did anyone read this?

juliusctw · Post by **juliusctw** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:08 am

hello

I'm just what people think about Intel's drive to kill graphics card and replace them with multiple core processors?

Do you guys think the future is multiple core, instead of graphics card?

Here's what I have read about it.

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing ... gpu-465590

jjp · Post by **jjp** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:37 am

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... t=larrabee

A graphics card is a "multiple core" processor with some fixed function logic attached to it for texture filtering, rasterization and so on. The question is if eventually everything fixed function is going to vanish. For the mid-term future I don't think so because the performance per transistor gained through using dedicated logic for some things is so high.

Post by **Kojack** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:41 am

I dislike Intel itself, I think all Intel gfx chips are a joke, but even if it doesn't beat nvidia or ati in performance I really want to get a Larrabee, just to play around with it. Plus there's people on the team I respect, so I have confidence that it will at least be cool, even if the first version doesn't kick everyone else's ass.

Although Larrabee isn't an attempt to get rid of gfx cards, it's an attempt to get rid of nvidia and ati gfx cards. Larrabee is still a gfx card, it just contains 32+ pentiums instead of 32+ custom shader units like other cards do.

eugen · Post by **eugen** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:52 am

Kojack wrote:I dislike Intel itself, I think all Intel gfx chips are a joke, but even if it doesn't beat nvidia or ati in performance I really want to get a Larrabee, just to play around with it. Plus there's people on the team I respect, so I have confidence that it will at least be cool, even if the first version doesn't kick everyone else's ass.

Although Larrabee isn't an attempt to get rid of gfx cards, it's an attempt to get rid of nvidia and ati gfx cards. Larrabee is still a gfx card, it just contains 32+ pentiums instead of 32+ custom shader units like other cards do.

Actually they said Larrabee processors are general porpose CPU (+ few GPU specific stuff but too few to be considered a GPU) and they suppose to be able to be easily programmed by common CPU code (like the one we write now for our c++ programs). The win would be the fact that you can use the processing power of the new many core architecture whereever you want whether is graphics, physics, ai or anything else and you can do that by using one programming language, one compiler...thats how i see it

Post by **Kencho** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:59 am

eugen wrote:Actually they said Larrabee processors are general porpose CPU (+ few GPU specific stuff but too few to be considered a GPU) and they suppose to be able to be easily programmed by common CPU code (like the one we write now for our c++ programs). The win would be the fact that you can use the processing power of the new many core architecture whereever you want whether is graphics, physics, ai or anything else and you can do that by using one programming language, one compiler...thats how i see it

I wonder if they're entering the GPGPU field too late. CUDA has been out for some time now, and nVidia has been promoting it everytime I've seen them.

syedhs · Post by **syedhs** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 1:42 pm

I remember more then ten years ago when RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) was pitted to beat CISC (Complete Instruction Set Computer) because of its inherently less complicated nature of code etc etc - RISC because was described as revolutionary against CISC. RISC at that time was championed by PowerPC and CISC was more or less Intel's. In the end, it didn't matter as Intel embraced more RISC approach in their design (it doesn't make sense to stay true to 100% CISC anyway) and PowerPC as we all know now, is basically doomed.

The same thing here, NVIDIA & ATI chips and the corresponding software which run on it have been written for years.. they are proven platforms and have lots and lots of games/simulation/etc applications running on them. Switching to Larabee or something similar just for the sake of changing to it wont cut it - even when Larabee have obvious advantages over current GPU design, I highly doubt of its success.

That is of course not with NVIDIA/ATI not doing anything at all. Probably, what they just need to is simply not to commit any blunder, innovate probably a bit better than today and have the necessary GPU tools/pipelines/libraries made available to developers more openly (or shall I say free) than ever.

Having said all these, I think Larabee will be something of complementary to GPU offering - not like Larabee will outshine NVIDIA and NVIDIA's numbered day of filing for chapter 11.