Shagster
04-16-07, 08:34 PM
Project Larrabee
Intel describes project Larrabee as a “highly parallel, IA-based programmable architecture” that will be “easily programmable using many existing software tools, and designed to scale to trillions of floating point operations per second...” Intel goes on to say that “[the Larrabee architecture] will include enhancements to accelerate applications such as scientific computing, recognition, mining, synthesis, visualization, financial analytics and health applications.”
Intel would not say any more about project Larrabee, other than to confirm that it has begun planning products based around the architecture. Looking at the statements above, we can deduce one thing already.
Being based on IA, we expect Larrabee to implement some instance of the x86 ISA, but the real clue comes from the 3 TFLOPs performance target. Let’s get this straight: Larrabee is a super wide, FP powerhouse architecture that can do a better job at accelerating scientific computing applications than current Intel CPUs? Larrabee sure does sound a lot like a high end GPU.
Intel didn’t attach a timeframe to these Larrabee projects other than to say that they were in the initial planning stages now. It is highly unusual for Intel to come out and say that it is working on a very vague new architecture, we can only assume that there is some sort of political motivation behind the Larrabee disclosure.
Larrabee will be an important architecture to watch, we expect to hear more about it at this fall’s IDF back in the US.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=2968
Intel describes project Larrabee as a “highly parallel, IA-based programmable architecture” that will be “easily programmable using many existing software tools, and designed to scale to trillions of floating point operations per second...” Intel goes on to say that “[the Larrabee architecture] will include enhancements to accelerate applications such as scientific computing, recognition, mining, synthesis, visualization, financial analytics and health applications.”
Intel would not say any more about project Larrabee, other than to confirm that it has begun planning products based around the architecture. Looking at the statements above, we can deduce one thing already.
Being based on IA, we expect Larrabee to implement some instance of the x86 ISA, but the real clue comes from the 3 TFLOPs performance target. Let’s get this straight: Larrabee is a super wide, FP powerhouse architecture that can do a better job at accelerating scientific computing applications than current Intel CPUs? Larrabee sure does sound a lot like a high end GPU.
Intel didn’t attach a timeframe to these Larrabee projects other than to say that they were in the initial planning stages now. It is highly unusual for Intel to come out and say that it is working on a very vague new architecture, we can only assume that there is some sort of political motivation behind the Larrabee disclosure.
Larrabee will be an important architecture to watch, we expect to hear more about it at this fall’s IDF back in the US.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=2968