Soleron said:
Squilliam said:
Yep, I know they aint Sony hehe. The main issue with LRB was that it would have had to be compared against software which was targetted at different architectures and run that inefficiently whereas if it was the target for said software the efficiencies of the hardware could be exposed. It was mainly an issue with it being a little too early in terms of process technology and early in terms of software efficiency. What they essentially did was can LRB 1 and kept it as a test bed, canned LRB 1.0 refresh and then went straight to LRB 2.0 whilst trying to get the software back end up to speed.
Where LRB 2.0 re-emerges is with Sandy Bridge a next generation architecture built on Intels 32nm process. With the ring bus Intel can stitch the LRB 2.0 cores onto Sandy Bridge circa 2011 or 2012 and with some basic improvements in hardware and software efficiency Intel then has their Fusion competitor. LRB 1.0 didn't need to really get released, the main competitor was Fusion which as typical of AMD got delayed anyway so Intel was not in a particular hurry. If Sandy Bridge is year end 2011 then LRB 2.0 integration will probably be the refresh part of Sandy Bridge in 2012.
|
That is what I would have thought, however Charlie D at SA says that even Intel's 2013 processor (Haswell, that's two after Sandy Bridge) does not use LRB graphics on die. He does know all about Intel's roadmaps as he gave us the Haswell+1 codename: Rockwell. Intel is conservative, they will want a seperate chip for a while before integrating it.
|
I respect Charlie D, hes been very insightful and correct on a lot of his predictions. However theres three points of uncertainty here. The first is that the roadmaps are conservative, so they represent what Intel knows it can do which leads onto the second which is that they are always subject to change which leads on to the third which is that they don't always represent the full product lineup in that they keep some commercially important secrets off their roadmap, I.E. If theres 3 SKUs of Sandybridge 22nm refresh, they may only list two on their roadmap.
