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IDF: Intel will make high end graphics cards
Intel's CEO reveals that Larrabee will offer 'discrete graphics'
You had to listen carefully to Intel CEO Paul Otellini's keynote speech to hear this announcement, as it was just a throwaway sentence, but the head of Intel quite clearly stated that a new Intel product called Larrabee would move the company 'into discrete graphics.'
As if the announcement was a bit of a slip-up, he then promptly moved on to talk about using quad-core physics in games and said no more about it in the speech. However, Otellini was quizzed about it in a question and answer session for the press later, where he again admitted that 'among the applications for Larrabee; one of them is high-end graphics.'
This confirms many rumours that Intel is planning to go head-to-head with AMD and Nvidia in the high-end discrete (meaning a standalone graphics card, as opposed to integrated graphics) graphics business. Before mentioning discrete graphics, however, Otellini explained a little about Larrabee, saying that it would be 'highly parallel,' and that it was a 'a highly parallel, many-core product comprised of an array of Intel architecture cores.'
If these were simple cores, then they could indeed be ganged up as an array of stream processors for DirectX acceleration, although Otellini also said that it had 'applications in supercomputing, in financial services, and physics and health applications.' Then again, both Nvidia and AMD are saying similar things about GPGPU and stream processing.
Intel's last foray into discrete graphics was the abysmal i740 graphics card, which failed to compete effectively with the Voodoo and PowerVR 3D accelerators at the time. However, Larrabee looks like it might be very promising.
Otellini said that Intel should be ready to demonstrate Larrabee in 2008.
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yaaaawwwwwwnnnn sorry what was that? did someone say something? where am I?...I won't be buying these even if they are good. If they're not any good, then great, if they are good then I'll be looking at it as maybe the kick up the arse that nVidia/ATi need to start making better cards. I won't be buying it simply because Intel gets enough of everyones money/daughters/souls already and all it is trying to do is slowly take over everything in the PC market just like Microsoft/Adobe/Autodesk. They'll be making sound cards and cooling kits next! It's a natural thing for a company. The first rule of a business is to make a profit, the second is to expand within its industry/market and that is all Intel are doing, nothing inherently wrong with that. Same reason why people shouldn't have every piece of furniture and utensil in their house from Ikea. Your house becomes a showroom, not a home and it's not particularly exciting if you answer 'Ikea' every time someone asks "oh this is nice where did you get it from?" Intel might well make good CPU's but I don't think they're going to be top of the graphics market although they'll probably get their niche segment - just like AMD's CPU's suffered somewhat from buying ATi (as well as ATi's cards slumping a bit too!). At worst Intel will make a good card which I won't buy on principle. At best, it'll give nVidia/ATi a good kick up the arse and force them to stop being silly with their 8800GSRGTSCRXGTR-R business and re-focus on what they do best - make great graphics cards.
Comment by EdArch at 6:12pm 9th March 2008
Ok guys we'd better start investing into intel shares and stuff, i mean since the release of core2duo, their shares have skyrocketed, whereas AMD's have starting falling, and increasing more so for both companies in relevant directions....... With graphics aswell as CPU's and motherboards, i think we all need application forms, or shares, big company, big views, BIG money.... probably discounts on 99 core CPU's in 5 years time ''Gigedy gigedy ''
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 11:05pm 25th September 2007
the havok buy out now makes more sense, could be very interesting as intel are making some very fast chips at the mo but based on previous attemps, I740 / ExTrEmE, this could be some of the best comedy this year :-)
Comment by MDK_UK at 1:19pm 19th September 2007
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