Intel Doing Discrete Graphics Cards!

[Michael]

We are focused on developing discrete graphics products based on a many-core architecture targeting high-end client platforms.

http://www.intel.com/jobs/careers/visualcomputing/

This should be interesting with a discrete Intel graphics cards and the open-source Linux drivers!

[rmjb]

This is great news. It'll put pressure on the other discrete graphics makers to open source something. Right now I want to replace my X800... I want some AIGLX magic!

- rmjb

[Michael]

This is great news. It'll put pressure on the other discrete graphics makers to open source something. Right now I want to replace my X800... I want some AIGLX magic!

- rmjb

Why not switch to the open-source Radeon drivers then? You can have AIGLX with that.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Awesome! Hopefully they'll do with graphics the same they've been doing with processors. Superior performance at a superior heat/energy ratio.

With open drivers, I'd buy it.

Can't wait for the Phoronix reviews!

[[Knuckles]]

Excellent! Currently the intel drivers are on the cutting edge of features thanks to the employment of people like Keith Packard to work on them.

If you could get an intel card + superior features on any computer, and not just on lame htpc motherboards and on laptops, that would rule!

[pipe13]

Well, one's definition of "superior features" is bound to vary. I wouldn't expect an R600-burner out of Intel anytime Real Soon. OTOH, Intel generally doesn't aim for a pile if it doesn't think it can hit the top, so Nvidia and AMD have rights to be nervous.

I'm currently running a PowerColor x700 card with the Open Source driver under FC-6. Works fine.

[1c3d0g]

Wow, this sure is a surprise! The dedicated GPU market definitely needs another heavy-weight competitor. Go Intel Go!

[Svartalf]

Well, one's definition of "superior features" is bound to vary. I wouldn't expect an R600-burner out of Intel anytime Real Soon. OTOH, Intel generally doesn't aim for a pile if it doesn't think it can hit the top, so Nvidia and AMD have rights to be nervous.

I'm currently running a PowerColor x700 card with the Open Source driver under FC-6. Works fine.

I don't expect an R600 burner (Or a GeForce8 burner for that matter... ) but I'd expect an R400 (NVidia GeForce5/6) burner, possibly an R500 (GeForce 7) harrier out of a dedicated X3000- the most critical thing is that it performs respectively well and that it's got open info and open sourced drivers. I expect this to happen because UMA does nothing but drag a GPU to it's worst case performance levels.

[drag]

I too am looking forward to this. This should be very welcome.

As for a R600 burner? I seriously doubt it also. But who cares?

Intel are doing some things right, however. I know clock speed doesn't matter so much, but even if Intel's designs are not quite as specialized or optimized as Nvidia's or ATI's hopefully they can make up for it by simply cranking up the mhz.


Also they mention 'many-core' quite a bit, don't they?



What would be the effect of dropping something like 3 GMA X3000-style cores, clocked at 800mhz-1ghz on a discrete card with 256 megs of DDR4 RAM and the ability to grab additional RAM over the PCIe port? (all on the same die, probably. How much silicon does a GMA core take up vs a previous generation pentiums that were made in those now-idle Intel fab plants?)

You'd end up with something like 24 programmable pipelines... It would be a very flexible card for a wide veriaty of situations wouldn't it? And I know that companies like multicore designs sometimes since power management is effective; you just shutoff cores you don't need, but you can fire them up on demand.

Does something like this even make any sense?

[Michael]

Intel's Visual Computing Group (VCG) gave an interesting overview of the discrete graphics plans this week. There seems to be a few interesting developments down the pipeline that could prove quite a challenge to NVIDIA and AMD in 2 years time. As already stated on their website, the group is focused on developing advanced products based on a many-core architecture targeting high-end client platforms initially. Their first flagship product for games and graphics intensive applications is likely to happen in late 2008-09 timeframe and the GPU is based on multi-core architecture. We heard there could be as many as 16 graphics cores packed into a single die.

The process technology we speculate for such product is probably at 32nm judging from the timeframe. Intel clearly has the advantage of their advanced process technology since they are always at least one node ahead of their competitors and they are good in tweaking for better yield. Intel is likely use back their CPU naming convention on GPU so you could probably guess that the highest end could be called Extreme Edition and there should be mainstream and value editions. The performance? How about 16x performance of any fastest graphics card

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4605