NVision: Larrabee to Run Like Its 2006

Posted 08/25/2008 at 10:50am | by Chris Moody

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Nvidia has been pretty hard on Larrabee, saying the multi-core CPU/GPU is wishful thinking. PC Pro reported that Andy Keane Andy Keane, Nvidia general manager of the GPU computing group had this to say;

"There's an incredible amount about Larrabee that's undefined," explained Keane, commenting on the specifications so far released. "You can't just say 'it's x86 so it's going to solve the massively parallel computing problem.'" He went on to say, "Look at the PC, With an OS they don't control, and applications coming from everywhere... to say arbitrarily that everything's going to scale to 32 cores seems to me to be a bit of a stretch."

John Montrym, chief architect for the Nvidia’s GT200 core, also thinks Intel is off about Larrabee’s real world performance, but conceded that, "Intel is not a stupid company," he conceded. "They've put a lot of people behind this, so clearly they believe it's viable. But the products on our roadmap are competitive to this thing, as they've painted it. And the reality is going to fall short of the optimistic way they've painted it."

He goes on to quote blogger and CPU architect, Peter Glaskowsky, "the 'large' Larrabee in 2010 will have roughly the same performance as a 2006 GPU from Nvidia or ATI."

I think Montrym was right, "Intel is not a stupid company". Will they really release a video solution that will perform so under par with contemporary GPUs? I find that hard to believe. Nvidia may be counting its chickens before they hatch.

Time will tell, and when Larrabee launches we will see who will be eating crow, Nvidia or Intel. Who do you think is right?