GCDC08: Larrabee will push 3D into new dimesions

By Michael J Huelskoetter (90 posts) on August 11, 2008 at 7:36 am

This week at Siggraph 2008 Intel will present new insight into the upcoming GPU architecture named Larrabee. Even before you read different information at our Siggraph blog page, you can take a first look at all the sexy things which Larrabee will provide right here.

For all of you who haven't had a chance so far to get any information about Larrabee: It will completely change the way how 3D graphics will be manipulated in the future. Instead of using one or two dedicated, discrete graphics units Larrabee will combine multiple x86-based processors on one single chip. This will push the possibilities of creating new 3D content beyond imagination. Complex tasks will take less time to be executed and thus games and other applications will become more realistic and powerful then ever before.

In order to provide such high grade CPU power Larrabee will deliver a lot of new and well-known benefits:

  • Familiar technologies like wide vector processing, multi-threading, 64-bit extensions and sophisticated pre-fetching will be some of the core functions of Larrabee. This means that all the software tools provided by Intel are still suitable when you think of x86-based applications. This huge computational power will find its way into 3D gaming and other stuff.
  • A coherent 2nd level cache which will be part of the Larrabee architecture, increasing the computing power dramatically. Thus data exchange and data computing will reach a new dimension.
  • Parallel 3D computing will become reality as Larrabee supports four execution threads per processor core. This will combine both in- and out-of-order pipeline computing. Moreover rendering pipelines and other complex calculations can organize their own workloads, which will make 3D programming highly flexible in the future.
  • All Larrabee cores will be connected via a high-speed, bi-drectional ring network which provides super fast communication between all involved CPUs. As a consequence the word „latency“ will become quite obsolete in the 3D-future.

And of couse the Larrabee-based architecture supports single and double precision floating-point arithmetic. This will make all the financial driven developers very happy. Excel into a new 3D-dimension. Wow!

Btw: If you want to know you who or where Larrabee is in real life just take a look at Wikipedia.

Categories: Events, Game Development, Graphics & Media, Parallel Programming
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Comments (7)

August 11, 2008 11:50 AM PDT


EdwardOCallaghan		 Hi,

So in other words, A GPGPU ?
I hope Intel are going to provide Solaris and GNU/Linux support for this new hardware!

Regards,
Edward.
August 12, 2008 1:38 PM PDT


jc thepot		 Hello,
Compare ibm PowerXCell 8i Processor Specifications , what is the status intel Larrabee with ECC protected L2 cache
and party-protected instruction cache and data cache ??
Best regards

jc thepot (Antony 92 France )

ps : i worked before for cdc6x00 , Texas -Instruments , Intel ,Cray Reseach
August 13, 2008 1:42 PM PDT


jc thepot		 Hello
GPGPU it is exact term
thks for information
jc
August 18, 2008 10:20 AM PDT


thepot		 Look by google: QS-22 Supercomputing to the Masses

(May 2008 Gabriel Consulting Group, Inc)
December 8, 2008 7:00 AM PST


Sean OConnor		 That's great. I hope it's served on a motherboard. Or will everything have to go over the graphics bus? Now there's the question.







January 15, 2009 11:12 AM PST


Obi-Wan Kenobi		 heh let's hope it won't be like Matrox Parhelia ended up, but still the Parhelia does have some very neat features cards of today only can dream of, I do hope Larrabee will indeedly be something , because choosing ATi and Nvidia all time does get boring after some time I am looking for more competitors and if Intel can prove to be a good and worthy competitor I'd be happy to even give them a chance in my systems at home.

The Thing is Intel good enough to catch up I mean they haven't been in the high end gaming market with VGA cards since their i740 chip. So I still wonder this many thing they have tons of catching up to do even I thought about this.

Only time will tell I guess. I wish the Intel crew all the best with their Larrabee project I hope it will change the face of graphics like 3dfx did in the past.
April 16, 2009 12:46 PM PDT


Johan		 When will it be available to the public? And is it really only NS 1000. I am really interested!
Would love to get my hands on one

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