Quote:
Originally Posted by wingless
These questions came to me because Intel is serious about getting rid of the GPU and dependence on Direct X for 3D graphics. They want 100% x86 CPU rendering/ray tracing to happen ASAP. I'm asking here because I have witnessed the huge amount of technical backgrounds and knowledge of these forum members and wanted to get a discussion on these topics started.
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There's no question that Intel's serious about marketing its cpus and hasn't been serious about marketing gpus since its dismal showing with the AGP-texturing hobbled i7xx gpus that it foisted to compete with the likes of 3dfx and nVidia several years ago. At the time, neither nVidia or 3dfx cared much about using the AGP system bus for texturing simply because using their own discrete on board local ram buses for texturing was many, many times faster than the fastest AGP incarnation Intel could bring to market. Intel abandoned the discrete gpu market at that time and has remained aloof from it ever since, preferring to tie it's own very weak IGP into the Intel chip systems it sells, instead. I think you can divine much about Intel's actual intentions with Larabee by Intel's historical approach to graphics in general, and I very much doubt that Larabee will be any different when and if it ever sees the light of day.
Even when discrete 3dfx and nVidia 3d cards were literally running rings around i7xx, as demonstrated in benchmark after benchmark at the time, Intel was still professing the "superiority" of the system-based, AGP-texturing dependent graphics it was selling in i7xx--right up until Intel suddenly quit the market completely due to the undeniable lack of demand for its competitively under performing discrete 3d gpus. I recall owning at least two of the discrete i7xx cards and downloading my drivers directly from Intel. The experience in comparison with my experience at the time with 3dfx so soured me on the system-dependent 3d that Intel seems compelled to offer that I've never forgotten it.
In a word, the minute that the ram requirements exceeded the 2-4 mb local frame buffers featured on the i7xx gpus, performance slowed to a literal crawl whenever the AGP memory had to be accessed for texturing. In a word, the "solution" Intel brought to market to compete with 3dfx and nVidia at the time turned out to be no workable or practical solution at all.
What I've read about Larabee so far convinces me that Intel hasn't changed a whole lot in the intervening years, and is still trying to use 3d graphics as a vehicle to move its cpus and systems. People really need to understand this aspect of Intel's manufacturing and marketing history if they want to truly understand the motivations behind all the pre-release Larabee publicity.
What Intel "wants" I believe, with respect to ray tracing, is to capture the minds of as many people as possible with the notion that when you buy Intel's cpus and systems of the near future you simply won't have to worry about gpus since Larabee will offer something better. IIRC, Intel made much the same noises about i7xx--that "AGP texturing" was going to render local bus discrete 3d-card texturing obsolete. As I say, that never happened nor did it ever at any time come close to happening.
It should also be noted that the PCIe graphics bus is, like AGP before it, not to be confused with a replacement for discrete local bus ram texturing, which is still the preference of both ATi and nVidia. Yes, the PCIe graphics bus is much faster than AGP ever was, but...the local bus pools of ram that both nVidia and ATi use today to texture from in the discrete 3d cards they bring to market are much, much faster, still.
A last word about ray-tracing--it's as old as the hills and twice as dusty...;) I was ray-tracing commercially for years before 3dfx shipped the first V1 running Glide, and several years before Microsoft jumped into the 3d game with D3d. The "real-time" ray tracing publicity from Intel that we read about far too often these days is not new or unique to Larabee. I first read about it when Intel released the P4 Extreme...heh...;) Intel-funded "studies" were even then putting out demos of the coming "ray-tracing" wave that Intel was implying was right around the corner for 3d games--uh, if only you buy Intel cpus and systems, of course...!
My advice is not to hold your breath waiting on this, but to understand that you are being snookered by a sophisticated marketing campaign the purpose of which is simply to sell Intel cpus and systems--today.