Intel refocuses on integrated graphics

[iMacmatician]

And the Larrabee HPC part has been announced as Intel has said.

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/20100531comp.htm

Aubrey Isle = 1st generation Larrabee chip

Knights Ferry = development card with Aubrey Isle

• 32 cores (128 threads)
• 1.2 GHz
• 300 W
• 45 nm
• 1-2 GB GDDR5
• 1.23 TeraFLOPS peak compute performance
• H2 2010

Knights Corner = production card

• >50 cores
• 22 nm

 

[halledise]

anantech reports on Intel's graphics card statement posted yesterday which notes that there will be no Intel discrete GPU (duh) in the short term and that Intel is focusing with "laser like precision" on integrated graphics.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3738/...t-bring-a-discrete-graphics-product-to-market

Not too much here, except that it indicates that Intel will be sticking to their own integrated graphics strategy for the long haul.

As the author notes, it also validates AMD's approach with ATI.

The article says to expect a 2x improvement over current Intel graphics for the early 2011 chips, and another 2x for the following chips.

Just food for thought.

Moore's Law ain't dead, just modified with the SOP approach (System on Package)

 

[JoeG4]

Apple should just buy AMD

 

[halledise]

Maybe Apple will just move us over to AMD and give us even more incredible ATI graphics! I could be really happy with AMD and ATI.

+111

YESSSSSSSSSS! that would be awesome (or should that be awefull - i.e. 'full' of awe rather than just 'some' awe)

my mate, who's got his own successful small-business as a PC box builder (and who's also a closet Mac man since I gifted him a coupla old iMacs), absolutely loves AMD and ATI and dislikes intensely the Intel monopoly.

He refused to install and sell Vista on his machines, unless customers were really insistent, but kinda likes Windows 7.
but he says to all customers that AMD is the way to go.
A superior product in his opinion.

He's got a dedicated machine with AMD processor and ATI graphics running Linux on one partition and some kind of Hackintosh on another and the thing fair flies he sez.
He reckons Intel should lodge their processors and Microsoft should insert Vista in a place where the sun don't shine.

 

[peakchua]

intel SUCKS at graphics. intel should dream on. though intel gma is improving. it SHOULD BE another option by an OEM or buyer as a CHEAPER option since it sucks so bad. i dont mind gma but thinking it makes my macbook pro have 330 m graphics instead of HIGHER end graphics because this **** fills the space makes me really not happy. if intel can make the gma get up to the performance of the 9600m gt or the 320m then i will not mind intel gma. BUT RIGHT NOW it is at the level of the nvidblow 9400murderer.

 

[applesupergeek]

iMacmatecian's post is irrelevant to this thread and misleading. The hpc project stemming out of larabee is intel's failure to implement an x86 architecture for a consumer gpu as they intended too and had high hopes of. Of course if you put lots of x86 cores parallel then you might have a good parallel computing device, but as it turns out the pipe dreams of a consumer gpu stay just that, pipe dreams.

Their issuing of this failed project as an hpc variant is of course irrelevant to the prospects of their consumer gpus which they have saddled with inferior graphics and directly negatively affected the refress cycle and future of the air.

I will not hypothesize on why he would post something misleading and irrelevant because apparently close to the whole second page of this thread has dissipated (was expurgated that is) because I did. It's still inexplicable to me how my comments on the irrelevancy of this post have vanished, while a post that has no reason to be here stayed.

Now let me go to the parallel computing sub forums and tell them about amd releasing ultra low power chips with great integrated api graphics in a few months that could fit the air. That should interest them and elicit plenty of wt? responses.

 

[bigwig]

I wonder why Intel decided to do a highly parallel floating-point oriented x86 (Larrabee) when Itanium was their floating-point optimized architecture, plus unlike x86 it was designed from the start for highly parallel applications (witness its use in the 1024-CPU SGI Altix). Itanium also has a tiny transistor count compared to x86. Shrink it to 32nm and let it fly.

 

[applesupergeek]

I wonder why Intel decided to do a highly parallel floating-point oriented x86 (Larrabee) when Itanium was their floating-point optimized architecture, plus unlike x86 it was designed from the start for highly parallel applications (witness its use in the 1024-CPU SGI Altix). Itanium also has a tiny transistor count compared to x86. Shrink it to 32nm and let it fly.

Because itanium was going down the road of abandonware and the larrabee team (and the top execs that gave the green light to it) had to justify the millions of dollars spent with at least some semblance of an applied product, even though that product was not the intended one.

Kind of like throwing out a better prepared dinner that's two days old, setting out to make a new dish, only to end up burning it and then picking up the half burned remains to serve anew.

 

[iSpoody 1243]

well if apple moved to amd and ati we would get quadcore cpus in the mbp a hell of allot sooner than from intel. I would so love to have a quadcore mac mini with a dedicated ati gpu