Pages: 1 [2]
Sid2
 
Forum moderator - BOINCstats SOFA member
BAM!ID: 28578
Joined: 2007-06-13
Posts: 7336
Credits: 593,058,630
World-rank: 3,055

2010-07-24 00:04:35



Accelerator Adoption Picks Up Speed



Well, we're six months deep into 2010, and while there hasn't been a lot of blockbuster stories on the HPC front, the trends are unmistakable: more GPU computing, multicore multiplication in CPUs, and the search for a software model that ties everything together.

In fact, the biggest "story" of the year from a vendor had elements of all three of these trends. That was Intel's revelation of the upcoming "Many Integrated Cores" (MIC) HPC coprocessor, based on recycling the company's Larrabee technology. In a nutshell, the idea behind MIC is to build a manycore x86 chip with lots of vector horsepower for HPC-type codes. The original notion of using Larrabee as the basis for high-end graphics chips was jettisoned in December 2009.

The rationale behind MIC is to be able to preserve the industry's investment in x86 software in order to provide a smooth path to manycore technical computing. To help ease that transition, Intel will supply its own MIC compiler, parallel computing development tools and software libraries to support the new architecture.

Commercial offerings of this technology aren't scheduled to show up until late 2011, or more likely 2012, but early versions of MIC (just the Larrabee hardware, really) are already in the hands of selected customers. The first product will be built on the 22nm transistor geometries and is codenamed "Knights Corner."


More . . .

magyarficko
 
BAM!ID: 76666
Joined: 2009-10-30
Posts: 619
Credits: 287,367,952
World-rank: 5,175

2010-07-24 00:53:03

Sid2 wrote:


Accelerator Adoption Picks Up Speed



Well, we're six months deep into 2010, and while there hasn't been a lot of blockbuster stories on the HPC front, the trends are unmistakable: more GPU computing, multicore multiplication in CPUs, and the search for a software model that ties everything together.

In fact, the biggest "story" of the year from a vendor had elements of all three of these trends. That was Intel's revelation of the upcoming "Many Integrated Cores" (MIC) HPC coprocessor, based on recycling the company's Larrabee technology. In a nutshell, the idea behind MIC is to build a manycore x86 chip with lots of vector horsepower for HPC-type codes. The original notion of using Larrabee as the basis for high-end graphics chips was jettisoned in December 2009.

The rationale behind MIC is to be able to preserve the industry's investment in x86 software in order to provide a smooth path to manycore technical computing. To help ease that transition, Intel will supply its own MIC compiler, parallel computing development tools and software libraries to support the new architecture.

Commercial offerings of this technology aren't scheduled to show up until late 2011, or more likely 2012, but early versions of MIC (just the Larrabee hardware, really) are already in the hands of selected customers. The first product will be built on the 22nm transistor geometries and is codenamed "Knights Corner."


More . . .



Hmmmm ... sounds to me like Intel hasn't heard of the "many core performance wall". Won't they be surprised when they figure out they're planning for the future with a dead-end strategy


Sid2
 
Forum moderator - BOINCstats SOFA member
BAM!ID: 28578
Joined: 2007-06-13
Posts: 7336
Credits: 593,058,630
World-rank: 3,055

2010-07-25 13:29:17
last modified: 2010-07-25 13:44:53

thatotherguy wrote:



Hmmmm ... sounds to me like Intel hasn't heard of the "many core performance wall". Won't they be surprised when they figure out they're planning for the future with a dead-end strategy



Intel's Many Integrated Core Architecture [Knights Ferry] will blur the boundary between CPU and GPU.

. . . Larrabee lives!




Sid2
 
Forum moderator - BOINCstats SOFA member
BAM!ID: 28578
Joined: 2007-06-13
Posts: 7336
Credits: 593,058,630
World-rank: 3,055

2011-09-27 10:38:42


The Intel MIC multiprocessor architecture announced in 2010 inherited many design elements from the Larrabee project, but does not function as a graphics processing unit; the product is intended as a co-processor for high performance computing. The prototype card is named Knights Ferry, a production card built at a 22nm process named Knights Corner is planned for production in 2012 or later.

Larrabee's hybrid of CPU and GPU features should be suitable for general purpose GPU (GPGPU) or stream processing tasks. For example, Larrabee might perform ray tracing or physics processing, in real time for games or offline for scientific research as a component of a supercomputer.


More. . .


Pages: 1 [2]

Index :: Gadgets, Games and Gizmos :: Intel's Larrabee: Architecture Evolution on a Collision Course
Reason: