Intel Larrabee: the General Purpose GPU of all GPUs
Hey guys, Icarus here!
So, I haven’t talked about Intel’s Larrabee GPU for a while. That’s because Intel’s so careful about leaking information.
However, I got another sliver of news today.
Intel’s Larrabee isn’t just a GPU; it’s a GPGPU.
So what is it exactly?
It stands for General Purpose GPU. It’s a bit different from most of the GPUs we’ve seen so far.
What it means by a General Purpose GPU, or the GPGPU, is that it’s supposed to be far more flexible in what it does compared to other GPUs we’ve seen so far.
The Intel Larrabee is based on x86 architecture, which is the foundation of most of the great CPUs that Intel has debuted so far.
What I’m guessing is that, because the Larrabee is based on a similar foundation as their CPUs, the Larrabee will be able to take on multiple functions that GPUs in the past could not take on.
For example, it may take on some tasks that the CPU usually handles, enabling the CPU to use more power and focus on other threads that may need more performance.
So, all in all, a GPGPU is:
- General Purpose GPU
- It means that the GPU can handle many other functions that other parts of the PC does. For example, a GPGPU might handle some threads that a CPU will usually do
This is what makes Intel’s Larrabee so exciting and unique; there aren’t any GPUs out there that can do anything close to what the Larrabee can do.
This can possibly revolutionize how a computer is structured and laid out
With a GPU that can handle applications and functions that other parts of the computer usually handle, it means that the other parts of the computer can also handle much, much more with the support of this new GPGPU.
Well, that’s all for this post! Hope you guys enjoyed it!
Stay tuned for more to come! Make sure to comment and subscribe!
Cheers!
~| Icarus
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September 3rd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Hi ImIcarus,
So how might this tech apply so say… a guy’s animation render farm? Any benefit?
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Hey Chemicalpete, thanks for the comment!
Intel’s Larrabee, as far as we know, can do much, much more than a typical GPU we’ve seen that only handles graphics commands.
In animation rendering, in a typical computer, you would need a decent graphics card and a good processor.
Think of it this way: with a CPU doing its own work, and a GPU doing its own work, the CPU will have a much heavier workload than the GPU. Thus, if you are also running other programs on your PC, the CPU will probably take longer to work out the commands from the animation rendering, and take longer to send the commands to the GPU.
However, with the Larrabee, because it is a GPGPU, it can handle both graphics and other applications. So now, what you have is a computer with a CPU that creates and sends commands, and a GPU that can do the graphics and other applications at the same time.
So if the CPU is running multiple threads, it’s quite possible that the Larrabee can take those extra threads, and function partly as a CPU, while taking on its own graphics commands.
Basically, the Larrabee has the potential to evenly distribute the workload among itself and other hardware components of the PC. So the more it can take, the less workload there will be on the CPU.
The less workload on the CPU, the more things the CPU can handle because now its workload is much, much smaller.
Hopefully that helps!
September 4th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Couldn’t help throwing in an FYI
The monsters vs aliens 3d animated movie was rendered by larabee.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Wow are you serious??
I haven’t gotten around to seeing that movie, but that’s just nuts!