Quad Larrabee: one possible future?

[gryoung]

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/Quad_Larrabee_:_Intel's_Answer_To_Nvidia's_Domination?/5767.html

A highly speculative post on VR-Zone but what if?
I for one hope this doesn't come to pass, if in five years time if Intel manages to pull off something like what is being said in this post it wouldn't be good news for gamers in the long run.
Yes, Nvidia can be a pain with the GPU pricing and at $600+ for the top of the line GPU this is quite an expense, but anyone who's kept track of CPU pricing knows this is peanuts compared to the Intel pricing scheme.
Imagine a top of the line Larrabee CPU/GPU and you get the privilege of paying a minimum of $1200+ and of course a hugely confusing naming scheme for various levels of CPUs which Intel uses.

Also an integrated CPU/GPU line up would remove a lot of choices for the consumer, an enthusiast wouldn't be able to choose the CPU and GPU separately but be forced into whatever choices Intel or AMD(if they're successful with Fusion) would allow.
I for one prefer the salad bar approach to system building and a "system on a chip" would remove a lot of those choices.

The other obvious drawback would be Intel dominating both the CPU and graphics markets and killing innovation, that is if Nvidia and ATI/AMD fails to keep a technological edge. Remember what Intel was like in the days before AMD's Athlon came out?, Intel offering miniscule incremental advances in their CPUs at a huge price while allowing no choices for the consumer like, overclocking etc until AMD changed the game on them.

Nvidia's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang can get as lippy as he wants with his claims and bravado about Larrabee being a powerpoint slide but he must see the headlights of the Intel juggernaut in his rearview and he must be a little nervous, considering the process technology, not to mention the R&D and marketing clout Intel can bring to bear in any market price war.

As the Chinese say "May you live in interesting times"(a curse actually), well there definitely are interesting times ahead.

 

[xBanzai89]

I wouldn't worry to much. It is probably just going to be a other over reported product, that won't do nearly as good as everyone thinks. Who knows what Nvidia and even ATI will have in 2011. I'm sure we'll be seeing something probably 3-4 times faster then a GT200. In that time we'll probably have another 2 more series come out with after the R700 and GT200. If were going to see DX11 around that time it could be a even bigger step...

 

[spenny2112]

Intel has stated that they will increase their integrated graphics performance 10x by 2010 we can all see how insignifigant that is.

Looking at that chart, we can see that Intel integrated graphics will be competitive with today's sub $100 hardware by the year 2010 in 3DMark06. With 4 year old games, NVIDIA's current hardware will still blow away Intel's 2010 integrated solution, and the margin just climbs higher if you look at a modern game. NVIDIA claims that these tests were done with low quality settings as well, but we can't speak to that as we weren't the one's running the tests. If that's the case, then the differences could be even larger. -Anandtech

 

[gryoung]

Something I sent as a comment on the Inquirer site which may be relevant in this discussion.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/10/graphzilla-tirade-berates
Pride goeth before a fall.
It's amusing to see fanboys of both camps running around beating their chests and yelling at the top of the lungs about how great their side is at the moment and how the enemy "sucks".
It's shows you that the PR bunnies in both Nvidia and ATI are doing a good job of promoting their products.

I for one think Huang is more then a bit unnerved by the infospeak that Intel is putting out. You would think that he's never been in business before from the comments he's recently made.
Of course Intel is going to "invade" the graphics domain they're behaving the way any megacorp behaves, look at M$, or even farther back, GE/Westinghouse and AT&T and Standard Oil(now Exxon). Everything in sight is fair game and total market dominance is the only reasonable goal. Anything less and Intel's investors would lynch their board of directors.

Also the money represented not only in the graphics field but the High-Performance Computing sector is more then an attractive inducement, so what if they had laughable graphics attempts in the past, doesn't mean they won't pull it off in the future. Look at AMD and how they practically came out of nowhere with the Athlon technology (many had discounted AMD before Athlon as serious competition for Intel) and had Intel running scared for a couple of years, till AMD tripped over it's own shoelaces and did a face plant.

Picture ATI and Nvidia as two sides in WW1 style trench warfare, both busy doing their hardest to defeat the other side and never looking up. Now envisage the enormous shadow of the Intel mothership rolling across their battlefield (aka in the style of Independence Day) and unleasing that beam weapon wiping the battlefield clear of both sides...
In case a lot of you are doubtful of Intel's clout have a look at what they may be capable of http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/Tera-Scale/1449.htm

They may not have experience at the moment in GPU architecture, but that doesn't mean they won't having it in a few years, with the deep pockets they have they can hire whatever talent they want. Recall what happened to SGI in the late 90's and how Nvidia bought up their talent and look where Nvidia is today and what's left of SGI.

Using a military paradigm, "Generals are always expecting to fight a future war in exactly the same way they fought the last war" and that's why they tend to lose the next war. WW1 comes clearly to mind. Huang has reason to worry if Intel is deadly serious about putting it's money where it's mouth is and pursues Terascale processing with zeal and I don't think he's all that naive to expect that it's going to be a tough battle ahead. AMD-ATI at the moment are not in a serious position to challenge Intel so its Nvidia which is squarely in the sights of Intel.

BTW, I'm not an Intel fanboy, only a consumer who has observed that things can change in the technology world in the blink of an eye. Nvidia is behaving in much the same way Intel was just before AMD introduced the Athlon and I think they're going to get a serious wake up call before all this is over. I hope Nvidia and ATI realize just what would happen if Intel got really serious about graphics, as Huang mentions, Larrabee is a powerpoint slide at the moment, but tomorrow it could be a solid product in Intel's motherboard and a lot more quickly then they would expect. Arrogance and pride are two emotions Huang can't afford at the moment.

 

[xBanzai89]

Intel maybe aiming to have the best vga in 2010-11 but they still don't know what ATI, let alone Nvidia will have by then. For all we know ATI may get back on its feet and trounce Nvidia with something in 2009-10.

EDIT: AMD will also be bringing out Bulldozer around that time. It would make sense for them to want to attempt to actually claim to have both the best GPU and CPU. That in itself would make for a good comeback.

 

[spenny2112]

Huang has very good reason to be confident in his company, especially considering the FACT that Intel is aiming for a 10x increase in performance of its current graphics solutions by 2010, which would result in an utterly pathetic product. Nvidia is an extremely successful company and certainly knows what it is doing, and the added competition from AMD will only serve to make Nvidia's products better. Intel is going to be busy fighting a war on multiple fronts and unlike AMD it has not purchased an ATI for itself. I am not saying that Intel will never reign supreme, but based on current information about Intel's goals, it's certainly not likely by 2010-2011.

 

[TerranUp16]

Lolz to the graph- teh Intel graphicz can beatz teh 9500GT by 2010!

I'm also trying to decipher that slide. Is it from the pre-unified architecture days? I kinda have a tough time taking that slide seriously when everything it promotes that it will be able to do that modern gpu's can't... modern gpu's actually can, xD Particularly when modern graphics cards can hand Intel's quad cores their ass when it comes to theoretical computing power (ala Folding@Home).