvidia have refined raster graphics to the point where other companies, including Intel, simply can't compete. But a new age of ray-traced graphics will level the playing field and might just hand Intel a chance for the total domination of the PC platform it so dearly desires. Jeremy Laird

Source

Larrabee on Wiki

[chconline Veteran]

Um, is this real? Lol :p

[Ultomato]

edit-

so does this mean integrated graphics are going to own now?

[Punio4]

Ok, I really don't understand... Is it a GPU or a CPU?

[PL_ Veteran]

I hereby dub thee...CORE 3!!!

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

edit-

so does this mean integrated graphics are going to own now?

Well, each new chip owns a previous generation chip :) So in a sence, they have owned all the time, but to answer your question, I think it means that Intel is very serious abou grabbing a GPU market share and with a chip this strong, I'm sure they will build a standalone video card :)

Ok, I really don't understand... Is it a GPU or a CPU?

The technology behind GPU and CPU has always been the same. In a way, a GPU has always been a CPU with graphics related instructions dedicated to graphics only whereas a CPU would do all the functions.

This is what makes it special:

Larrabee is different from its predecessors in that it uses a derivative of the x86 instruction set for its shader cores instead of a custom graphics-oriented instruction set, and is expected to be more flexible. In addition to traditional 3D graphics for games, Larrabee is also being designed for GPGPU or Stream Processing tasks; for example to perform ray tracing or physics processing, perhaps as a component of a supercomputer

I hereby dub thee...CORE 3!!!

Intel will probably name Wolfdale/Yorkfield/Penryn that ;)

Um, is this real? Lol :p

Yes it is :) Here is more info.

[PL_ Veteran]

Okay, what about Core 3 Fusion? ;)

[Premgenius]

:D

[BajiRav]

Wow Core Myth now officially replacing MHZ Myth :D

[spacer]

This will be out just in time for Crysis2!

/boner

[Blaine]

This sounds so hot

[georgevella]

Its essentially mimics how current graphics processors work with a number of execution units executing code in SIMD fashion. So yes it can be considered a GPU oriented more towards general purpose computing.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

does this mean graphics card will go the same way as sound cards, all integrated?

[KeeperOfThePizza]

Its essentially mimics how current graphics processors work with a number of execution units executing code in SIMD fashion. So yes it can be considered a GPU oriented more towards general purpose computing.

glad i havent upgraded from s939 yet.

[DoubleThink]

Wow, this could be a near fatal blow to struggling AMD. So it looks like Core 3 is on its way (Y)

[Tuffgong4]

does this mean graphics card will go the same way as sound cards, all integrated?

only if they integrate the sound into the processor. this is different because it won't be a chip soldered on to the motherboard like integrated sound but a merger of cpu and gpu.

[sevastopol]

i dont think it will be a final blow. hard yes, but amd will fight, its used to it

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

*drool*

[spenser.d]

Wow, this could be a near fatal blow to struggling AMD. So it looks like Core 3 is on its way (Y)

You act like killing off the only major competition is a good thing. I'd rather AMD be sticking around.

-Spenser

[Orange]

Always been with INTEL and only tried AMD once, will stick with INTEL i think :D

[Impact]

I have always liked Intel. This will be very interesting when it comes out to see how well it performs against Nvidia's offerings them (assuming Intel hasn't bought Nvidia :))

[Miuku.]

And AMD dying off would bring us back to the 80s and early 90s - most of you are too young to remember how hard Intel ****ed on us all back then.

No competition - no innovation - no choice - who loses? You do.

[joeydoo]

And AMD dying off would bring us back to the 80s and early 90s - most of you are too young to remember how hard Intel ****ed on us all back then.

No competition - no innovation - no choice - who loses? You do.

But equally.... Intel shouldn't be holding back in case the good products they come up with kill AMD. It's all on AMD's head to raise their game.

[Fourjays Veteran]

But equally.... Intel shouldn't be holding back in case the good products they come up with kill AMD. It's all on AMD's head to raise their game.

:yes:

Intel holding back would be the same as AMD going bust. AMD or someone else has to compete.

[Naughty Dog]

This is in a way reminding me of the movie 300 except Persia is Intel and AMD is the other group i forgot the name.