zgemboandislic
Newcomer
Intel's Secret GPU
- Thread starter zgemboandislic
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That article seems to be devoid of any useful information - just some speculation and a fancy headline. Anyone got anything better?
I did hear a rumour (?) that Intel might try pushing a CPU-based "GPU" in the future rather than go the dedicated route. But that doesn't make much technical sense (great from a business pov I'm sure)...
Oh, and I'm sure that lots of companies would love a piece of the gaming/multimedia hardware pie. Now and over the next few years (especially with Vista pushing more graphics-y stuff) its only likely to get a bigger market which means more opportunity of making a bit of cash
Jack
I did hear a rumour (?) that Intel might try pushing a CPU-based "GPU" in the future rather than go the dedicated route. But that doesn't make much technical sense (great from a business pov I'm sure)...
Oh, and I'm sure that lots of companies would love a piece of the gaming/multimedia hardware pie. Now and over the next few years (especially with Vista pushing more graphics-y stuff) its only likely to get a bigger market which means more opportunity of making a bit of cash
Jack
Killer-Kris
Regular
JHoxley said:
That doesn't make to bad of technical sense when you start thinking about how big the L2 cache is getting and just how much bandwidth it has. Or how big of an advantage always being a process or two ahead can give on transistors, clockspeed, and power consumption.
zgemboandislic
Newcomer
Chalnoth said:
That's not what I understood from that article. I don't think they were talking about integrated gpus, hence the word 'secret'.
Intel's tried a couple of time to enter the discrete graphics market. I'd still be willing to bet they've given up on that. I have a hard time believing that they'd launch any searious effort in creating a discrete graphics product unless the GPU market somehow changes significantly.
In the mean time, they don't have to worry much about it, because they have their integrated lineup. It wouldn't take all that much time to reconfigure a chip designed for integrated operation for a discrete product, if the market changed to make that a reasonable proposition.
Edit: Oh, one other thing: the rumored merger of ATI and AMD some weeks back could possibly be such a change in the marketplace that Intel would be looking for. They may have bandied about a few possible options in case the rumor was true, this being one of them.
In the mean time, they don't have to worry much about it, because they have their integrated lineup. It wouldn't take all that much time to reconfigure a chip designed for integrated operation for a discrete product, if the market changed to make that a reasonable proposition.
Edit: Oh, one other thing: the rumored merger of ATI and AMD some weeks back could possibly be such a change in the marketplace that Intel would be looking for. They may have bandied about a few possible options in case the rumor was true, this being one of them.
IgnorancePersonified
Regular
I think with possible CSI options like HT coprocessor options Intel is looking at selling it's "processors" in what ever form into whatever market. looking at the speculation around their newest integrated product it wouldn't seem too far a jump into the low to middle discrete market and the volume that that entails.
Pure speculation... but if CPU's have hit their (financially viable) limits at around 4-5ghz and the next ventures are towards higher bandwidth and multi-core. Maybe some sort of expansion into GPU's is another way of leveraging performance and feature value for Intel platforms?
How about some crazy Intel hybrid/custom chip that has a D3D10 pluggable software driver that enables GPGPU style work to be spread across a quad-core intel CPU with an additional co-processor. Or something along those lines...
Disable the pluggable component and you've got (some form of) a D3D10 GPU for regular gaming.
Just an idea...
Jack
How about some crazy Intel hybrid/custom chip that has a D3D10 pluggable software driver that enables GPGPU style work to be spread across a quad-core intel CPU with an additional co-processor. Or something along those lines...
Disable the pluggable component and you've got (some form of) a D3D10 GPU for regular gaming.
Just an idea...
Jack
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Chalnoth said:
Truth is that relevant rumours are circulating. No idea if they should be taken seriously or not and to what extend.
I wouldn't be surprised if the ATI/AMD rumours actually originated from Intel hypothetically wanting to give standalone GPUs another try. AMD has neither the resources nor the experience for any graphics related venture.
If true my primary concern would be image and driver quality. Those few times I tried to launch a game on Intel's IGPs in the past it was rather Volari alike texture filtering than anything else.
There's one possibility though I still consider unlikely, yet you never know:
http://www.imgtec.com/Investors/Presentations/Prelim06/index.asp?Slide=23
http://www.imgtec.com/Investors/Presentations/Prelim06/index.asp?Slide=24
Intel holds a Eurasia license since last year and IMG mentions along the lines since it's introduction more or less the same stuff:
This is of course pure speculation from my behalf, since all this could easily also mean just IGPs where Intel will use their IP for.
***edit: and to make it clearer, even if Intel is planning something along those lines I wouldn't expect anything above the low-end segment.
Ailuros is a meanieAiluros said:
Honestly, though, I instantly thought the same thing--Intel holds a Eurasia license, integrated graphics with Eurasia, supposedly scales, so the possibility of a Eurasia discrete board exists. Being realistic for a second, though, this really just seems like a confluence of rumors and otherwise disconnected pieces of information and we're seeing things that aren't there
ps--yes, the old adage is true, if you post something about Eurasia/Series 5 in a thread, I'll show up. it's like talking about Battlecruiser 3000AD or something...
Megadrive1988
Veteran
one step on the road to Intel Platform 2015, this time 2006-2007 implementation.
IgnorancePersonified
Regular
I was quite surprised to see this Intel IGP running Armadillo Run demo. 865G. Not really demanding but pretty good none the less.
I liked the look of mobile gfx "cards" with the ram on the same package.
I liked the look of mobile gfx "cards" with the ram on the same package.
The Baron said:Ailuros is a meanie
Honestly, though, I instantly thought the same thing--Intel holds a Eurasia license, integrated graphics with Eurasia, supposedly scales, so the possibility of a Eurasia discrete board exists. Being realistic for a second, though, this really just seems like a confluence of rumors and otherwise disconnected pieces of information and we're seeing things that aren't there
ps--yes, the old adage is true, if you post something about Eurasia/Series 5 in a thread, I'll show up. it's like talking about Battlecruiser 3000AD or something...
IMG shouldn't have called Eurasia "Series5" IMHO. Something like Series6 would had been way more appropriate. For one Eurasia is a USC and as a second and more important Eurasia contains Metagence IP (or to be more precise, more of Metagence IP since graphics accelerators are multithreaded per se).
Last but not least Eurasia in my mind is architected for PDA/mobile devices and it's scalability obviously can reach IGP level or even low-end standalone graphics at best, but I have severe doubts that it can go further than that for the time being.
Careful with the wet dreams; that one is a totally different thing then the vaporware (high end) desktop GPU that flundered two years ago.
As for the rest above: yes we're used with IMG seeing weird hints in their PRs and nothing coming to frution after all. But in a way that's IP for you, because you depend too much on your partner's decision. However if any of their partners wouldn't have for the time being any plans for a desktop integration (of whatever sort) it would be nonsense to mention it in an AGM presentation. I'm not hoping for anything for the time being, yet I won't be surprised in the future either if I see something relevant showing up. The next best thought though then would be why Intel doesn't devour IMG and call it a day, instead of paying a shitload of royalties to them.
With the tons of buyouts and mergers occuring these days and endless shifts in related markets, this also wouldn't come as a surprise. Hopefully Fudo ain't reading, but then I doubt he has even a clue what IMG stand for.....oooops *blush*
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The SGX cores which target laptops and desktops are probably scaled beyond the portable cores in many different ways besides just ALUs and ROPs. They're likely to be custom designed for desktop performance, sharing just a general technological base with the portable cores, yet classified together with them under the SGX label for a more unified Series 5 branding. After the success of the MBX brand, which became their sole focus in the market out of circumstance, Imgtec probably decided to focus on one graphics brand again for the new generation and therefore lumped together different cores under simply "SGX" that might have otherwise each received a distinct brand. That's not to say that SGX isn't much more scalable than the previous Series 5 incarnation, however.
While the PowerVR group may have incorporated ideas or inspiration from the Meta IP, I doubt SGX's shader units are using actual Meta multithreading IP. Multithreading is just a natural approach for graphics which was probably already being followed by PowerVR independently, though having a division of specialists over at Metagence must be a great resource.
While the PowerVR group may have incorporated ideas or inspiration from the Meta IP, I doubt SGX's shader units are using actual Meta multithreading IP. Multithreading is just a natural approach for graphics which was probably already being followed by PowerVR independently, though having a division of specialists over at Metagence must be a great resource.
Lazy8s said:
The former S5 desktop GPU was afaik a high end GPU for it's time. Even today something that is slated for IGP or anything of that level is quite a bit lower than a past high end desktop GPU. Which other IGP would you expect in 2007 to reach for instance 6800/X800 performance exactly?
Metagence originated IMO actually from the original PowerVR and not the other way around. Look back at the timelines and you'll see when Metagence as a subdivision was created.
However there are specific techniques in the recent Metagence cores (like superthreading f.e.) that would benefit greatly a unified shader core for resource handling and thread scheduling, which weren't there before or at least not to that extend.
There's a reason why the original SGX block diagram: http://www.pvrgenerations.co.uk/articles/2005/pvrsgx/SGX2big.jpg
...changed quickly to the newer one:
http://www.pvrgenerations.co.uk/articles/2005/pvrsgx/SGXbig.jpg
Albeit I'm sure you've read it already, here's an analysis on the Meta core:
http://www.audiodesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183701195
I'm quite confident that the similiarities aren't exclusive to "just" generic block diagrams.
