UPDATE: There wasn’t much new information from Maloney and Baker on Larrabee, though they did indeed demonstrate it working for the first time.
The new information here is that Intel is shipping development systems to game developers and professional users. Though they didn’t give any details, I am guessing they are just emulating Larrabee’s instruction set on many-core dual-socket workstations. Intel is reiterating here that their first implementation of the Larrabee technology will be on a consumer-level discrete graphics card.
This ray tracing demo has been seen many times before, from Daniel Pohl, but not until now have we seen it running on Larrabee. In fact, this demo was running fairly smooth (I am guessing a framerate in the 20s) and at a higher resolution (based on the monitor displayed I am guessing 1600×1200) that other demonstrations rendering solely on the CPU. The demo system was also using a 6-core Gulftown processor to help feed the beast.
Finally, Intel’s Sean Maloney points and laughs at typical GPU companies. Okay, not really, but that is probably what they are thinking. It has to be seen if Intel’s direction will indeed be the correct one.
UPDATE: Below I have posted an Intel video of the Larrabee ray tracing demo.
UPDATE: Below I have posted an Intel video of the Larrabee ray tracing demo.
