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
Final Words
Well, we've known it was coming for quite a while. We knew it would be a many-core CPU architecture well suited to graphics. And with as much information as we were given, when we sat down to look at what we had we felt like we still didn't know anything about Larrabee. Piles of data and information, insight into how a software render would fit on top of the underlying architecture... it has left us with the feeling that all this is a really cool idea with great potential, but we just don't have any idea what or how well it will do when it finally hits.
Of course, this is the first time any real detail has been given, and any hint of product is at least 12 to 18+ months off. We can't expect Intel to give everything away right off the bat. We are very happy to have the detail we do, and can't wait to get more.
While we are very interested in the architecture from the sort of technophile point of view that we can't help but have, technology for technology sake (no matter how cool the theory behind it might be) amounts to nothing without real-world application and benefit. For Larrabee it will all come down to peformance and price.
AMD has shown that you don't need to be on top to compete. As long as performance somewhere in the middle of the pack can be produced, appropriate and aggressive pricing can go quite a long way. For the consumer it is always a cost/benefit analysis, and there are quite a number of computers with $100 - $300 graphics cards under the hood. If compatibility is there, if performance is there, and if Intel is able to price it right, the first round of Larrabee hardware doesn't need to be ground breaking.
Getting a good foothold and sticking it out for the long haul should be Intel's goal. Compatibility (especially with the track record of Intel's integrated graphics) is likely more important than pure performance. Getting product out there into the market is necssary before developers will even start to take a chance on pushing the hardware itself. And this is where Larrabee could really shine.
Opening the door to fully programmable rendering and making it attractive enough for developers to start pushing the envelope will be a long process. The current game development arena is all about return on investment, and except for a few brave souls we will likely see game and engine developers stick to DirectX 10 for quite some time even after DX 11 comes along. Those who venture into the realm of pure software renderes written for a highly data-parallel CPU will be the exception rather than the norm.
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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?