Larrabee Team Is Focused On Rasterization

Vigile writes "Tom Forsyth, a well respected developer inside Intel's Larrabee project, has spoken to dispel rumors that the Larrabee architecture is ignoring rasterization, and in fact claims that the new GPU will perform very well with current DirectX and OpenGL titles. The recent debate between rasterization and ray tracing in the world of PC games has really been culminating around the pending arrival of Intel's discrete Larrabee GPU technology. Game industry luminaries like John Carmack, Tim Sweeney and Cevat Yerli have chimed in on the discussion saying that ray tracing being accepted as the primary rendering method for games is unlikely in the next five years."

Comments

Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Who did what with the who now?

Re:Uh

[Yvan256]

Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a wrench.

Re:Uh

[oodaloop]

That's how I felt when I read it. The most pertinent thing I can think to say is :In Soviet Russia, ray traces YOU!

*Sigh*

[dreamchaser]

Intel has been saying with each and every iteration of graphics hardware that it's created that it would be 'competetive'. None have been except at the very, very low end. I like Intel's CPU's quite a bit, but I have heard the boy who cried wolf too many times from them with regards to GPU's to take them very seriously at this point.

Re:*Sigh*

[QuantumRiff]

One would think that a company that could do a complete turn around after it got its 64bit ass handed to it (thanks AMD) would be able to dedicate just a bit of brain-power to their graphics.

Re:*Sigh*

[moderatorrater]

Considering their more aggressive stance against AMD right now, I'd say it's more likely that they're going to try to compete in the graphics arena. AMD now has the ability to bring strong integrated graphics to the table which could result in a net gain in spite of the loss in performance they've suffered recently. The more I think about it, the more I realize that buying ATI put AMD in a very good position (other than that whole "no money to spend on anything" problem).

Re:*Sigh*

[Toonol]

...buying ATI put AMD in a very good position (other than that whole "no money to spend on anything" problem).

Funny, that's the same thing that happens when I buy ATI...

Re:*Sigh*

[serviscope_minor]

Intel has been saying with each and every iteration of graphics hardware that it's created that it would be 'competetive'. None have been except at the very, very low end. I like Intel's CPU's quite a bit, but I have heard the boy who cried wolf too many times from them with regards to GPU's to take them very seriously at this point.

Hard to take them seriously? Are you kidding? The very low end is the massive majority of the market, and Intel has that well wrapped up. They are probably the #1 PC GPU manufacturer out there. If you want cheap or low power, you get an Intel GPU. Also, if you want 100% rock solid drivers that are supported out of the box and cream the competition in terms of stability (speaking about Linux here), you buy an Intel GPU.

So yeah, if you discount the market leader in terms of driver stability and volume of sales, and care only about speed then yes, Intel isn't competitive.

In my world, I will continue to take them seriously, since I always aim to but Intel graphics if I can. If they get faster, that's a nice bonus.

Re:*Sigh*

[ardor]

It is impossible to target their hardware when developing AAA titles, however. It would require enormous scaling. If these abundant GMAs would be equal to low-budget ATI/nVidia cards, things would be different. But even a 6200 gives GMAs a run for their money.

Re:*Sigh*

[dreamchaser]

I meant with regards to statements like it will play DX 9 and 10 games just fine. I've never seen an Intel GPU solution that plays an game with significant 3D accelleration needs 'fine'.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether you take them seriously or not, this is a serious effort to be a major player in the discrete graphics market. (a market not likely to disappear soon as some seem to think)

I happen to know a great many people that work at Intel. And I just happen to also do product testing and marketing focus groups for them. All centered around gaming.

This was a topic that intel did not take seriously 5-10 years ago. They take it deadly serious now.

I spoke with paul otellini on one occasion on the topic of intel gaming. It went more or less like this.

Paul- Which Intel chip do you have in your machine at home?
Me- It's an AMD actually.
Paul- You work for Intel, your family works here and you buy an AMD?
Me- I run what gives me the highest performance in what I do. It also happened to be cheaper, but thats secondary.
Paul- They only beat us in gaming! Our chips are better at EVERYTHING else.
Me- Gaming leads the market.
Paul- No it doesn't.
Me- No one upgrades twice a year to keep up with MS office. We upgrade to keep up with Carmack.
Paul- If I offered to give you a couple of our next gen processors, would you use them?
Me- I'd try them out, but if they can't beat my current machine I won't use them. Even if they are free. Neither will anyone I know. We literally spend a couple thousand dollars a year keeping our machines state of the art so we can squeeze an extra frame per second out of our systems. We aren't going to use anything that isn't the best.

You want me and my market segment to take you seriously? Take us seriously. We make up a small segment, but we are fanatical.

___
A couple years later, I got an email from him.
It was actually sent as a response to several key divisions in intel, because several people had asked why we (intel) care about gamers, they make up less than 5% of the PC market (it's actually closer to 1%).
___
Paul- We care about gamers because gamers grow up. They grow up to work mainly in IT fields. The gamers from 5-10 years ago are now the IT professionals we most want to be on our side. They are the ones making purchasing decisions and recommendations and they do so based on what they know. They know AMD better than us because we ignored them for so long.

Why do we care about games? We don't. We care about the people playing them and we want them to identify with our products.

____

So now you have some insight as to where intel thinks this is all going. It's not that they care about gaming or graphics, because they really don't. They care about the people behind it, and getting them hooked into a brand that "supports" them.
Then there is the really obvious reasons for Intel getting into graphics, VISTA, and other next gen OS's and GUI's are going to use a lot of hardware acceleration. Which means discrete graphics cards aren't for the desktop anymore, they are for the server and the workstation too.
Add to that using the GPU to do certain types of parallel processing at much better thru-put than you can get from a CPU.

The motivation should be obvious.

*Posted AC for my sake. I like my contacts at Intel. I'm hoping Paul doesn't remember talking to a PFY about his companies gaming culture.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget that XBoxes, Playstations, Gamecubes, Wiis, and the rest all use higher-end videocards.
God forbid we try to play Gears of War on an Intel GPU.
Intel is talking about being competitive for GAMING, and that has not been the case.

Re:*Sigh*

[pavon]

Also, if you want 100% rock solid drivers that are supported out of the box and cream the competition in terms of stability (speaking about Linux here), you buy an Intel GPU. I wouldn't go that far. I've had stability issues with my intel graphics. Some OpenGL screensavers and some games running under Wine will crash or lockup X, regardless of what settings I use in my xorg.conf (XAA vs EXE, Composite on/off). Furthermore, several extentions (like composite) that are fairly stable with NVidia drivers are still buggy as hell with the intel drivers.

I never had any stability issues whatsoever with the last NVidia card I bought. Then again, that card is now useless to me since NVidia stopped releasing accelerated drivers for new kernels, which is why I went with intel last time around.

So yeah, if you discount the market leader in terms of driver stability and volume of sales, and care only about speed then yes, Intel isn't competitive. Which is exactly what dreamchaser said. Intel keeps claiming that the performance of their new chipsets will be competitive and every time it isn't even close. So why should we take what they say seriously? I sure as hell don't.

I don't regret my decision to go with intel, and would do it again if I was buying a computer today. However, the way things are looking, I have more faith in the ATI driver situation improving than in intel ever producing a GPU with good performance.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, that card is now useless to me since NVidia stopped releasing accelerated drivers for new kernels, which is why I went with intel last time around.

What what WHAT? Unless this has happened in the past month or so, I call bullshit. You run their script which compiles a tiny wrapper around their big binary blob, and everything is peachy. It's worked perfectly for me on Gentoo for years. In fact, I definitely call bullshit. Latest kernel, latest cards (and old cards), albeit a beta version of the drivers.

Re:*Sigh*

[pavon]

Hmm, it look like you are right. Last time I looked (which was a while ago) the drivers were split into 70 and 75 series, and I was told that the 70 series only worked with 2.4 kernels.

Note to self: Must remember that this new form does not work in konqueror - 3rd post I've had to retype today.

Re:*Sigh*

[lordSaurontheGreat]

In my world, I will continue to take them seriously, since I always aim to bu[y] Intel graphics if I can. If they get faster, that's a nice bonus.

I smell a fanboi...

Re:*Sigh*

[Kjella]

Me- I'd try them out, but if they can't beat my current machine I won't use them. Even if they are free. Neither will anyone I know. We literally spend a couple thousand dollars a year keeping our machines state of the art so we can squeeze an extra frame per second out of our systems. We aren't going to use anything that isn't the best. I figure by this time he called up the head of the CPU division and said "Build us the Core 2 Extremes! Those people are completely nuts and you could probably sell it for a thousand dollars as long as it thoroughly beats AMD". To me it seems fairly obvious where Intel is heading (though they're so large they can afford to go in multiple directions) and that is systems on a chip. It's already announced with Moorestown and in the meantime there's Atom for the low-cost fanless computers in the Nettops (not announced but in stockholder presentations). Do you realize how ungodly large the market is for a cheap small silent computer? How it'd effectively squeeze out all the competing chip manufacturers so a larger share of the net profit flows to Microsoft? For one a decent full-HD decoding chip would take over the HTPC market. The distance between "average people" and gamers is growing, even with Vista requiring a bit 3D acceleration. The limited 3D required for Aero is nothing compared to the array of universal shaders a gamer needs.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Geforce 9800 (Finished and can be bought now)
shader cores 128
clock 1.7Ghz
128x1.7 = 217.6 Gflops
70.4GB Bandwidth

Larrabee (Not released until Q1 2009)
16-24 cores
Clock 1.7 to 2.5Ghz
2.5*24 = 60 GFlops
DDR3 Memory bandwith far less (Even faster DDR3-1600 has 12.800 GB/s speed)

This shows the Larrabee is at least 3.6 times slower processing speed. Plus memory bandwidth is around 6 times slower. Plus the Geforce 9800 isn't even the fastest. The GeForce 9800 GX2 is nearly twice as fast and available now.

Plus its also important to note that Next generation of NVidia cards will be out around July.

Geforce G200 (Expected in July this year, not in over 6 months time like Larrabee)
* 512bit bus so double width of Geforce 9800
* 1Billion+ transistors so very likely to be more than 128 cores
* Clock speed undetermined but its 55nm so its going to be around at least Geforce 9800 speeds.
* Plus GDDR5 will give double speed of GDDR3

But even assuming G200 isn't clocked faster plus doesn't have more than 128 shader cores, once we have the GDDR5 version, its going to be at least 4 times faster than Geforce 9800. It could end up being nearer 5 times faster.

This means we are going to get around 16-20 times the processing speed and at least 12 times the memory speed from a Geforce G200 compared with the highest estimates of Larrabee. And this assumes against a single graphics card. A Duel card will be double this speed.

Plus ATI are going to match these speeds. Intel however are showing they are laging far behind.

So now tell me which top end gamers are going to buy. Intel, no way. Still will be low end.

Intel are still not considering gamer requirements for the future, which they have to, when designing new hardware expected to be used in years to come. Its all Intel marketing hype and talk about thinking of gamers. They are simply trying to limit the effects of GPGPU, which has shown up the X86 architecture as slow by comparision, plus bloated down by lagacy features. Larrabee hopes to clean away some of the legacy features which is a good thing, but for gamers, Larrabee is too little too late at this stage. They really need to up their product spec, if they want to be taken seriously.

Re:*Sigh*

[drinkypoo]

It's not just intel either. Every promise to revolutionize graphics has failed. Anyone remember Microsoft Talisman? :)

I'm still waiting for intel to bring out PCI and PCI-E cards with open source drivers.

Re:*Sigh*

[dreamchaser]

I wouldn't say it put them in a good position as much as it enabled them to survive. They are currently losing the price/performance fight in a big big way on the CPU side. Having a high margin product like popular ATI GPU's can at least help keep their heads above water until they come up with a better CPU architecture.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't go that far. I've had stability issues with my intel graphics. Some OpenGL screensavers and some games running under Wine will crash or lockup X

I can confirm this. Granted it has gotten better than what it used to be , but the drivers still need some work. On the other hand, in the latest Ubuntu DRI and Compiz worked out of the box on a dual screen setup where the screens had different aspect ratios and refresh rates. It has actually come to the point where a number of Intel powered laptops will have all hardware working out of the box. Hopefully the AMT / ATI will follow.

Duh

[Wesley Felter]

Creating a GPU that won't run existing games well (or at all) never made sense. Some people fantasized about forcing gamers to buy a rasterization GPU and a separate raytracing GPU, but those are probably the same fools who bought PPUs and Killer NICs.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that as if there are no advantages to that approach.

While I do agree that the endgame on this is that there will not be separate cards, I hardly think that it's a no brainer that the tasks won't be separated.

John Carmack's suggestion a while back that both ray tracing and rasterization being combined in games is a good reason to consider the merits of specific GPUs for both. If they were designed to work together having two chips on one card could be a significant advantage in terms of performance.

Suggesting otherwise is a bit like saying who needs audio or graphics acceleration when those started to appear. They weren't strictly necessary, but they added so much to the quality of the graphics that nobody today would argue that it was a mistake.

Re:Duh

[frieko]

Creating a GPU that won't run existing games well (or at all) never made sense. Not to Intel, they've been doing exactly that for years!

Re:Duh

[MBCook]

The theory that people were passing around was that it would be primarily targeted at raytracing and have a small rasterization engine that was decent but not high performance.

It was a stupid idea. I don't think even Intel could could make raytracing parts competitive in the market at this point. If they wanted to do that with a new part, I would expect them to be showing MUCH more at this stage. If they were to just drop this on the world in the next few months or year, no one would be able to support it fast enough to make the part reasonable for most games.

This is the clear path. I'm actually a bit skeptical that raytracing was anything but a tech demo they have been toying with. I kinda doubt it's being seriously considered for anything but it's ability to be a relatively familiar demo that can use it's many cores.

Re:Duh

[RiotingPacifist]

but if the raytracking GPU doesnt have the speed to keep up with a raster GPU, they cant really be combined into a game, when your moving you get worse graphics :S.

Re:Duh

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Not all GPUs have to support high end games. There's little reason to have a chip that's as powerful as the nV 8000 series in every computer. It's not necessary, because most people don't play that kind of game. A given computer is more likely to be used with Solitaire than with a demanding 3D game.

Re:Duh

[Wesley Felter]

Except Larrabee is a big, complex, expensive GPU, so it has to be fast (on most games) to be economically viable. If Intel was content with the GMA they wouldn't have created Larrabee.

Max Smart

[geekoid]

This information was based from someone inside a mailbox.

Confidence in the man...

[ravyne]

Tom Forsyth is a lesser-known name in graphics but, having read his blog and exchanging emails with him on a couple occasions, I assure you all that he really knows his stuff. He's been a graphics programmer on early game consoles, software engines, video codecs, and other modern things. The man knows 3D and has mapped it to some low-end and odd-ball hardware. I'm sure he's gotten his head around Larrabee quite nicely.

I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[Yvan256]

As a Mac mini user, I'm forced to use whatever GPU intel comes up with, unless Apple suddenly remembers their own words when they introduced the Mac mini G4:

Lock the Target

Or one 3D game. Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they're good for 2D games only. That's because an âoeintegrated Intel graphicsâ chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You'd have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don't even have an open slot to let you add one. - Apple Inc., Mac Mini G4 Graphics

In any case, what I'd really like is yesterday's technology with today's manufacturing capabilities. Imagine an old Radeon or GeForce GPU built at 45nm or lower. Would that result in a 5-10 watts GPU that could still beat whatever intel is making?

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[everphilski]

Imagine an old Radeon or GeForce GPU built at 45nm or lower. Would that result in a 5-10 watts GPU that could still beat whatever intel is making?

Maybe, but nVidia will leapfrog ahead of you with better tech on that 45nm fab.

To be honest with you I don't understand why people keep drooling over shaving off 5-10 watts in their computers. When you are paying 6-12 cents per kilowatt-hour. You'd have to run that sucker 100-200 to save a dime. Are you really gaming that hard, where those times add up? Don't tell me it's an environmentalist bent, you can save kilowatts by just air drying laundry or adjusting your thermostat or using CFL's, etc. Just doesn't make much sense unless you are grinding your computer 24/7 (and then you are saving *maybe* $4-8 in electricity. per year.).

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[mrsteveman1]

Yea that was a funny quote, but i think Apple has always cared more about interfaces and video than games. The GMA950 does what they really care about quite well, and they seem to think their core image and core animation stuff is important.

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[wattrlz]

Every one of those watts that goes into your computer comes out as heat though. Imagine a future where frying an egg on your cpu, gpu, or any other major hardware component is hyperbole again.

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[Yvan256]

It's not about trimming cents from a power bill (and since I live in Mauricie, Quebec, hydro-electricity is the rule, meaning cheap and clean electricity).

It's about a more powerful but still quiet computer. Since I bought my Mac mini, I consider external hard drives to be extremely noisy.

An efficient GPU that only requires a few watts equals less cooling, meaning a more quiet computer (perhaps even fanless, see low-end mini-ITX boards).

May I remind you that while some new videocards sometime require their own power connector, my whole computer can only take 110W at most? And that's a Core 2 Duo, not a wimpy VIA C3.

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[Anonymous Coward]

That quote is hilarious! I mean...just try to play Halo on a Mac Mini. Or on any Apple OS at all. Wow.

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[SanityInAnarchy]

steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. Either you know what you're talking about and are oversimplifying a lot, or you don't know at all.

If I have 2 gigs of RAM, and a game takes 1 gig, wouldn't it be better if my GPU could use the other gig? Most video cards don't come with a gig of RAM, they come with much less. And I can upgrade my system RAM -- most video cards, you only upgrade the RAM when you buy a new one.

And "steals power from the CPU"? WTF? That is physically impossible. You could say that more is done in software, because less is even supported in hardware, and that would be true. But here, nothing about it being "integrated" makes a difference -- it's simply a weak chip.

Besides, you weren't using that second core anyway. It's going to be awhile before games start to really take advantage of multicore, I suspect.

Now, there is something to be said for the performance of the RAM -- it's possible that the CPU and the GPU now have to share memory bandwidth (true also for dual-core, by the way). At the same time, it means you aren't constrained by things like an AGP or PCI-Express bus in the way. But a PCI Express bus doesn't really do much...

Still, look at consoles. From what I remember, most of them still have "integrated" hardware, and when this current generation came out, they pretty much spanked the PCs of the time.

All that said, I probably don't know much more than you, but there's a lot more going on than "siphons off ram from the system..."

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's about reducing power, yes...

But it's also about less heat, which means less cooling apparatus, which means a quieter machine.

And it means less power needed from a battery, if and when you need one. (Laptops, UPS, etc.)

And that's not "shaving 5-10 watts off your GPU", it's about making a 5-10 watt GPU, if I understand the grandparent -- instead of, say, a 20-30 watt GPU. Which still isn't a lot, but a little bit here, a little bit there, and it adds up -- CPUs are getting more efficient, too.

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[Yvan256]

That was a direct quote from the old Apple Mac mini web page, FYI.

Re:I hope their GPU gets much, much better

[SanityInAnarchy]

Ah, thought I was missing something. Whoops. I see the attribution now.

Sorry about that.

Perhaps its proper to join the competition

[GregPK]

Seriously, I don't know why they don't just open source the interface and let it be compatible with crossfire and hybrid technologies from Nvidia and ATI. This would make far more logical sense than going to war with them. Plus, users would no longer need to plug into the video card for video. They could just plug into the motherboard interface and add more video cards.

Stupid debate

[pclminion]

The whole damn debate is just a bunch of old men whining. Raytracing is obviously a superior rendering method, the question is simply when it will become fast enough. The dinosaurs don't want to let go of their precious scan conversion -- and who can blame them given the massive amount of work put into those algorithms over the last decades -- but the time of scan conversion is coming to an end.

Re:Stupid debate

[Anonymous Coward]

"Raytracing is obviously a superior rendering method, the question is simply when it will become fast enough."

Hence, the old men said it won't be feasible for another 5 years. Now get off their lawn!

Re:Stupid debate

[ardor]

A superior rendering method because ... ?

Primary rays have no advantage whatsoever over rasterization. Secondary rays, now THIS is where it gets interesting. Primary rays can be done fully with rasterization, in fact rasterization is nothing more than a clever first-ray optimization. Therefore, a hybrid is the way to go.

Your "precious scan conversion" and "those algorithms" blubb shows serious lack of knowledge about the actual algorithms. I suggest you do some in-depth studies of them before posting again. You fail to mention issues like cache coherency (given practically for free in rasterization, while hard to achieve in a raytracer). Antialias is also not trivial, unless you go brute force and sample multiple rays per pixel. In rasterization, everybody uses multisampling, a very simple and efficient algorithm (not without drawbacks though, but the performance benefits usually outweigh them).

Oh, before you mention lighting: lighting models are independent of the rendering method. Global Illumination has _nothing_ to do with raytracing as the frame rendering method.

So... without fancy secondary effects, where does this leave us? With the same output a rasterizer can give me, only with much better performance (largely thanks to the cache and missing intersection tests) and just as easy. Reflections, now this is hard with a rasterizer, but thats why a hybrid is wise; use rasterization by default, and secondary rays for those parts of the scene where these effects are visible.

People quickly get blended by the apparent elegance of raytracing. Just try to raytrace fast .. it won't remain elegant for long. And just like many papers, at some point you'll use rasterization, because it IS faster in special cases, which usually make up 60-70% of the scene (opaque, (un)lit surfaces).

Re:Stupid debate

[pclminion]

My day job consists mostly of writing rendering code, although not in a gaming context. I am not at all "dissing" scan conversion. It's what I do every day. My point is, WHEN (and only when) the technology is fast enough for real time recursive ray tracing, it will be the end of rasterization in 3D applications.

Cache coherency problems can be fixed by making an enormous cache, or simply making the RAM itself so damn fast it doesn't matter anymore. Adaptive subdivision of pixels for antialiasing is not exactly a first year student problem but not enormously difficult either.

Honestly, I want to see the technology blow right past raytracing and go straight to radiosity, but that's probably another factor of 5 in terms of how far off it is.

Re:Stupid debate

[Anonymous Coward]

"Honestly, I want to see the technology blow right past raytracing and go straight to radiosity, but that's probably another factor of 5 in terms of how far off it is."

Then why did you call these graphic engine experts "old men" as if they are just set in their ways? It sounds to me like they know just what they are talking about.

Re:Stupid debate

[pclminion]

Then why did you call these graphic engine experts "old men" as if they are just set in their ways? It sounds to me like they know just what they are talking about.

It's been my experience in the software world that people are incredibly stubborn about dropping old, familiar technology when something better comes along. It's certainly not limited to these folks. But even the smartest people get blinded by the familiarity of their ways.

Re:Stupid debate

[ardor]

WHEN (and only when) the technology is fast enough for real time recursive ray tracing, it will be the end of rasterization in 3D applications. Oh yes, the brute force solution. It will be a very long while until it is fully obsolete. Expect hybrids to stay for a long time. An example: many people claim terrain culling methods to be fully obsolete nowadays. Then they try to render really large terrains...

Also, given that hybrids are a no-brainer, I bet both pure raytracers and rasterizers will be extinct in games.

Cache coherency problems can be fixed by making an enormous cache, or simply making the RAM itself so damn fast it doesn't matter anymore. Ehrm .... got any other wishes?! You do realize that this would be a revolution and might not be possible? One of the reasons why the cache is fast is that the signal propagation delay can be much lower due to the proximity of the cache to the cpu. In other words, there will always be a cache. As for an enormous cache: cache mem is very expensive, is likely to be because cache performance doesnt stand still (read: it will always use more expensive special hardware), and huge caches have issues with cache misses.

Adaptive subdivision of pixels for antialiasing is not exactly a first year student problem but not enormously difficult either. I didn't say its enormously difficult, just not nearly as trivial as with rasterization.

Honestly, I want to see the technology blow right past raytracing and go straight to radiosity 1. Radiosity is not the ultimate. Just try doing specular stuff with radiosity.
2. Algorithmic complexity will always come back to haunt you. O(nÂ) will always be worse than O(n), unless you have small scenes. So you have your geforce19000 and can render ... ONE room with realtime radiosity! Nice! Somebody else fakes it and renders an entire city. Guess what will be chosen for games.
3. You could have said path tracing or photon mapping at least.

Finally, these people don't particularly favor raytracing simply because it does not pay off for games. Games usually don't feature fully shiny scenes, games are expected to run at interactive framerates. In, say, 5 years, entirely new (and demanding) effects are en vogue; if raytracing steals too much time, it will be dropped, its results faked. This is what the "old men" do all the time in their games: fake. In the offline world, things are wildly different, so don't compare them.

Re:Stupid debate

[Kjella]

Perhaps. After looking at the latest 3D games/tech previews as well as seeing movies like Beowulf etc. which can spend forever rendering I get the impression it's not the rendering technology that is the problem. Rasterization is good enough, it's that the models still act unnatural that break the illusion. Maybe raytracing can do more with less once it's past the tipping point but I don't think it'll be any major revelation. Conversely, if we do get natural movement going I think we're already at the "is this real or not" point.

Re:Stupid debate

[ardor]

I agree. The shading can be done very, very well nowadays, but once things move, the illusion is dispelled. In Half-Life 2, I was instantly amazed by the movement of the Strider and the Hunter aliens. It made them believable, more than just a bunch of triangles. A level with multiple striders and hunters attacking, alongside these flying synths and the soldiers is very immersive because the behavior of the acting entities is so believable.

Maybe among all these top 10 games lists, its time for a top 10 game animations one...

Re:Stupid debate

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Wow, don't try and hold back that ageism so much - tell us what you really think!

Oh wait, I'm a dinosaur who advocates (and researches) ray tracing - damn blew that theory all to hell I guess.

And his post was ranked "4, Insightful" when I saw it - maybe understanding words like insightful should be required before people get to moderate. Yeah, yeah, I know... it's /.

Re:Stupid debate

[Have Brain Will Rent]

My day job consists mostly of writing rendering code, although not in a gaming context. I am not at all "dissing" scan conversion. It's what I do every day. My point is, WHEN (and only when) the technology is fast enough for real time recursive ray tracing, it will be the end of rasterization in 3D applications.

If it isn't recursive then it's not ray tracing it's ray casting.

Re:Stupid debate

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of barking idiots are getting mod points these days, by the way? "Troll"?!?

Re:Stupid debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to add, there is another reason for difference between cache and main memory.

Cache is S-RAM, which is manufactured in the same photolithography process as the CPU. That is to say, the cache is a part of the CPU.

DRAM is made with a different photolithography process. There have been people talking about doing mixed CPU / DRAM chips, but so far nobody has actually brought one to market.

SRAM is basically a bunch of D flip-flops (6 transistors per bit). DRAM is charge on a capacitor (1 transistor per bit). There is probably more to it as well maybe someone who is more expert can explain in more detail the differences between cache and main memory and the difficulty in putting DRAM on a CPU die?

No need to take them seriously

[Sycraft-fu]

It isn't as though they are only going to sell to true believers or anything. Just wait until it comes out, then evaluate it. At this point I don't really have an opinion one way or the other. Intel certainly has the know how and the fabrication tech to make a good GPU, but they also have the ability to miss the boat. I'll simply wait until it is real silicon that I can purchase before I concern myself with it. It'll either be competitive or it won't, we won't know until it is out and real tests are done.

Re:No need to take them seriously

[geekoid]

I just want it to look good and play well. The method makes no difference to the end user.

Re:No need to take them seriously

[dreamchaser]

Oh I do tend to agree. I am just sick of hearing them talk about it. Show me a shipping product.

Re:No need to take them seriously

[coopaq]

"Intel certainly has the know how and the fabrication tech to make a good GPU"

They have the no-idea-how you mean.

can it uses it's own ram? the new amd chipset can.

[Joe The Dragon]

can it uses it's own ram? the new amd chipset can. Also will it be able to work with a add in video card?

Oblig.

[wattrlz]

It's just a bunch of noise rasterbation.

Frying Eggs

[dreamchaser]

I miss being able to fry my morning egg on my CPU heatsink. Now I have to go all the way downstairs and use the damn stove.

Free drivers?

[CSMatt]

Off-topic. but will Intel provide drivers under a free license for their new GPU, similar to what they are doing now with their integrated GPUs?

Double-Plus Good!

[turgid]

Was it a week or two weeks ago that intel's Larabee was going to replace nvidia and ati's raster graphics with ray tracing?

Resterilization

[solweil]

I read that as resterilization. Thought it seemed a little too meta.

Not for games?

[RiotingPacifist]

has anybody stoped to think that they might be trying to go after a different market. Laptop gaming just isnt a very big market (if you geeky enough to play games, your probably not far off building your own desktops for about 1/3 of the price of a laptop). The main use of graphics cards on laptops is for graphics design and the sort. Sure there are people that want to play games on their laptop, but few people will spend $3000 to get a laptop capable of playing the latest games, when a desktop will cost them $1000 and they can keep playing the latest games for about $200/300 a year! On the other hand a design company will happily keep throwing money at laptops which they can use to show customers simulations in high detail.

I can easily image that if Intel designed a really good card for image design, and it was in the consumer price range, a certain fruit based company would love to use it, now selling parts to them, thats where the money is.

Re:Not for games?

[tepples]

Laptop gaming just isnt a very big market (if you geeky enough to play games, your probably not far off building your own desktops for about 1/3 of the price of a laptop). Then what else sits between DS/PSP/GP2X and PC gaming?

solving yesterdays problems.. tomorrow!

[hohokus]

claims that the new GPU will perform very well with current DirectX and OpenGL titles well, there's your problem..

Keep Vista in mind

[DrYak]

Keep Microsoft Windows Vista in mind and reconsider your last sentence :

A given computer is more likely to be used with Solitaire than with a demanding 3D game. More seriously : Intel has been king in the ultra-low cost segment of GPU because nearly every business desktop (almost any non-high-end Dell machine for example) needs a graphic card, just to draw the desktop, but almost no 3D function. Thus it's hard to find 1 machine which was sold to a corporation and doesn't have an i8x0 or i9x0 embed GPU. (Even if sometimes, it is disabled because the buyer asked for a mid-range nVidia or ATI).

The problem is that now thanks to Vista and its Aero, powerful 3D acceleration starts to matter not only to /.er gamers, but even for the secretary who only runs an OS, a browser, an office suite and the occasional mine-sweeper/solitaire.

Re:Keep Vista in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Aero works perfectly fine with an integrated graphics chipset as long as it's from the last few years. Most of the people I know have Intel integrated graphics because they're low powered and have decent drivers. The people that need powerful 3D acceleration are in the minority and your assertion that it matters to a secretary because of Vista is ludicrous.

Re:Keep Vista in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

The GMA950 runs Aero just fine. The GMA900 cannot, but that's only due to drivers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950#GMA_950_2

Pixels

[Whiteox]

All it is is changing pixels. After all, it's still a 2D screen that displays as a bitmap. Sometimes a step backwards is valuable too.

driver quality...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard that Tom Forsyth, Mike Abrash and Mike Sartain at RAD Game Tools are doing the 3D driver for Larrabee, so maybe this will be the first good Intel driver...

Are Intel GPUs stronger than Wii GPU?

[tepples]

It is impossible to target their hardware when developing AAA titles, however. It would require enormous scaling. I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Are you claiming that Intel GPUs are less powerful than the Hollywood GPU of Nintendo's Wii console, or are you claiming that too few AAA titles come out for Wii?

Re:Are Intel GPUs stronger than Wii GPU?

[dreamchaser]

Who said anything about the Wii? I must have missed that.

Re:Are Intel GPUs stronger than Wii GPU?

[tepples]

It is impossible to target [Intel's 3D graphics] hardware[, which is less powerful in that of NVIDIA or ATI,] when developing AAA titles, however. Are you claiming that Intel GPUs are less powerful than the Hollywood GPU of Nintendo's Wii console, or are you claiming that too few AAA titles come out for Wii? Who said anything about the Wii? I must have missed that. I brought up the Wii. I was using it as an example of a platform for which the major video game publishers publish titles, but whose GPU is less powerful than today's low-end to mid-range 3D video cards for PCs. Now why do think it's possible to develop games for Wii but not for PCs with Intel graphics?

About those drivers...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yes, I love how there are absolutely rock solid, open drivers for just about every Intel card ever made (of any kind) on Linux.

Can anyone at Intel confirm that this will be the case with the new drivers? Or will ATI beat them to it? Because more than anything else, this is what will determine my next video card purchase: Rock solid open source drivers that have all the features of the Windows drivers.

Translation: "We want gamers to like us."

[Futurepower(R)]

PFY = Pimply Faced Youth

This sounds real to me. Intel CEO Paul Otellini could have said that.

But it must be translated from corporate-speak. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, except that he wants to tell you something you want to hear. The translation is: "We want gamers to like us." You already knew that.

I don't intend this to indicate anything about whether I think Intel is serious this time about making competitive GPUs. I'm just commenting on the fact that CEOs often don't believe that what they say must be true. They often just say what they think will make you like them. And it doesn't matter anyway, since they are gods, and make millions even if the company fails.

Quote from the Wikipedia link: "In 2006, he oversaw the largest round of layoffs in Intel history when 10,500 (or 10% of the corporate workforce) employees were laid-off. Job cuts in manufacturing, product design, and other redundancies, were made in an effort to save $3 billion/year in cost by 2008. Of the 10,500 jobs, 1,000 layoffs were at the management level."

About this 6200...

[sznupi]

Last Intel offerings (X3100 that is in all laptops here) are actually (finally) definatelly faster...
Yes, it's still nothing spectacular, but as long as I can play (with tweaked settings of course) Orange Box titles, Hellgate: London, Sins of Solar Empire and Mythos, I'm happy.

Re:About this 6200...

[sznupi]

Quite possible - I just replied to parent claiming that Intel can't touch gf6200, while X3100 actually surpasses it

(again, it's nothing dramatic, but I guess it's enough for a lot of folks, including me - I'm in a market for a new Thinkpad R61 14", and cheapest one, with X3100, will do the job fine; plus I'm somehow under, perhaps misjujed, impression that Intel gfx will give longest battery time; anyway Lenovo doesn't deal with AMD...)

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked with Crytek and have had correspondence (mostly throughly electronic media) with all of the above mentioned People at various times. Of these people, Tom Forsyth is the one who's opinion who has most value in practice. He's not in the spot-light like the others, but he has worked on both sides of the hardware/software company divide and delivered some fantastic presentations in his time.

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Long live Muckeyfoot!

[Bobtree]

Startopia is still one of my favorite games. Thanks again Tom.

Larrabee will be awesome ... for everybody!

[Joce640k]

Read the article - Larrabee is designed for general purpose programmability.

If your motherboard has Larrabee you could use it for the physics calculation while your add-in GPU does the graphics.

This makes a whole lot more sense than trying to get a single GPU to do both tasks.

Re:Larrabee will be awesome ... for everybody!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that Larrabee2 was going to start having a cuda-like api. The first release of larrabee was going to be pure opengl/directX stuff.