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Intel tries new waters: mythical 'Larrabee' CPU-as-GPU details emerge

Posted Aug 4, 2008 at 12:38PM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: PC Gaming Tags: DirectX, gaming accessories, Intel, nVidia, OpenGL, prototype, SDK

The Intel Larrabee is still in concept design stages as of press time, but data gathered from a recent press conference from the Larrabee project's top engineer, Dr. Larry Seller, has lead many to believe that the CPU will have a graphics processing unit integrated on die - or at least an architecture for graphics processing.

According to the tech wizards at AnandTech, the Larrabee will still be based on the Pentium architecture (x86), although it will be a multi-core (many have called it "many core") processor of an unknown number of cores and be realized as a data parallel processing powerhouse (think Cell BE).

Now the general notion of what the Larrabee is supposed to do is often confused, thanks to the rumors of this mythical CPU-with-GPU that ran amok. Now that the principle facts are known, it appears that Larabee was not designed essentially to be a replacement for dedicated graphics computing. Don't get us wrong: the Larabee can perform graphics rendering on its own, but it's not expected to defeat discrete graphics solutions by much.

In fact, the first few details of what the Larrabee will do involves a tie-in of deferred tile-based rendering (ala Imagination Technologies' PowerVR graphics chip) and a back-end frame buffer rendering process and neither promises much in the way of quality.

The multi-core CPU, however, will have a fully coherent memory subsystem for its multi-chip setup, and from here you get a clearer idea that it's geared more for performance.

So it's more of a CPU that can process DirectX and OpenGL instructions, if told to. And by using a combination of an extension of the x86 instruction set and an Intel-developed programming language in C/C++ designed specifically for the Larrabee, the CPU can even perform as a custom processing solution for software designed to run it as an engine of sorts.

A bigger picture of that would be slapping it into a game console, allowing developers to use the specialized SDK and create their own engine. Of course, to be this diverse, the processor will have to be very open. Thus, Larrabee, doesn't have many fixed function logic. The more complex instructions will have to come from software, no doubt.

The Larrabee was claimed to be heavily modified to carry a 16-ALU-wide vector unit with it, while each core would have a coherent memory foundation including Level 1 caches (unknown capacity) and a secondary level cache of some 256 KB.

The processor would have 1024-bit ring bus interconnecting all the cores in the processor, serving as the data and instruction pathways for all cores. The ring bus is two way, with 512-bits coming to and from each neighboring core.

We'll have more updates on the Larrabee as soon as more is spilled. But if you want to get yourself in the tech mood now, AnandTech has a lengthy writeup for your perusal.

Via AnandTech

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NVidia have been doing great work on GPUs for years this is intel's first real attempt at doing a GPU, I'd be surprised if this actually impacted heavily on Nvidia at all.

I think it would be of concern for Nvidia given that it's two rivals now both do GPUs and CPUs, AMD (who own ATI) and intel.

It's a little reminiscant of the PS3 launch, we got all this info on how many terraflops it can do but we were all disappointed overall with it's performance overall, general purpose horsepower does not mean better graphics.

# AMD and NVidia — Bountyhunter53 2008-08-04 22:04

They wont fall down by this. I bet you that there gonna release something to rival it maybe a AMD processor with a NVidia made GPU. NVidia cannot be beaten with small things like this, they could be beaten with a 16 core GPU with a 18 core CPU if that's possible.

# are you guys clueless? — GW2 2008-08-04 23:09

amd owns ati and intel owns nvidia so there not competing. of course nvidia wont go down they are nvidia.

# What? — Darkshneider 2008-08-05 00:37

Since when does Intel own NVIDIA? Las thing involving NVIDIA and another company, was when they bought Aegia.

# rofl — Mr Toasty 2008-08-05 07:08

intel does not own nvidia.

Anyways this thing is rumored to have anywhere from 8-48 cores. I think that Intel is finally embracing the method of ray tracing for video games, which produces a higher degree of photorealism, albeit at the cost of CPU power.

# lol — Hekynn 2008-08-18 08:37

Nothing can beat or own Nvidia I'm sure Nvidia is working on their next series of Video cards now

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Intel tries new waters: mythical 'Larrabee' CPU-as-GPU details emerge

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