Larrabee had been regarded by gamers as potentially Intel finally fielding a competitive alternative to the cards from graphics giants nVidia and AMD (ATI). However as more and more positive information about the card appeared (albeit lacking a point of comparison with the cards from nVidia and ATI), Intel suddenly withdrew Larrabee and cancelled the project. This was followed by another announcement of a return of Larrabee, called Knights Ferry.But why?
Tom Piazza's response: "I just think it is not practical to try to perform all these functions in software, due to the software complexity involved. We have also encountered problems with Performance per Watt while trying to do these things..." Or in technical speak: "It's wasteful to code these operations when it can be done in hardware". Or in other words, using a generalised core (like a CPU) for graphics is not as efficient as using a core specially designed for that task. One wonders which engineer thought this might not be the case...
So a change of direction! The Larrabee cores are now to be massively programmable parallel processors (sound familiar?), which makes them particularly interesting to folders.
We can only thank Intel for not wasting its money on what may have been a technological impasse, and instead directing its funds towards a project more likely to yield success. Even if they're currently focussing on Ray Tracing...
Source : PPC France
jmn
On: 09/23/10
