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Nvidia head lambasts Larrabee
If software and emulation is so great, why hasn’t Intel fixed its integrated graphics? asks Jen Hsung Huang
Nvidia’s often outspoken CEO, Jen Hsung Huang, has never been a particularly big believer in Intel’s Larrabee GPU, and even once dubbed it 'Laughabee' in a particularly vicious bout of Dad-humour. However, now that Intel has revealed how Larrabee will work, the head of Nvidia is apparently now even less convinced that Intel can make an impact in the graphics business.
In an interview with professional muck-stirrer Fudo at Fudzilla, Jen Hsung Huang said that ‘there are lots of questions that we are looking forward to seeing answers to from Intel.’ He then reeled off a list of questions about Intel’s forthcoming graphics chip, pointing out that ‘Emulation depends heavily on software. If it was so easy, why doesn’t Intel focus this expertise to fix the countless incompatibilities of their current integrated graphics? After all, it’s just software, right?’
‘Emulation is simply inefficient,’ said Jen Hsung Huang, adding that ‘graphics is the most computer intensive application we know. This is the green era, the era of efficiency. Why wouldn’t Intel focus on extreme power efficiency like their CPUs?’ As well as this, he also asked, ‘why is x86 desirable if Larrabee is not binary compatible with volume PC applications? Isn’t binary compatibility the most important attribute of x86?’
Interestingly, Nvidia’s CEO doesn’t see Intel’s developments in ray tracing as a threat to Nvidia either, confidently claiming that ‘Nvidia is the world leader of ray tracing solutions’ following its purchase of Mental Images, and its subsequent demo of real-time ray tracing in CUDA at Siggraph.
Although a lot of Larrabee’s architecture is still under wraps at the moment, Intel’s decision to focus on software rendering with x86 processors was very unorthodox. However, in a recent interview with Custom PC, Intel’s senior performance analyst Francois Piednoel, explained that ‘Larrabee is not like a regular CPU. It’s based on x86 instructions, but it’s parallel. Without saying too much, you will get the benefit of x86, but you’ll have much more than this. We’re not stupid; we are designing something that will be a very good generic graphics card as well.’
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Do they think they're in some kind of technological election? It's not like you can smear Intel, so they need to shut it and get on with coming back against ATi - competition's good for performance and price whatever the sector. All the slagging in the world won't make a card faster.
Comment by KHenry_07 at 11:41am 12th October 2008
If they have nothing to worry about, why are they so intent on ripping into Intel at every available opportunity? If Intel's product will be rubbish then no-one will buy it. Simple. The reason they are always badmouthing is because they are arrogant and scared.
Comment by Anon31 at 11:55am 10th October 2008
Intels the biggest manufacture of CPU's, GPU's(ok, so perhaps not in the gaming market) and chipsets. They've now entered, rather successfully the Solid State Storage Device Market. P4 might of been a plop, it I thnk that it only seemed so bad because AMD's athlon XP and AMD64 were so good (BTW, near to the end of the Athlon XP, P4's were starting to get the upper hand). Weather you like it or not, when your up against intel, You take it serious. They're not going to invest all that money, time and other resources for a crappy product. All this talk about them not being innovative is a bit harsh. The fact that they've managed to use a product, that was desgined for something completely different in the 1st place, managed to apply some 2008 technology to it, making it multiple cores, taking the gamble of software based, and hugely multi-parralled processing, you end up with something unique, very flexible and completely different to a P1 CPU. The un-inovative way to go would be to clone/copy AMD or Nvidia with stream processors and have GPU styles with that. Another way to look at it is, Nvidia is trying to turn their GPU's in to multi-use GPGPU's throught CUDA, Intel and bringing a GPGPU to the table and primarily using it for graphics. Comparing emulation is insiginicant here, we don't know enough details on how this chip works, or even if it'll need that much emulation. That fact it's being designed for graphics means that any emulation will be optimised for Larrbreree (or however you spell it). Who knows how it'll perform. No-ones knows much about it. Never mind it's benchmarks. But if I were nVidia, i'd keep my mouth shut and try and keep good relations. nVidia might be performance king now, but we all know how suddenly that can change. It's a bit like David vs Golaith. Who knows where Intel might shove them.
Comment by weirchri at 11:31am 10th October 2008
Have people considered the fact that intel chose ATI's crossfire platform to run on their boards. Surely this means they know how a Radeon graphics card works, so they can get the chipset architecture right. maybe nvidia are under estimating intel. Ok so they made a cock up of P4, but core2 remedied that in a big way. I think they know more about the graphics card chip manufacturers than we think. I say its not worth slating something until its present and slateable. Lets see what it does and then slate it. ;)
Comment by charddude at 10:20am 10th October 2008
Why would Nvidia, one of the world leaders in graphics technology, have any reason to feel threatened by Intel? Look at Intels track record with graphics chips..... it's quite frankly laughable. Maybe Larrabee will be different, but then again, it could flop horribly.
Comment by cyberspice1 at 8:41am 10th October 2008
Why would Nvidia, one of the world leaders in graphics technology, have any reason to feel threatened by Intel? Look at Intels track record with graphics chips..... it's quite frankly laughable. Maybe Labaree will be different, but then again, it could flop horribly.
Comment by cyberspice1 at 8:41am 10th October 2008
"Any one not intimidated by intel are fools"? morelike "anyone intimidated by Intel shouldn't be competing against them, full stop" S/W emulation IS slower, heck, I've noticed it on a friend's SNES emulator and he's got a Q6600/9800 setup! they've made a good point about the fact that if the tech is so good then why haven't iNtel been blowing everything out of the water with their on-board gfx, and alot of what iNtel have been saying on this sounds like the AMD marketing-speak that was around just before Phlegm came out...my ten cents...
Comment by EdArch at 6:00am 10th October 2008
just think about the multibillion pound Juggernaut plunging into your market. They have the money and facility to beat everyone to the next jump in size sub40nm production and that would always give them an edge even if there not really the best GPU (there tec seems to speak more to versatility than griding power but i thought that off stream processors and look how good they are.) As for the other stuff there lazy did Nvidia ever sort out quad sli i think not after a product is launched its a success or its forgotten always the way.
Comment by Cool_CR at 10:29pm 9th October 2008
With the amount of times Jen Huang has come out attacking every competing product he can find I suspect they must be feeling terrified...
Comment by NotFred at 10:10pm 9th October 2008
amd pointed this out a while back, intel has merely copied other peoples innovations for the past decade or so. i think this can be made more general, intel simply cannot innovate much anymore. i know someone is going to say the core architecture was a 'great' innovation, but it is really just some of intel's old designs integrated with new technologies that others, for the most part, developed. the results are great, but if you take what was allready good and simply push it a bit further you arn't really doing anything impressive. instead of thinking up a clever new architecture for graphics, they pulled some of their old chips off the shelf, updated them, and worked some things out to make it graphics compatable. nvidia has the right to not feel threatened, all intel can do is follow others lead and occasionally improve on the example through manufacturing power and such.
Comment by yougotkicked at 9:37pm 9th October 2008
I'm still not sure we've had that one answered yet. I know not all custom pc's aren't built for gaming but do we actually know what Larrabee is aiming at yet? We've heard a bit about how it's made and what it's based on. Will gaming developers need to code games differently? Answers on a postcard to.....
Comment by crazyceo at 9:03pm 9th October 2008
i don't think Intel will release larrabe as a competing product unless its competitive, if its not i could almost see them scraping the whole thing if it risks damaging there reputation. neway Intel don't make mistakes cough*NetBurst*cough. :D
Comment by TBallS at 8:10pm 9th October 2008
funny that, i thought software was inefficient :P he does have a point though: why arent intel fixing their current integrated chips before they release a new product line? there may be some important lessons to be learned in architecture and drivers. and sorry for getting in before the fanboys lightening pete :D
Comment by soddit113 at 7:28pm 9th October 2008
I think hes either overconfident in such a statement, or very worried. With the end comment from Intel: ''Were no stupid'' and with the amount of success and with such high gains financially, i myself cant see Intel doing some stupid either. Lets just wait and see however. On a side note, lets see how many comments that follow will actually be topical and not mention anything stupid or indeed so normative that a 3 year old could dream up. :) No ATI would be a first.
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 6:46pm 9th October 2008
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