SIGGRAPH, Larrabee, and The Future of Computing

By Josh Bancroft (Intel) (69 posts) on August 11, 2008 at 9:30 pm

I'm in Los Angeles for the SIGGRAPH conference. I'm here to look for and write about interesting stuff, and help with a blogger event that Intel is hosting tomorrow to introduce some of the engineers behind Larrabee (more on that in a bit). You can check out what Intel has going on at SIGGRAPH this year on this page.

This is the first time I've been to SIGGRAPH. One of the coolest things I get to do since I joined Intel Software Network last year is get to know really, really smart software developers in all sorts of areas - not just the run-of-the-mill IT type stuff, either. I get to talk with developers who do gaming, web applications, high performance computing, open source community projects, and graphics and visual artistry. That last one is what SIGGRAPH is all about.

SIGGRAPH is the Special Interest Group (SIG) for GRAPHics for the ACM - the Association for Computing Machinery. The ACM was established in 1947 (!), and has been the foremost body for researching and publishing new computing topics for decades. They have hundreds of student chapters, and a strong academic following. You could say that the ACM is kind of a big deal when it comes to figuring out what the future of computing in going to be. Of course, there are lots of different areas of computing, and SIGGRAPH (the organization) is the part of the ACM that focuses on graphics and what computers can do, visually. They organize SIGGRAPH (the conference), an annual event attended by thousands of engineers, creatives, and software developers. SIGGRAPH the conference has been held annually since before I was born (since 1974). This year, it's in Los Angeles, at the Staples Center/Convention Center (the biggest event venue I've ever been to).

So what's with the history lesson? Well, I wanted to give some perspective on why I think Intel chose this venue and this organization for it's first significant public disclosure of the upcoming Larrabee many core architecture. This is all just my opinion - no one asked me what I thought about any of this before hand, and if they had, I don't know enough to have advised them one way or the other. I'm just a blogger, so I write what I think, and try to get a conversation started. If you want an "official" stance, go read a press release or something. :-)

The ACM and SIGGRAPH, being academic-type organizations, publish lots of journals, and getting a paper published in one of those journals is a huge deal. Wikipedia says that the acceptace rate for SIGGRAPH papers is only about 20% - that means you have a one in five chance of getting your paper published. And you can bet that the ones that DO get published are going to be important and interesting.

I can't shake the feeling that the Larrabee Architecture paper that was just published by the ACM, written mostly by Intel engineers, is one of those landmark events in computing. I'm really not trying to add to the hype that's already surrounding Larrabee. There's enough of that already. But it really is going to be a huge leap in computing. Imagine that in a couple of years, instead of having one, or two, or maybe four cores, your computer could have a Larrabee card with 24 or 32 (I'm guessing - this number isn't final) programmable x86 cores that can be set to any task that benefits from massive parallelism (like, say, making that 3D game you're playing look REALLY pretty and smooth), along with 8 "bigger" traditional Nehalem (I mean, Core i7) processor cores that do the things your current single or dual core processor does. Oh, and with Hyperthreading, all of those cores can run more than one thread, which makes them appear as even more "virtual" processors to the operating and software that use them.

How in the world are operating systems, applications, and games going to have to change to deal with this massive shift to many cores and many threads? In a word, developers. It's not an "automatic" benefit, like the performance boost you get when upgrading to a processor that runs at a higher clock speed (in GHz). Software has to be fundamentally re-designed. There are some tools and tricks (compilers, etc.) to help make your code more efficient on multicore systems, but those will only get you so far.

This is a massive, fundamental shift in the way we think about software. If you're a developer, this is going to affect in you in the coming years. And even though Intel is fundamentally a hardware company, and everyone is "oohing and aahing" over the hardware architecture of Larrabee, it should be clear that it all depends on software, more than ever. That's what we (Intel Software Network) are here for. Besides our very active Multicore developer community, we've just launched a new developer community around Visual Computing. We've got a ton of other helpful resources, and most importantly, access to the whip smart software engineers who write the books on all this stuff. So when you decide it's time to get your head around this multicore/parallelism thing, come talk to us, and we'll get you up to speed.

(Man, that last paragraph sounds really cheesy. I can't help it! We're talking about the future of computing, the future of software, here! I think a little cheese and grandeur is warranted. ;-) )

Categories: Academic, Events, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Visual Computing

Comments (6)

August 12, 2008 12:20 AM PDT

Du Wei 杜伟 (Intel)
Total Points:
9,105
Status Points:
9,105
Community Manager
 Josh, we are looking forward for more insight info. on from the event. There should be a lot of cool stuff to share with all of us.
August 12, 2008 2:20 PM PDT


Roy Hill		 Josh,
You should stop by the main Intel booth to see the wide range of fellow traveler demos & theater presentations. There is a lot of buzz around Larrabee but we have a great presence in all the steps of digital content creation today.
September 12, 2008 1:42 PM PDT


Art Scott		 Yeah, 2008 a turning point, SIGGRAPH '08 Larrabee paper, GDC '08 multi-core .ppt's, GameFest too, ... and F#
The word is getting out, this ain't gonna be your fathers' PC.

Seems multi-core issues (Larrabee) is driven by the CG Game playing young male scions, testosterone poisoning; they want it all and they want it now.
I guess Dad just wants faster SQL...

When? Let the guessing games begin, 2009? 2010? 2011? Later?
If I'm Intel I'm hoping sooner, guess MS too.
September 22, 2008 10:50 AM PDT


priyanka		 well............as my last year seminar toopic i choose the same "larrabee"as knowing about its features its be a grate jump accodingly in graphics market
September 22, 2008 10:54 AM PDT


priyanka		 welll........i .think most of vthe people r unaware of this grate thing so..........i just.........wanna tell to the whole world hey........just stand up and clap for intel biggest achievment .............wel pray to god that like this intel succed in its way (wel actually y i m aware bcoz i m studing in B.E.COMPUTER(SCET,SURAT))
September 22, 2008 10:59 AM PDT


priyanka		 jhey intel ......................when larrabee will come forward to compit with the nvidia..............

Trackbacks (3)


Leave a comment  

To obtain technical support, please go to Software Support.
Name (required)*

Email (required; will not be displayed on this page)*

Your URL (optional)


Comment*