Squilliam said:
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. |
OK, I agree there's some room for it to happen anyway.
Since Larrabee is so new, Intel will first have it in an expensive, high-end product and then gradually lower the level. It'll also take a few generations to catch up to AMD and Nvidia, they're not going to be perfect on the first commercial go.
So it will be a while before we see a competitive desktop Larrabee in a mobile power envelope, and probably another generation after that before we see on-die integration.
They also have to get the Fusion-style memory controller right; that's the magic sauce that will make Llano work. Just wiring them together will get integrated graphics level performance, you need GDDRx-like access speeds in order to make a real GPU work. Another issue is drivers - none of the Intel integrated parts have had good drivers despite years to perfect them and a stationary target. The 965s never worked, G3x and G4x still sucked and Clarkdale has major shortcomings (though bearable). Look at the difference between the open source drivers and the binary drivers on Linux for AMD cards to see how much drivers matter (open is 1/10 to 1/3 of binary performance depending on game).
Charlie D did say, with regards to consoles, that Larrabee was a dead cert provided it hit performance and timeline milestones. A few months later he said it had missed both of those and was now out of the running. So it comes down to how reliable he is as a source on the subject of Intel, and my opinion is still in the 'unproven' range. (With Nvidia news it's now 'credible').
