Intel’s graphics card expected 2010
What is Larrabee?
Larrabee is the codename that Intel has given its upcoming graphics processing unit (GPU).
The basic GPU will be released next year in the form of a high-end workstation product. This will see Larrabee being used in high-end research applications and performing tasks such as ray tracing and physics processing in real time.
In many cases in the high-performance computing market, Intel’s CPUs are being replaced by general purpose graphics processing units (GPGPU) from Nvidia and AMD. Intel is hoping to take this market back with Larrabee.
Larrabee graphics cards
Intel is also going after the graphics card market with the Larrabee GPU. Graphics cards featuring the Larrabee GPU will compete directly with AMD/ATi and Nvidia in the retail sector, and will be available in 2010.
GPU CPU hybrid.
Larrabee has been considered a hybrid between a multi-core CPU and a GPU. Unlike offerings from nVidia and ATi, Larrabee will feature the x86 architecture commonly seen in CPUs.
Larrabee will function in many ways like a CPU, but will use Larrabee-specific extensions. The Larrabee will make use of Pentium P54C designed cores. The individual cores offer relatively low performance, but since they are very small, Intel can put many on a single chip. Expect between 32 and 48 cores on a single chip.
Gaming performance
Preliminary performance data shows Larrabee running at 1GHz per core. Using 25 cores at this speed, Larrabee was able to maintain a frame rate of over 60fps in Gears of War at 1600×1200 without anti-aliasing. The data available to date shows that performance scaling is almost linear when adding additional cores. Running 48 cores showed roughly 90% increased performance over 25 cores.
These figures are conservative, as Larrabee will most likely run faster than 1GHz, and high-end Larrabee graphics cards will feature up to 48 cores.
This should translate into some very impressive performance capabilities.
Development
The high performance computing version of Larrabee will run using an OpenGL driver. This makes the software development process relatively straight-forward.
Developing drivers that will be able to run the thousands of different games available today will be a more difficult task. This is partly why the Larrabee-powered graphics cards will take a bit longer to appear than the high performance workstation version of Larrabee.
Intel graphics card discussion
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