Spare a thought for AMD and NVIDIA. They have been happily smacking each other upside the head for a decade. But at least they have been doing so safe in the knowledge that their GPUs are distinct from – and inherently superior in graphics processing terms – to CPUs.
At least, that used to be the case. Intel has now unveiled Larrabee, a co-processor based on an entirely new approach to graphics processing. If Intel has done its sums correctly, not only will the very definition of the GPU be unceremoniously defenestrated, but also AMD and NVIDIA's graphics chips could even be pummelled to the very brink of existence.
Exactly how many of these cores Larrabee contains Intel will as yet not be drawn on. Given that chips based on the Larrabee architecture won't go on sale until late next year or early in 2010, it's entirely possible Intel has yet to finalise the core count.
However, we do know that the Pentium-derived design of the cores makes them much smaller than those found in an Intel Core 2 die. In fact, Intel suggests 10 Larrabee cores can fit in the same space as a single 65nm Core 2 Duo die. Extrapolate out from that using the knowledge that Larrabee will be based on 45nm silicon technology and we reckon Larrabee chips will boast at least 32 cores at launch.
Other than the Pentium link, the other major feature of the Larrabee core architecture is a superwide floating point unit. Capable of handling 16 instructions per clock cycle, it's four times as wide as the equivalent unit in one of Intel's existing desktop CPUs. Factor in each core's additional ability to support four software threads and the chip's potential is truly staggering. It's just possible that Larrabee might deliver 100 times the floating-point punch of a Core 2 Duo chip.