Introducing the Cloaking Device

By Uzi Sarel (Intel) (1 posts) on November 5, 2008 at 8:18 am

I'm going to introduce an exciting new project code named 'cloaking'. This post is mainly to introduce the project and give a very high-level view of it. I plan to post more data. Please comment so I know what to focus on.

'Cloaking' is a codename for a new piece of software in Intel's integrated graphics drivers that offload some of the 3D processing to the CPU.

The basic philosophy behind cloaking is simple - 'modern' 3D workloads are very demanding such that integrated GPUs can sometimes be challenged with; on the other hand Intel has super-strong CPUs that are mostly idle during those GPU challenges. Cloaking basically means - "let's use those awesome CPUs when possible to accelerate 3D workloads".

Cloaking code is part of Intel's recent integrated graphics drivers for D3D9 on Vista.

A picture worth a 1000 words, so by posting the following movie I'm actually posting 7,500,000 words... Enjoy!

Cloaking Demo

Categories: Gaming, Visual Computing

Comments (5)

November 5, 2008 11:11 PM PST


Hugues Labbe		 Uzi for president!
November 5, 2008 11:23 PM PST


Hugues Labbe		 Now, seriously, with these upcoming octo-cores Nehalem CPUs w/ HT (SMT) capability enabled (i.e. 16 logical cores), chances are cloaking will rarely be able to keep all these cores 100% busy and always be bottlenecked by the GPU even with the next gen integrated gfx chipsets (e.g. ivybridge, sandybridge...). Furthermore, in theory at least, w/ the perfect load-balancing scheme, leveraging any avail. CPU resources should improve performance (even in the high-end case). Would this approach to leverage unused CPU resources for geometry processing make sense as well within a low to mid-range discrete gfx product line? E.g. think low-end to midstream Larrabee SKUs :)...
November 7, 2008 7:38 PM PST


L33t G4m3r		 Yo, isnt this just admitting that Intel integrated graphics suck? Why dont nvidia integrated chips need to do this? If ur graphics are so good, why did apple dump u 4 nvidia?
November 7, 2008 7:41 PM PST


L33t G4m3r		 What r u "cloaking", how bad your chips stink? I mean, ok, u got great cpus, but your graphics suck.
April 11, 2009 7:11 AM PDT


Tippy		 Nice article. Man Intel hasn't much wiggle room befor the NV paid schills show up. this is nice tech . I like how Intel cpus going to change Games forever . Software render is wonderful. Iam sure cloaking will be fine . I would like to see NV render any of that without a CPU in the socket. But NV GPU is CPU dependent to weak to stand on its own . Hate doing that . Bring on larrabee and turn on the eyecandy.

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