Posted 08/25/08 at 01:50:03 PM by Chris Moody

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?

Read More

Comments 

4

TAGS 

intel, nvidia, Larrabee, nvision, GPU. CPU

Posted 08/22/08 at 09:51:03 AM by Pulkit Chandna

DreamWorks Animation and Intel announced at IDF that, beginning next year, films under the DreamWorks banner will all be in next-gen 3D. Last month, the studio had announced that it was going to replace its AMD hardware with Intel’s future chips with multi-processing cores. Now it has been confirmed that Intel’s upcoming Larrabee (codename) graphics chip will form the crux of the partnership. The two partners even unveiled a 3-D movie image brand called InTru 3D. The technology is also targeted at the video games industry and the internet. AMD has also been touting its Cinema 2.0 tech that it claims will pulverize the wall between movies and games.

Read More

Comments 

0

TAGS 

amd, intel, Software, movies, hardware, IDF, Larrabee, Dreamworks, Cinema 2.0, intru 3d

Posted 08/16/08 at 04:06:34 PM by Justin Kerr

Nvidia’s secret war with Intel has evolved into a full scale arms race for the atomic bomb of graphics technology, ray tracing. Using its forum at SIGGRAPH, Nvidia was able to demonstrate an interactive ray tracing simulation using four of the company's next-generation Quadro GPUs. They were set in a Quadro Plex 2100 D4 Visual Computing System with an estimated street price of around $11,000. Not exactly your standard gaming rig, but it gets the point across. Either way, it appears as though Nvidia is finally taking a cue from Intel and is focusing at least some of its effort on developing hardware capable of making this technique a reality for everyday users. The demonstration featured linear scaling of an anti aliased Bugatti Veyron with over two-million polygons. It was run at a resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p) and chugged along at an impressive 30 FPS. The demonstration also featured image-based lighting paint shaders, reflections / refractions, and ray traced shadows. Industry insiders noted that the demo was an impressive undertaking since it was one of the first interactive demonstrations done using a GPU. Intel has demonstrated ray tracing using Quake 3 but was done using CPU power.Larrabee will be Intel’s counter in the consumer market, but it remains to be seen if the CPU style design will be as capable of pushing out polygons as Nvidia’s offerings. Gamers are no doubt hoping the new race to master ray tracing will accelerate its development, but I have a feeling we will be playing Duke Nukem Forever long before we see consumer based ray tracing solutions from either company. Though the important first steps are now well underway.

Want to read more about ray tracing? Read Maximum PC’s White Paper: Raster vs Rays.

Read More

Comments 

6

TAGS 

intel, cpu, nvidia, gpu, hardware, Larrabee, ray tracing, Siggraph 2008

Posted 07/09/08 at 06:08:36 PM by Reed Porter

DreamWorks has decided to drop all of their existing AMD hardware for “future [Intel] chips with multiple processing cores”. According to Tom’s Hardware and Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer, these future chips are referring to the upcoming Nehalem CPU’s and Larabee GPU’s, both of which Intel is hoping to make a splash with in late 2008 to early 2009.

This news comes at the expense of AMD, with whom DreamWorks already had prior contracts. DreamWorks films such as Shrek the Third and Kung Fu Panda were all developed and rendered on multi-core AMD machines and the company was heavily promoting its partnership with AMD as recently as 2007.

“Technology plays a significant role in enabling our artists to tell great stories. By utilizing Intel’s industry-leading computing products, we will create a new and innovative way for moviegoers to experience our films in 3-D” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation.

Exactly what “innovative experience” moviegoers have to look forward to is anyone’s guess but one thing is for sure, this is yet another blow to AMD whose problems only seem to be compiling.

Read More

Comments 

5

TAGS 

amd, intel, nehalem, hardware, Larrabee, Dreamworks, erratum, innovative moviegoer experience

Posted 06/22/08 at 03:45:12 PM by Justin Kerr

Intel was quick to debunk the rumor on Friday that it would be launching its new Larrabee platform of GPU’s at Siggraph. This comes as little surprise to most of us since Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced in January of this year that Larrabee’s first sample silicon wouldn’t be ready for internal testing until late 2008. With general release slated Q4 2009 this would have been a significant deviation from plan had the rumor been true. The information on current release dates comes from Intel’s long-term roadmap and is known as “The ****** Book”.

Want to know more about Larrabee? Read more after the jump.

Read More

Comments 

0

TAGS 

intel, gpu, hardware, Larrabee, Siggraph

Posted 06/02/08 at 03:35:35 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

Want SLI with Intel’s next-generation CPU? Fuhget about it. The chipset tussle between Intel and Nvidia may leave enthusiasts and gamers bent this fall.

Read More

Comments 

15

TAGS 

intel, news, nvidia, sli, nforce, nehalem, features, Larrabee