what is larrabee?

[shaanm]

Can somebody please give me a summary of what intel larrabee is? The only thing I know is that its a multi core gpu. I need more info. Thank You!

 

[taltamir]

and the wikipedia says: mooo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_%28GPU%29

Larrabee is the codename for a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) that Intel is developing as a revolutionary successor to their current line of graphics accelerators. It is expected to compete with the GeForce and Radeon lines of graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD respectively. Its release date is currently speculated to be in the late 2008-early 2009 timeframe.[1]

Larrabee differs from its predecessors in that it uses a derivative of the x86 instruction set for its shader cores instead of a custom graphics-oriented instruction set, and is thus expected to be more flexible. In addition to traditional 3D graphics for games, Larrabee is also being designed for GPGPU or stream processing tasks: for example, to perform ray tracing or physics processing, in real time for games or perhaps offline as a component of a supercomputer.[2]

According to a presentation made by Intel in December 2006, Larrabee will run at 1.7-2.5 GHz and feature 16-24 in-order cores (as opposed to out-of-order cores) running a modified x86 instruction set, in addition to texture sampling units and other hardware typical of graphics processors.[3]

Jon Stokes of Ars Technica has suggested that Larrabee's microarchitecture may be based on the Pentium MMX.[4]

Intel previously created an AGP graphics accelerator, the Intel740.

 

[CrystalBay]

It may sound impressive but ,I doubt it will be impressive...

 

[Cookie Monster]

Later in 2008 or even 2009.

 

[shaanm]

But is it integrated on the motherboard? Or is it suppose to be on a video card? Thank you but Wikipedia was the first place I looked. The wikipedia article is too old.

 

[taltamir]

wikipedia is usually up to date with those things and pretty accurate... if it has no new info then there is probably nothing new to report.

 

[DRavisher]

According to the arstechnica articles that I've read, it will be a stand alone card, perhaps with separate models for gaming graphics and number crunching. But maybe they will use the same general design for integrated solutions too, just scaled down.

It will certainly be interesting to hear more about this. It would be very cool to have three competitors in the GFX space. But just because Intel has the wherewithal to do it doesn't mean they will be successfull against nvidia/AMD.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: shaanm
But is it integrated on the motherboard? Or is it suppose to be on a video card? Thank you but Wikipedia was the first place I looked. The wikipedia article is too old.

Larrabee is the codename for an architecture, not a discrete GPU. The discrete GPU that Intel is rumored to be developing will very likely be based on Larrabee architecture, but Larrabee is not a GPU.

Most likely, you will first see Larrabee architecture as a co-processor configured or optimized for graphics and/or physics, not unlike a physics processing card, or Mercury Computer's Cell-based PCI-E accelerator board. See:

http://www.mc.com/products/pro...0&ProductTypeFolder=56

In fact, it would not be unreasonable to describe Larrabee as Intel's response to the Cell processor, but with less programming difficulty. The ultimate goal of Larrabee is not graphics, but a configurable, many-core, multi-threaded, [massively] scalable, processing architecture that can be optimized for damned near anything, from enterprise routers to super computers.