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Intel Quietly Promoting Larrabee in China

Paul Lilly — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:44 -0600

Intel hopes to eventually make a thunderous entrance in the discrete graphics market with its upcoming GPGPU chip codenamed Larrabee, and to do that, the company needs to line up some chip partners willing to jump on board. Intel CEO Paul Otellini set out to do that recently, talking privately to several China-based videocard makers.

According to what un-named sources have been whispering in DigiTimes' ear, Intel plans to offer preferential pricing for just the GPU by itself, as well as when bundled with other Intel products. This is a similar strategy to what Intel has been doing with its Atom platform, and it remains to be seen how many graphics partners will warm to Larrabee in this manner.

As it stands, some first-tier graphics card vendors are a bit leary about Larrabee on fears that the first release may end up buggy. But within the next couple of years, vendors expect Larrabee will be able to hold its own against what AMD and Nvidia have to offer.

Image Credit: Intel via Engadget

Epic Games Tim Sweeny Claims GPGPU Too Costly To Develop

Justin Kerr — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:25:31 -0500

Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney is on record as being stanchly against GPGPU computing in the past, but in a recent keynote delivered at the High Performance Graphics conference he further downplayed its future. From a developer standpoint he claims that GPGPU based applications can cost nearly 10x as much as a single threaded versions, with multi-core based software being the current sweet spot.

This isn’t the first time Sweeney has predicted the demise of GPGPU based computing technologies, but he has now further expanded his list of endangered technologies to include DirectX and OpenGL. In his speech last year Sweeny claimed that “In the next generation we’ll write 100-percent of our rendering code in a real programming language--not DirectX, not OpenGL, but a language like C++ or CUDA. Whether that runs on Nvidia hardware, Intel hardware or ATI hardware is really an independent question. You could potentially run it on any hardware that's capable of running general-purpose code efficiently."

Some might consider Sweeny’s comments a bit misguided considering that both Apple and Microsoft are strongly backing OpenCL, and ultimately if it turns out to be a more efficient way of doing certain tasks, couldn’t the development costs be justified? Clearly the GPU has future potential in the transcoding market, but do you think Sweeney has a point here?

AMD Demos DX11 Hardware Running at QuakeCon

Justin Kerr — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:01:39 -0500

DirectX 11 which will debut with the release of Windows 7 is arguably a pretty big deal. The new APIs will enjoy a much larger installed base than its predecessor thanks to backwards compatibility with Vista, and graphical improvements that were teased in DirectX 10 should see a pretty significant performance boost. With the release of Windows 7 nearly upon us, many have been holding off on GPU upgrades until the DX11 parts to start rolling off the line, and this time it appears AMD will beat Nvidia out of the gate with its “Evergreen” series.

This hunch was further re-enforced by a live hands on demonstration provided to PC Perspective at QuakeCon showing a working DX11 graphics card in action. The GPU code named “Future Card” was running several live DirectX 11 SDK simulations, but even more impressive was its ability to launch and run existing DirectX 9 titles. Its one thing to show a tech demo, but it’s even more impressive to prove you have a fully functional card.

It looks like the Radeon HD 5000 series will among the first DX11 cards on the market, and AMD could well be on track for a late 2009 release. Is the race to DirectX 11 a battle Nvidia can afford to lose?

AMD Announces OpenCL SDK for x86 Processors

Paul Lilly — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:05:00 -0500

GPGPU computing has been a frequent subject of tech chatter, the latest of which involves AMD's release of the first OpenCL SDK for x86 CPUs. What this does is enable developers to take OpenCL code that would normally be written for GPUs and target CPUs instead.

GPGPU computing, which offsets tasks from the CPU to the GPU, offers a range of benefits, including the potential for much faster video encoding and less time waiting for effects to be applied in supported applications like Photoshop CS4. But is there much use for AMD's "backwards" concept?

"The beta will help programmers more easily develop parallel software programs and take further advantage of multicore x86 CPUs to accelearate software and deliver a better computing experience," AMD states.

According to Arstechnica, until AMD's SDK is able to target GPUs, debugging will remain the primary use.

Image Credit: AMD/ATI

Nvidia Discusses DirectX in Windows 7

Paul Lilly — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:30:07 -0500

According to Nvidia, Windows 7, which recently reached RTM, will be the catalyst that propels the concept of GPGPU computing into the mainstream.

"Previously, GPUs were almost exclusively limited to rendering and accelerating graphics and video," Chris Daniel, product manager for software at Nvidia, wrote in a Microsoft Partner blog. "With the introduction of Windows 7, the GPU and CPU will exist in a co-processing environment where each can handle the computing task they are best suited for. The CPU is exceptionally good at performing sequential calculations, I/O, and program flow, whereas the GPU is perfectly suited for performing massive parallel calculations."

Nvidia went on to say that by introducing the DirectX Compute in Windows 7, Microsoft is providing a huge shot in the arm for developers to make better use of the GPU for more than just graphics acceleration. Such tasks include high-quality video playback, high performance transcoding, enabling new media scenarios, and offering extended control over media libraries.

"As an example of the real world benefits of DX Compute, you will be able to use the massive parallel capabilities of the GPU to significantly reduce the time it takes to manager your media files compared with just using the CPU alone," Nvidia added.

Image Credit: Nvidia

Nvidia Releases OpenCL Driver, SDK

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:00:00 -0500

Earlier this year, Maximum PC Editor-in-Chief Will Smith challenged Nvidia "to stop trying to convince us that closed APIs are good, and instead embrace OpenCL." Fast forward to today and the graphics chip maker still isn't ready to kill CUDA, but it did become the first to release an OpenCL driver and Software Development Kit (SDK) in pre-beta form. Nvidia says its goal is to solicit early feedback in anticipation of a beta release to be made available in coming months.

"The OpenCL standard was developed on Nvidia GPUs and Nvidia was the first company to demonstrate OpenCL code running on a GPU," said Tony Tamasi, senior VP of technology and content at Nvidia. "Being the first to release an OpenCL driver to developers cements Nvidia's leadership in GPU Computing and is another key milestone in our ongoing strategy to make the GPU the soul of the modern PC."

If you haven't been following along at home, OpenCL is short for Open Computing Language and is an open programming framework paving the way for developers to tap into the power of GPUs for general-purpose computing, otherwise known as GPGPU (General Purpose GPU). The open standard has the potential to work on most modern GPUs, and not just Nvidia hardware like the company's CUDA platform. But don't read this as Nvidia giving up on CUDA. On the contrary, Nvidia feels OpenCL reinforces the ideas behind CUDA, and has bumped up the CUDA release schedule to include three releases planned for 2009.

Intel Begins Writing Nvidia’s Obituary

Justin Kerr — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:26:46 -0600

The war of words and bad blood between Intel and Nvidia continues to spiral out of control, and Intel is back at it again. After making some rather pointed remarkets about Ions shortcomings, Intel decoded the time was right to warn the geek masses about Nvidia’s impending doom at the Goldman Sachs Technology conference in San Francisco. According to Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini, Nvidia is merely trying to defend the status quo, and that Larrabee will be the future choice for those in search of powerful dedicated graphics solutions. Oddly enough, Intel choose its words very carefully and mysteriously made no mention of AMD’s ATI division.

Most enthusiasts I’m sure see these statements as a bit overconfident, and the 2010 release of Larrabee is the real wild card in the equation. Even if Intel manages to churn out the most powerful GPU, it’s unlikely they would have the type of driver optimization, developer support, or backwards compatibility that have made the ATI/ Nvidia GPU’s the most important component in any gaming PC. Clearly however, dedicated GPU companies should be concerned over CPU+GPU solutions for mainstream users. If GP-GPU applications don’t take hold in time to win over the mainstream consumer, Nvidia and ATI risk find themselves severing a much smaller niche market that could be devastating to both companies.

What do you think? Is this just corporate posturing at its best? Hit the add comments link and let us know what you think.

The Biggest Technology Flops Of 2008

Justin Kerr — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:33:16 -0600

Every year around late December or early January the internet is bombarded with the top “whatever and such and such” of 2008. Here at Maximum PC we stopped to reflect on our favorite gaming moments, and even cracked the lid on the best of open source; but we never took the time to focus on the hilarious technological flops of the year now past. Luckily however, Tom’s Hardware has put together a fairly comprehensive list. Some of which we can agree with, others perhaps worthy of debate. The list includes:

1.) HD DVD
2.) Nvidia’s Mobile GeForce 8400M and 8600M
3.) iPhone Killers
4.) Windows Vista
5.) Mobile Television
6.) OLED Displays
7.) Phenom X3
8.) The Microsoft Yahoo Proposed Merger
9.) GPGPU
10.) Sony Ericsson XPeria X1
11.) HybridPower: Pseudo-Green
12.) Sony Batteries
13.) Fiber Optics
14.) Non-HD DTT
15.) GTA IV For PC

I’m sure we have more then a few readers that will jump to the defense of some of these items such as Windows Vista and perhaps OLED or Fiber, but it’s hard to argue with the bulk of it.

What do you think should be added or subtracted from the list?