Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1593
10 December 2008 Intel Offers Details on Larrabee Intel presented a paper at SIGGRAPH 2008 that described the features and capabilities of its fi rst-ever forthcoming "many- core" blueprint/architecture codenamed Larrabee. Details unveiled in the paper include a new approach to the software rendering 3D pipeline, a many-core (many proces- sor engines in a product) programming model, and perfor- mance analysis for several applications. Intel is developing Larrabee separately from its current line of integrated graphics accelerators. The fi rst product based on Larrabee will target the PC graph- ics market and is expected in 2010, possibly earlier. The card containing Larrabee is expected to compete with Nvidia's GeForce and AMD's ATI Radeon products. Larrabee will also compete in the GP-GPU and high-performance computing markets. Larrabee will be the industry's fi rst many-core x86 Intel archi- tecture, meaning it will be based on an array of many individual processors. It is expected to kick-start an industrywide effort to create and optimize software for the dozens, hundreds, and thousands of cores expected to power future computers. Intel has a number of internal teams, projects, and software-related efforts under way to speed the transition, but the tera-scale research program has been the single largest investment in Intel's technology research and has the company partnered with more than 400 universities, DARPA, and vendors such as Microsoft and HP to move the industry in this direction. According to Intel, over time the developer freedom afforded by the Larrabee architecture will bring about innovation in many market segments, including gaming. While current games keep getting more realistic, they do so within a rigid and limited frame- work; Intel claims that Larrabee will give game developers more fl exibility due to its parallelism and programmable architecture. Other areas within the visual computing space that stand to benefi t from this architecture are photorealistic rendering, high- defi nition audio and video, and computational modeling. Initial product implementations of the Larrabee architecture will target discrete graphics applications, support DirectX and OpenGL, and run existing games and programs. Additionally, a broad potential range of highly parallel applications, includ- ing scientifi c and engineering software, will benefi t from the Larrabee native C/C++ programming model, the company promises. NEWS: GPU Lenovo Unleashes ThinkPad W700 PRODUCT: MOBILE WORKSTATION Lenovo rolled out the ThinkPad W700, a 17-inch widescreen mobile workstation engi- neered to meet the demands of data- and graphics-intensive users. Lenovo brings the industry's fi rst built-in digitizer and color calibrator to a mobile workstation, along with Nvidia Quadro FX mobile graphics and support for the upcoming Intel mobile Quad Core processor. Other features include optional dual hard drives with RAID confi gurations, up to 8GB of high-speed DDR3 memory, a range of wireless connectivity options, and multimedia capabilities, including an optional Blu-ray DVD burner/player. The ThinkPad W700 extends Lenovo's commitment to workstation users, complementing Lenovo's W500 mobile workstation and ThinkStation S10 and D10 workstations. As workers in areas such as DCC, CAD/manufac- turing, digital photography, and science fi elds (including the oil and gas industries) become increasingly mobile, they are demanding the full-featured performance of a desktop workstation in a mobile confi guration. The 17-inch display features 1920x1200 resolution, high brightness (400 nit), and a wide color gamut. A Pantone color calibrator is built into system to automatically adjust the color quality of the display. The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation is currently available with models starting at $2978.