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Graphics-Enabled CPUs To Take Off In 2011
angry tapir writes "Half the notebook computers and a growing number of desktops shipped in 2011 will run on graphics-enabled microprocessors as designers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) increase competition for the units that raise multimedia speeds without add-ons. The processors with built-in graphics capabilities will be installed this year on 115 million notebooks, half of total shipments, and 63 million desktop PCs, or 45 percent of the total, according to analysts."
Depending on how exactly these processors will look like, they may be very interesting for speeding up scientific computations. The fastest computer in the world at this moment is already GPU based, and such a CPU/GPU hybrid can possibly be even more efficient by removing the slow communication between CPU and GPU.
And the wheel of reincarnation turns another step.
One of the good things about having the GPU integrated in the processor chip itself is you don't have to go through the bus, so this reduces latency and leaves more bandwidth for everything else.
...CPU handling the graphics in laptops is already causing overheating issues.
Two cases in point, a Toshiba laptop with AMD and a 13" MacBook Pro with Intel, the fans run annoyingly at high speed, the bottoms are hot enough to fry eggs on. That's just sitting with one web page open. How long can one expect machine like that to last? A year? two maybe?
Are web pages going to suddenly tone down their act, quit using video, animation, Flash? Text and pictures only? If they do that, then what? Hardware makers only start making laptops that can handle web text?
Dedicated graphics is the way to go, CPU and graphics on separate dies away from each other, separate the heat sources.
I can just imagine the scene where a bunch of power hungry types just made the decision to move towards integrated graphics, and a highly intelligent engineer just stomping out of the boardroom in protest.
Other than a few hard core gamers and graphic artists, discrete graphic cards are a total waste of money for most people.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Way back near the dawn of time, Intel created the 8086, and its slightly less capable little brother, the 8088. And they were reasonable processors ... but although they were good at arithmetic, it was within tight constraints. Fractions were just too hard. Trigonometry sent the poor little souls into a spin. And so on.
And thus, the 8087 was born. It was able to carry the burden of floating point mathematical functions, thereby making things nice and fast for those few who were willing to pony up the cash for the chip.
Then out came the 80286 (let's forget about the 80186, it's not really all that relevant here). It was better at arithmetic than the 8086, but still couldn't handle floating point - so it had a friend, the 80287, that filled the same purpose for the 80286 as the 8087 did for the 8086 and 8088. (We'll blithely ignore Weitek's offerings here. They existed. They're not really germane to the discussion.)
Then the 80386. Much, much better at arithmetic than the 80286, but floating point was still an Achilles heel - so the 80387 came along for the ride.
And finally, the i486. By this stage, transistors had become small enough that Intel could integrate the FPU on die - so there was no i487. At least, not until they came out with the i486SX, which I'll blithely ignore. And so, an accelerator chip that was once hideously expensive and used only by a few who really needed it was integrated onto chips that everybody would buy.
Funnily enough, it was around the time that the i486 appeared that graphics accelerators came onto the scene - first for 2D (who remembers the Tseng Labs W32p?), and then for 3D. Expensive, used only by a few who could justify the cost ... is this starting to sound familiar to you?
So another cycle is beginning to complete, and more functionality that used to be discrete is now to be folded onto the CPU. I can't help but wonder ... what will be next?
No GPGPU, no accelerated desktop, maybe even problems with higher resolutions. Seems like a problem dressed as a solution to me.
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
I realize that Integrated Graphics are sub-par, but to say they're useless for games unless you're a masochist (the "self" is redundant...), is a bit overstating it. Many of us non-gamers do like to play a game from time to time, but we don't want to spend ourself into bankruptcy. Guess, what? This means we buy older games (cheaper!), and from my experience today's integrated graphics (also cheaper!) handle older games perfectly fine.
Actually the AMD IGPs aren't half bad. Sure they'll never beat a discrete but while I was waiting for my discrete to show up I was playing Bioshock, FEAR, Swat 4, L4D, pretty much anything I wanted and that was with last years 4250 onboard. The new APU chips have an HD6xxx IIRC, anywhere from an HD6250 to an HD6550 depending on chip.
And the reason nobody allows you to write directly to hardware is we already tried that back in the days of DOS. What you ended up with was a single bit of buggy code could take the whole system down with VERY little trouble. Now add in the malware that would be written to try to hide in the GPU, and you'd have a mess.
The reason you can do that with an X360 OS because it is "DRM...in a box" which means all code is approved by MSFT and no approval? No run. Personally I'd rather NOT have my desktop programs have to be given a seal of approval from MSFT, thank you VERY much. There is a cost to everything, and the cost of having the freedom to run what you want is having to use abstraction since the OS has to have a way to control the program.
But don't worry I have a feeling you may get to try it that way if you switch to Apple, as I have a feeling OSX will end up being replaced by iOS and the app store. Then you'll only run what Apple approves of and I'm sure that having that level of control will make for faster access. Personally I'll take freedom over speed, thanks anyway.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have one. The main problems with it are that in Android, there is a certain lack of applications I need (can't seem to find a decent text editor / wordprocessor, for one).
Under Linux, you get all the software (Pidgin, proper text editors with undo and stuff, GIMP and so on) and it's handy for playing with ARM ports of software, but the battery life is only about 3.5 hours. If you want to keep Android there it has to run off the SD card, which is very slow, even with a class 10 card. I might try installing on the machine's internal flash, though - see if that is quicker or less power-hungry.
On mine, I actually disabled the graphics acceleration in Ubuntu - it tended to leave it a little unstable, but it also stopped the VT switching from working, which I didn't like.
Also it is worth mentioning that the 2.2 update did bad things to the bootloader and prevented linux from booting either. It took a bit of fiddling before I was able to reinstall the 2.1 bootloader and I still haven't repaired android after that.
In summary, it's a nice little machine, but I found Android too limiting and linux isn't really mature on this platform yet. With some kind of extended battery it would kick ass, though.
So there will be more computers with crappy integrated graphics. Hopefully, it will still be possible to upgrade them with a decent graphics card.
Yes, and yes.
Oh, and btw, wasn't the plan until recently to basically replace the CPU with the GPU? I'm confused...
No. Graphics Processor Units make very poor Central Processing Units. GPUss work nicely to augment CPUs when doing specialised calculations (encryption, video encoding, physics, etc) that would take the CPU a long time to do on its own, but there are no plans to replace CPUs with GPUs.
which is totally what she said
It may not be the year of Linux on the Desktop but it WILL be the Year of the Linux on your Mobile.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I actually can chip on this on a "this is not true" side. My father isn't a gamer by any stretch - the only games he likes to play are various arcanoid derivatives. Which meant that his work laptop served him just fine.
Then came shatter, and he all but killed me with his "why won't my laptop run this?" questions. Try to explain to someone running the crappy intel 945GM that always ran the old 2d arcanoids that shatter just won't work on it.
So now, I'm probably giving them my current gaming computer as I upgrade, and I'm pretty sure he'll be telling tech support at work that his next laptop has better include 3d acceleration or else (he's in position to be able to tell them that). So the old saying applies here - you'll be satisfied with integrated, until in comes one killer application that it won't run, and then you aren't. Problem is, with so much software requiring decent 3d graphics on board (even aero does!) you're still best served by a half decent dedicated graphics card that powers itself down when 3d features aren't used or used sparingly.
Finally there's an issue of quality, and that goes beyond 3d. Most integrated chipsets have clear problems displaying higher resolutions, which is why high resolution laptops generally have a dedicated chipset rather then integrated solution.
First of all where would this be FUD? Try connecting a full HD monitor to an integrated Intel GPU and you'll see what I meant.
Also, this bullshit that users don't do computing intense stuff is, well, bullshit. Full HD video, 3D movies, photo processing are computationally intensive even if they are not particularly serious usage of computing power. Don't confuse "important work" with "computationally intensive work".
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
Not all GPU accelerated desktop is 'fluff', such as expose/compiz scale/kde present windows (particularly the latter with window title search). When I have many windows open, it's a vastly superior way to find what I need than anything else. It could have been done without craphics acceleration, but it's easiest to get large as possible previews of the results of your search this way.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ehm...
I just checked. Shatter was released in 2010(!) for Windows. The Integrated graphics you mention were released in January 2006. Go and read my comment again: I said, older games on modern-day integrated graphics. I'm pretty sure Shatter will work perfectly fine on my wifes ATI Radeon HD 5750 (iMac bought in fall 2010)... which are the integrated graphics sold these days. Will Shatter work on my 2007 laptop? Can't say, because I can't find system requirements of Shatter. However, the ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 (which is crappy) runs Portal decently. Portal, however is a 2007 video game (Based on the Half-Life 2 engine, released in 2004).
You pretty much INVERTED my statement: use modern-day games on old integrated graphics.
I hope you see a problem with that...
Furthermore: nobody needs Aero... It's useless gimmics and the specs are insanely high for something compiz can do on a Gefore2 MX.
As for the high resolution comment: I've driven a 1280x1024 screen without a problem with my Asus EEE PC 701 4G. I fail to see how rendering a desktop is hard for those integrated graphics. Perhaps when running a GAME on those resolutions, but nobody in his right mind would do that. Back in the early days of graphics card, what interested you most was to know how much memory it had, because you could calculate how high resolution it would support. Those times are over. Integrated graphics drive two monitors at 1440x900 each just fine. I see that every day at work.
Yep. I often need a machine with powerful CPU but don't care about the graphics. It seems like NOBODY makes one. Laptops are a bummer because you can't build your own.
Really? Because you just described the entire apple PC lineup.
Also, if you can't find it, it sounds like you're not looking. Or, only looking at bestbuy and futureshop. MSI has many models, sony and HP do custom to order (CTO) and asus has so many options I'm surprised they don't confuse customers out of a sale.
It really sounds like you are surprised to find that budget laptops don't come with premium features, like full HD, 1080p screens. So hit up dell and configure one.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
My back-of-the envelope calculations tell me that the 9W version is at least as powerful as a low-end Nvidia 400-series or ATI 5000-series
My back of the envelope memory tells me that all low end 400 series and low end 5000 series "graphics" are actually IGPs as well...
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
And the advantage is...?
The advantage of shared memory graphics is reduced cost and power consumption.
The advantage of integrating the memory controller in the CPU is it allows the CPU faster access to memory.
The advantage of reducing the number of high speed chips is reduced cost and power consumption.
So with that in mind lets consider the options for a CPU with an integrated memory controller.
Putting the shared memory graphics on a seperate chip would require a link to the CPU that offered high speed high priority ram access by the GPU and would still leave you with two high speed chips. AMD do this with hypertransport though IIRC they usually have a small ammount of dedicated graphics memory as well to keep the framebuffer traffic off the hypertransport links.
Not offering shared memory graphics at all rules a platform out of the low end market and makes it less than ideal for the business market in general. Intel did this with the nahelm quad and hex core processors and I belive are planning to do the same with the LGA2011 high end sandy bridge chips.
So the natural thing to do is to put the shared memory graphics on the CPU with the memory controller. Intel did this with the dual core nahelm chips and with the LGA1155 mainstream sandy bridge chips.
So there will be more computers with crappy integrated graphics.
Probablly a few more because there were no nahelm quad cores with integrated graphics support. So if you wanted a fast quad core you pretty much had to have discrete graphics as well whether you wanted them or not.
Practically speaking sandy bridge puts things pretty much back the way they were before with the choice of processor core count decoupled from whether to use integrated graphics. It's just those integrated graphics are in the CPU rather than the northbridge. Hopefully this will mean the likes of dell will finally migrate off LGA775.
Oh, and btw, wasn't the plan until recently to basically replace the CPU with the GPU?
GPUs are great at some types of calculation but suck at branch heavy code. So many algorithms have to be completely redesigned to run on them. IIRC in the case of video encoding GPUs can do it quicker but only using cut down encoders that produce lower quality results.
AMD was at one point planning to make units that combined the best of both (note: the fusion name which originally reffered to this is now being used to reffer to CPUs and GPUs on the same die but logcially seperate). Dunno if they still are.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register