To Larrabee or not to Larrabee That is the ?

Interesting this powerhouse thatll revolutionize gfx as we know it http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqu [...] deal-intel

Yea, gotta love the Inq, never know what may come outta there

That article is pure ****. Xbox "720" out before 2010? PS4 out before that? Yea, right. Cant believe I even clicked on that link.

You got Rick rolled!

INQ=FUDZILLA!LOLOLOLOL

This thread could only have been worse if someone actually chucked a turd at my screen. Same result, just different cleaning options.

Well, like the PS3 right now: If you have superv hardware, but have a crappy API for the programmers you won't get far by default. Cell is a fine thing alright, no one can't deny it, but programming for it sounds like a b!7ch.

Intel (according to what i read) wants to prevent that offering those "big console players" the benefit of going with "sugar daddy" Intel watching their investment and teaching the programmers. Kinda like imposing but it's not imposing at all, lol.

So... If M$ and/or Sony don't want Larrabee, Intel has no option but to make a nice funeral for it. All IMO, of course.

Esop!

^ Well, if they don't give a rip for lil Intel, who they give a rip for? AMD?

Wintel. The word says it all. They *have* to care - and they will.

Its true Intel has been courting M$ for this. Whether its going to happen is something else. Whats running on the current 360?

A variation of ATI R500 I think...

On the consoles arena, it's not like that. Intel can actually "buy" it's way in that market.

Each console gen has a different API to work with since it has a different hardware set and console OSes are not made like regular OSes. They work on tighter develop with hardware to optimize things. At least, to some degree.

Anyway, if Intel can't get it to the PC industry, i don't give a damn actually. More over, i don't know if Larrabee is going to be a good or bad thing! lol

Esop!

It still has to be done in a way thats already known vs a way that isnt. More to do, more to adapt etc. M$ has to include all the game devs in their decision. This isnt business as usual, so to speak. The PS3, Ive heard is a b14+ch to have to wirk with, so too could this be.

If its as easy as Intel claims, and the moneys there, itll happen. Otherwise, it may get tougher

LOL, true that

True, since it works both ways: PC -> Console and Console -> PC, but yeah, u're right though. Porting hardware is as "easy" as writing a driver for the OS it will run on and porting software is as easy as it has a compiler that can come up with code for either hardware.

Hope Intel doesn't screw us up just for the sake of money >_>'

Esop!

Thats my concern

Its be like havong to be able to include Apple in all windows enviroments, not an option, but a need

your thinking is too simply my friend.its a completely different architecture it no longer uses vertex and pixel shader in the current gen. because the developers will need to start from scratch to make the game/driver/OS/GPU to communicate to each other.its a high risk thing to do.we are talking about business here not just simple "because i want it" sort of thing, money is the whole deal!if larrabee fails whos going to pay for all the lost?YOU?!?!

Intel's plan was to take out AMD and Nvidia.

Yep, i just finished reading the article from Wikipedia. Should've started from there, lol.

Now, this you mention: "Intel has written its own Larrabee native software renderer to interface between DX/OGL and the Larrabee hardware", that could be understood as a "driver" for Windows and such. I'm sure there will be code for the Kernel to actually USE all those processors (kind of a patch for it i think) just like AMD did when it's X2 came out.

It's an interesting chip indeed, since it *really* makes a "brute force" GPU from a CPU, lol.

Esop!

Remember it's a 2x1 "solution": GPU+CPU. So 192W for that theorical "power" it's very good indeed.

Now, thinking about thermal dissipation, yeah... It's gonna be kinda hot XD

And if you have an interpreter software layer, it won't matter. U can always turn one instruction into a set of other instructions, but yeah, it will add "lag" to the process.

Esop!

EDIT: Grammar XD

Actually... Yes it will

That's why they might be aiming for the X-Box: They have an interpreter, but if they win the X-Box deal, they'll have a full working API for M$ wich might be included in DX11 (or DX11.1, or whatever it's gonna be). Hence it will be "easy" for M$ to port it to Windows what-ever-edition so games run in that thing using Larrabee's optimizations.

It's a complex scenario, but i'd bet on M$ getting seduced, since Larrabee won't change so much the way PCs as a whole work. Larrabee is only a merge of 2 things into 1. Kind of a "Software Renderer" but with OpenGL/DX instructions fully supported, lol.

Hardware wise, i think the North Bridge might dissapear with Larrabee, or it will be gimped IMO, but shouldn't matter to this thread

Esop!

While I do agree that it would be a major coup for Intel to land Larrabee within a console for the next generation, I really find it to be little more than idle speculation and rumors.

To be honest, I don't think Larrabee has a place in consoles. It's GPUs done with the NetBust philosophy, of providing high amounts of performance by simply saying "to hell" with concerns over TDP. It's easily programmable, but as a result is not terribly efficient for real-world single-precision stuff at all, on either a per-million-transistor or per-watt basis, even compared to CURRENT GPUs like RV770.

Now, in the future, things might change a BIT with Larrabee 2. However, I doubt they'd change the philosphy; it'd just like going from Willamette to Northwood. This simply won't do in a console...

Now, a lot of people may think that it could work, since huge, heat-spewing behemoths that cost more to produce than they do to sell may exist now, but there's the trick: they don't compete well. Historically, just three consoles have sold for less than they cost to produce, and coincidentally also were big and hot: the original Xbox, the Xbox 360 under 90nm, and the Playstation 3. Coincidentally, not one of them ever made a profit; the 360 didn't start turning a profit until AFTER they switched over to 65nm chips a while back, which had the dual advantage of not only slashing chip costs roughly in half, but also drastically cutting down the infamous RROD cases.

Meanwhile, in this generation, you have the cheap, lower-powered Wii kicking the respective tushes of both its competitors. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Sony and Microsoft are going to take a note of this, and tone down a bit on the power; over the past couple generations, we saw a big push toward bigger chips that consumed more power, but coincidentally, it never yielded more profits.

Hence, I don't think that in this market, Larrabee has a place. Sure, the Playstation 4 and the Xbox 720 could be as big leaps over the PS3 and 360 as those were over the PS2 and Xbox, but then, it could be readily predicted that they'll struggle just as much against Nintendo's next console as these are doing right now against the Wii.

So, I think that Sony and Microsoft will tone back their aggressiveness; of course the new consoles will be more powerful, duh. However, I have the impression that they won't be as expensive or heat-producing, in the interests of being more competitive. As a result, the visual leap from the current, 7th gen and the next gen won't be as large as it was from the current to the 6th before it.

And of course, I've been calling it the Xbox 720 all along, running with the joke that it, for once, will be able to actually render everything at 720p, rather than relying on 576-640p for a lot of its top-shelf titles, (Grand Theft Auto IV and Halo 3 are examples of those two resolutions I mentioned) and using bilinear filtering to scale them up to 720p for output.

Larrabee is a little overkill for a console. The GPU's in consoles are extremely weak, the Nvidia RSX in the PS3 is on par with a 7800 or two 6800 Ultras, not exactly bragging rights, what gets them by is the superior CPU's (IBMs 3.2ghz Tri-Core in the 360, and Toshiba's/IBM's Cell Processor in the PS3), and of course the mastercrafted optimizations that make consoles run so well and get better with age.

You are talking about a theoretical 192w GPU here, in a console? The whole Xbox 360 console only consumes 175w MAX on the Falcon (newer) chips, ~215w on the old original boxes.

The wattage is just the beginning of this potential nightmare, then you have to worry about heat. The heat from the original 360 CPU got so hot they now use a self-contained waterblock for the Falcon chip. So imagine a stronger CPU/GPU 2 years from now in that box, at 192w? Youre looking at a ~400w console giving off enough heat to make waterblock and copper worthless. At that point technology is going backwards instead of forwards, as the console it gonna have to be bigger than your 1200w reciever and louder than your blender due to the 4 120mm fans for the quad radiator its gonna need for that water block. And lets not get started with the PS3 using twice as much power as the Xbox 360, PS3 needs 380w

Of course this is leaning on the Inquirer

I could not see a full scale Larrabee in a console if all the theoretical numbers are at least in the ballpark, but I could see a......revised version of it, scaled down. Maybe half of the PC version somewhere along those lines. If Intel really can pull this off and Larrabee kills Nvidia "overnight" with a monster card, putting it in a console would also be the mythical "end of pc gaming" come to reality, as there would be no reason to buy a PC anymore. We already know next gen consoles are going to have full working net browsers and more media/storage options and utility, not to mention the superior hardware optimizing that makes drivers for graphic cards look like crap. Intel would score big with Larrabee, but kill there CPU business at the same time in the long run.

Of course at this point in the conversation we are beyond theories and rumors, we are walking on absurdity and pipe dreams now