Larrabee: A fiasco, or the future?

[villa1n]

It's not a matter of If it will pan out, but rather when. How much money and how much ROI is what will dictate whether the product comes to fruition or not.. you cant tell me a company with 10 times the market cap of its top 2 competitors combined cant afford to hire engineers, developers to come up with something better than what is out there...its just a matter of resources.

[FischOderAal]

It's not a matter of If it will pan out, but rather when. How much money and how much ROI is what will dictate whether the product comes to fruition or not.. you cant tell me a company with 10 times the market cap of its top 2 competitors combined cant afford to hire engineers, developers to come up with something better than what is out there...its just a matter of resources.

Well, first I have to say that I have basically no knowledge about ICs whatsoever. But I don't think you can "easily" start from scratch and release a GPU that is as fast as the ones of your competitor, which have been in the business for several years. Somehow I doubt it's that easy, even with a f*ckload of resources.

[saaya]

Well, first I have to say that I have basically no knowledge about ICs whatsoever. But I don't think you can "easily" start from scratch and release a GPU that is as fast as the ones of your competitor, which have been in the business for several years. Somehow I doubt it's that easy, even with a f*ckload of resources.

why would an engineering team be able to build a sweet gpu at nvidia and ati but not intel? is there something special in the air or water in their labs there?

intel hired quite some nvidia engineers, if all they do is rebuild G200 on intels 45nm process they would probably be enough for a mainstream product already... the thing is, its not about building a fast gpu... intel could do that but it would accelerate them losing grip as x86 fades away... what they want is build a cpu that can act as a gpu... a software emulated gpu... and one that is at least as fast as a propper gpu... THAT is all still possible and a matter of resources... BUT, intel wants it to be financially feasible and possibly even wantsd to mkake money with it...

THAT might be something that is actually impossible... itll either be slower or cost more than a conventional gpu... you cant beat a fixed function processor in its own game with a general purpose processor at the same transistor budget...

its like expecting an SUV which can drive everywhere and is sortof a general purpose car, to beat an F1 car, which can only drive on very flat streets, but does so at insane speeds... now you either build an insane suv mutant at insane costs, that can drive as fast as a f1 car on a racetrack, but can ALSO drive everywhere else... or youll lose the race on an f1 track... obviously...

im confused how intel thought this was going to work... with their mfc advantage in their sleeve that might work out, but apparently they wanna use the cheap old 45nm fabs for lrb once cpus have moved to 32nm? 0_o

[marten_larsson]

its like expecting an SUV which can drive everywhere and is sortof a general purpose car, to beat an F1 car, which can only drive on very flat streets, but does so at insane speeds... now you either build an insane suv mutant at insane costs, that can drive as fast as a f1 car on a racetrack, but can ALSO drive everywhere else... or youll lose the race on an f1 track... obviously...

Great car anology!

[XmikeX]

Great car anology!

Indeed. Unfortunately, F-1 seems insipid these days.

XmX

[gosh]

Larabee needs to be compatible with software in some way and if you develop for Larabee that software needs to work on other hardware with reasonably speed.

Intel would need to spend loads of money to develop software for Larabee if it differs to much from existing hardware. As a programmer you don't start to develop advanced software if there isn't a market.

If DX12 has raytracing and that works on AMD and/or nVidia GPU's. This could maybe be the entry for Larabee into the market.

[nn_step]

why would an engineering team be able to build a sweet gpu at nvidia and ati but not intel? is there something special in the air or water in their labs there?

intel hired quite some nvidia engineers, if all they do is rebuild G200 on intels 45nm process they would probably be enough for a mainstream product already... the thing is, its not about building a fast gpu... intel could do that but it would accelerate them losing grip as x86 fades away... what they want is build a cpu that can act as a gpu... a software emulated gpu... and one that is at least as fast as a propper gpu... THAT is all still possible and a matter of resources... BUT, intel wants it to be financially feasible and possibly even wantsd to mkake money with it...

THAT might be something that is actually impossible... itll either be slower or cost more than a conventional gpu... you cant beat a fixed function processor in its own game with a general purpose processor at the same transistor budget...

its like expecting an SUV which can drive everywhere and is sortof a general purpose car, to beat an F1 car, which can only drive on very flat streets, but does so at insane speeds... now you either build an insane suv mutant at insane costs, that can drive as fast as a f1 car on a racetrack, but can ALSO drive everywhere else... or youll lose the race on an f1 track... obviously...

im confused how intel thought this was going to work... with their mfc advantage in their sleeve that might work out, but apparently they wanna use the cheap old 45nm fabs for lrb once cpus have moved to 32nm? 0_o

Well the short answer is that Intel artificially handicapped themselves by demanding x86 Compatibility. Ati and nVidia are completely free to do what ever they desire with the underlying architectures and modify them at a minutes notice to improve performance. While Intel is stuck supporting every single bad idea introduced into x86 since the introduction of the 8086.
It is a long known historical fact that legacy ISAs always have a lower performance per transistor compared to completely new ISAs which often have the benefits of learning from the mistakes of previous ISAs.

[cegras]

why would an engineering team be able to build a sweet gpu at nvidia and ati but not intel? is there something special in the air or water in their labs there?

You already said it yourself: both ati and nvidia have design wins and losses, and the pedigree of their technology stretches back many many years. And yet, even though they are in the GPU business, they produce different designs.

[ajaidev]

You already said it yourself: both ati and nvidia have design wins and losses, and the pedigree of their technology stretches back many many years. And yet, even though they are in the GPU business, they produce different designs.

+1

It would have been easier for Intel to just buy Nvidia and go for the x86 GPU at a later stage. The question remains can Intel still buy Nvidia or cant they ??


Initially the x86 GPU will be back breaking but in long term not so much intel all ready has shown how the thing can do with more core. The base just needs to be stable so that the future is secure. The future seems more like a Crysis 5 Holographic edition than anything like Crysis 5 now with Ray tracing. 3D holograms need lots of processing power something that x86 GPU will be very very good at!! that is if it gets launched.

[Unoid]

Intel bought Havok in 07, as well as purchasing a game studio that is making Project offset.

I can see Intel releasing the game with advanced larrabeee support with kickass physics all done on larrabee

http://www.projectoffset.com/index.p...d=58&Itemid=12

[Xoulz]

Intel bought Havok in 07, as well as purchasing a game studio that is making Project offset.

I can see Intel releasing the game with advanced larrabeee support with kickass physics all done on larrabee

http://www.projectoffset.com/index.p...d=58&Itemid=12

Yep. We discussed this a while back and I also believe that Seth * Co's Project Offset will be Larrabee's golden egg.

Glad more people see this coming!



PS: whoever said "the'll need to learn to write new software for it (larrabee)" Doesn't understand Larrabee is X86...