Intel courting Microsoft/Sony for Larrabe (GPU) deal.

[Final-Fan]

Squilliam said:

alephnull said:

Squilliam said:
The power is likely going to be there Larrabee is specced to have 1 Tflop of double precision power compared to 120 Gflops from the R700 and 20 from the Cell 1.

That line is so intellectually dishonest it hurts. I assume by "Cell 1" you are referring to the version in the PS3s (not the same version in those expensive blades from IBM) which specifically neglects double precision performance as you don't need that kind of accuracy in games. You are either a terrible person or a useful idiot.

Sorry, I was led astray then. I was misinformed if thats the case. I was told by someone whom I thought knew what they were talking about that double precision was actually more useful with certain types of game code.

I just want to say that I am EXTREMELY grateful that alephnull was able to come in and contribute so much to this thread; I think this is a great discussion to be having and I also thank Squilliam for bringing the possibility to our attention.

As far as the proposition itself, I think that Sony at least would be quite foolish to abandon the Cell, now that every Sony developer is finally getting used to it, just to run after another brand-new unproven technology that may be moderately better.  It would also prevent Sony from having easy BC next time around. 

Microsoft will probably be cautious of anything that strains the famous 360-PC relationship, but on the other hand it does seem like Larrabee could potentially be a real sweetheart deal for them ... if you are really correct about MS not having the same problems with Larrabee that Sony had with the Cell.