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Intel enters the laptop discrete GPU market with Xe Max
- dvdkon 6y agoThis is a really confusing product for me. Do they really expect laptop manufacturers to spend money on a niche GPU compute workload accelerator? I'd say it's because Intel wants to show something for their GPU-building efforts, but they already did that with Iris Xe IGPUs. The linked Ars Technica article says it well, "who will benefit enough from an Xe Max-equipped laptop"? I don't see anyone.
- gbrown_ 6y ago> I'd say it's because Intel wants to show something for their GPU-building efforts I think this hits the nail on the head.
- pinewurst 6y agoIn the same sense that Intel enabled/pushed a low volume Cannon Lake laptop as a China only SKU so they could tell the analysts, "see we've shipped 10nm" - even if the onboard GPU didn't work and had to have AMD RX540 instead.
- lliamander 6y agoMaybe a cheaper discrete GPU option compared to Nvidia MX GPUs, and paired with cheaper comet lake processors?
- merb 6y ago> Do they really expect laptop manufacturers to spend money on a niche GPU compute workload accelerator macbook pro's if they keep their intel based cpus. if you use an external monitor it will always use the discrete gpu, besides that it might not be necessary. the discrete gpu inside the macbook pros heat really fast. it really depends on how good these are and how much heat they produce. if they are slightly worse but have way better cooling than its a win-win
- TheRealSteel 6y agoMacBook Pro isn't keeping their Intel CPUs. Apple officially announced a change to 'Apple Silicon' for Mac a few months ago.
- refulgentis 6y agoIMHO you're looking at it from a software engineer lens - from a product lens as I understand it, this is huge for OEMs as it's a way to upsell while gaining the ability to target a significantly larger chunk of the market. It provides a way to get 4k dual monitor support for pros and marketable video game support for prosumers, both in ~$600 fanless ultrabooks
- hedora 6y agoIs the discrete accelerator required for dual 4K? The article says it only really helps (vs the integrated intel GPU) with video encoding and machine learning workloads.
- Filligree 6y agoA discrete accelerator is needed even for single 4K. Yes, intel's GPUs can handle that on paper, but they can't really do so while running any software which needs GPU acceleration, such as a browser. It's laggy at best.
- vetinari 6y ago4k and browser composition are non-issue for any PC GPU. It is purely matter of memory bandwidth, and even Broadwell-era iGPUs are fine.
- Filligree 6y agoPerhaps it is on Windows. Neither ChromeOS nor my X1 Carbon running Linux have been able to run at 4k without noticeable lag even in the terminal.
- vetinari 6y agoAlso in MacOS. A 2015 13" MBP (which is Broadwell) can drive two 4k displays; the only limitation is, that each of them must be connected to separate TB port. For Linux, I don't know, the only older machine with Linux that I have is Ivy Bridge one, and that is capable only of 4k@30, which is uncomfortable. With Kaby Lake, it's nice. Also, lag is a latency. That would suggest, that your problem is somewhere else, not in the raw GPU performance. GPU itself doesn't have anything with the output resolution anyway, it is handled separate, dedicated block called output encoder.
- ksec 6y ago>This is a really confusing product for me. 1. Discrete GPU sells, Discrete = better than Integrated. ( Forget about the actual benchmark for the time being ) Especially true in market like China. 2. I would not be surprised if this was giving out for free with or for very little cost compared to just buying TigerLake. ( Or you know, normal price but with Intel Xe Max Marketing budget rebate ) 3. The sole purpose is likely a Marketing exercise to address the world / market. We ( Intel ) now have a discrete GPU too. And they are good. ( You will always need to solve the Chicken and Egg problem with continue investment of GPU, revenue generation and demand for a product new to market segment) 4. Nearly 80% of PC sold are now Laptops. You need something to generate volume, view, exposures, Xe Max seems like well positioned. 5. You also need product volume to push developers to develop for their GPU / OneAPI. Just like Apple tells you e.g 60% of Active Devices, or 600M are already on iOS 14. Developer should plan their App upgrade with new API usage accordingly. Same with OneAPI and Intel Xe Max GPU. It is easier if you have a Total Addressable Market. Q: So this is more or a marketing move than anything? A: Possibly, Intel are exceptionally good at sales and marketing. Despite their Technological incompetence in the past years, I have to give them credit for that.
- glangdale 6y agoI hate to be cynical, but I suspect there's an Intel exec who will "benefit enough" from Intel having shipped this. I share your bafflement. It feels like, at best, a 'pipe cleaner' (i.e. a product that's put through the whole process to debug it and ensure that a later product goes smoothly).
- marmaduke 6y agoI would use one. The ISPC compiler recently got support for this new generation of GPUs and in principle it’s exactly the niche they want to hit. The code I write is then used by my research group colleagues. The same goes for AVX512. It seems niche but then you use it and it’s great, but only a weird subset of laptops have it for now (but MBA 2020 and MBP 13 2020 do have it, MBP 16 doesn’t)
- fluffything 6y agoHow is ISPC's support for AMD MI supercomputing accelerators, or Nvidia's A100s ? I feel like Hip, OneAPI, ISPC, etc. haven't improved anything over CUDA. With CUDA we had one proprietary API. Now we have 3-4.
- marmaduke 6y agoIspc used to support NVPTX (since it’s based on LLVM) but for obvious reasons they dropped it. I agree that OpenCL should have won but OTOH most of us have AVX2 or NEON to work with at least and things like ISPC make that trivial to write for, for the workloads where it matters.
- marmaduke 6y agoAlso I think if you have access to an A100 (which is 6k+ eu before tax academic price), you aren’t really worried about using a proprietary API.
- HelloNurse 6y agoWhat poor souls use a low-power laptop GPU for content creation? This product falls squarely in the gap between inexpensive mainstream laptops and high-performance "workstation" or gaming laptops.
- amelius 6y ago> During an extended product briefing, Intel stressed to us that the Xe Max beats Nvidia's entry-level MX 350 chipset in just about every conceivable metric. In another year, this would have been exciting—but the Xe Max is only slated to appear in systems that feature Tiger Lake processors, whose Iris Xe integrated GPUs already handily outperform the Nvidia MX 350 in both Intel's tests and our own. Two GPUs are more powerful than one, so I don't see the problem.
- robin_reala 6y agoThe problem is that you can’t use both at the same time:[1] To cut right to the chase on an important question for our more technical readers, Intel has not developed any kind of multi-GPU rendering technology that allows for multiple GPUs to be used together for a single graphics task (ala NVIDIA’s SLI or AMD’s CrossFire). So there is no way to combine a Tiger Lake-U iGPU with Xe MAX and double your DOTA framerate, for example. Functionally, Xe MAX is closer to a graphics co-processor – literally a second GPU in the system. This basically seems to make it only useful as some sort of encoding/decoding co-processor, with potential but currently undescribed / undefined ML benefits. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16210/intels-discrete-gpu-era-begins-intel-launches-xe-max-for-entrylevel-laptops https://www.anandtech.com/show/16210/intels-discrete-gpu-era...
- mtgx 6y agoThey expect users to pay twice for their GPUs - once for the integrated one and once for the dedicated one. They are probably attempting this because for a long time OEMs would include both Intel's iGPU (not like they had a choice) but also an Nvidia GPU, even if it had the same or lower performance than the iGPU, just so Intel doesn't fully monopolize their devices. Then again, by this logic not sure why any OEM would pay twice for Intel GPUs, either.
- im3w1l 6y agoYou are shadowbanned.
- trynumber9 6y agoXe HP and Xe HPG seem more interesting but I wonder if they'll be too late to be competitive. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16018/intel-xe-hp-graphics-early-samples-offer-42-tflops-of-fp32-performance https://www.anandtech.com/show/16018/intel-xe-hp-graphics-ea...
- baybal2 6y agoLDPPR4x is a very odd choice for graphics. LPDDR4x soundly loses to HBM2E on energy/bandwidth ratio. 6-8 picojoules per bit to 1.5-2.5
- wmf 6y agoLaptops generally can't afford HBM. I have a hunch that DG1 is Tiger Lake with the cores cut out so that's where the memory controller comes from.
- baybal2 6y agoHBM memory is not that expensive, what is expensive is the (co-)packaging But Intel has already committed to using active silicon interposer instead of abf for substrate, which is way more expensive.
- wmf 6y agoI have no idea what that means, but DG1 does not have any kind of interposer. In the context of DG1, LPDDR is cheaper than HBM.
- lliamander 6y agoGiven Intel's reputation stable Linux drivers, I'm excited for their discrete desktop GPUs.
- DCKing 6y agoYeah! People say AMD has the best Linux drivers, but they're wrong! Intel's are feature rich and stable, and I think they're better than AMD's [1]. They're just kind of ignored since nobody "chooses" to use an Intel GPU in their computer. You just get one bundled in your CPU, until now that is. Intel Xe will likely be very poorly received because they'll be compared to AMD and Nvidia's best offerings and "Intel is failing at everything" is the big story now. But AMD and Nvidia are treating the low end GPU market as some sort of a backwater, and there's a proper niche for people who just want a reliable graphics card with modern video outputs and modern video codecs. If it can run desktop 3D effects smoothly on multiple high resolution screens - like a better or less expensive GT1030 and RX550 - you can be golden. Not everything GPU is about gaming or high end compute. [1]: Okay, AMD's Linux drivers are also really good, but they can still have more hairy edge cases and lack of development than Intel's.
- pedrocr 6y agoBut why would any of those people want this part? The only way I see it is if you want an Intel GPU for the compatibility in an otherwise AMD system. If not the Intel CPU you'd build already includes a more than capable GPU this generation.
- leetcrew 6y agomaybe I'm missing something important, but it seems like it could only be a super niche part for a laptop. why spend extra board area and BOM on an eGPU that barely outperforms the iGPU? seems like it would make more sense as an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel desktop part. maybe you have some old desktop that you want to turn into an HTPC, but it doesn't have the right ports or the ability to decode high bitrate video in realtime. plop one of these guys in for (ideally) $xx and you're good to go. of course, this would be the opposite of the high-margin stuff intel likes to make.
- toolslive 6y agothey tried this (!?) a decade ago too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(microarchitecture)
- wmf 6y agoAs meh as Xe is, it's a working GPU which is dramatically more mature than Larrabee ever was.
- wtallis 6y agoLarrabee was a weird attempt to force x86 into the GPU space. It was more hubris than silicon. Xe is Intel actually making a serious attempt to build decent discrete GPUs, without bizarre political constraints on the technological designs the team can pursue.
- skissane 6y agoI view it as an attempt to explore the question "can a competitive GPU architecture be built as an extension of a mainstream CPU architecture?". And they tried it and it didn't work out, which suggests the answer is "No". But I don't fault them for trying – a willingness to try out different areas of the design space, even test them in the market, is a positive thing. Of course, you can see why a vendor whose major product is a mainstream CPU architecture might have a special interest in exploring that particular design question, but it still was a valid question to explore, even if they didn't get the result they were hoping for. We can learn as much from failures as from successes.
- wtallis 6y agoI think it was really obvious up front that Larrabee wasn't going to have enough graphics-specific hardware on the chip for it to have a chance at being a competitive GPU for consumer gaming. At best, they were aiming for a heavily compute-oriented chip that could also do graphics, but for graphics tasks it was going to be heavily reliant on brute forcing the problem with a large, expensive chip. So a bit further toward the compute-oriented end of the spectrum than any of the GPU microarchitectures than any of the GPUs AMD or NVIDIA have shipped. And it ended up that it was only viable for compute tasks if they stripped out the rest of the graphics hardware, and x86 compatibility wasn't enough to overcome NVIDIA's lead in GPGPU software support. If Intel could have brought Larrabee to market with fabrication two nodes ahead of NVIDIA/AMD, it probably could have been successful. But Intel has a pretty solid track record of being unable to maintain two competitive microarchitectures at the same time, and I don't think they've ever quite been two full nodes ahead.
- arthurcolle 6y agoSorry for the aside, but is it possible to create a GPU cluster for, say, machine learning or rendering that uses both NVDA and AMD GPUs, together? I have 4 AMD GPUs and 2 NVDA 1080 TIs and was curious if its possible to wire up a computer that uses all 6 simultaneously
- projct 6y agoSort of. Mixed brand has a lot of bugs, and the different ways you'd hook up more than 4 cards have a lot of drawbacks so you would have to plan this carefully. It would be easier and more flexible to get a 4 slot board for the AMD GPUs and use the NVIDIA ones in a different machine. EDIT: note also that the 4 slot board does not need to populate all the PCIE lanes necessarily depending on your workload.
- arthurcolle 6y agoAre there issues with using GPU drivers from several different GPU vendors on the same machine? I heard that from some people that were into the crypto-mining scene, and was curious if that carries over to all potential GPU cluster applications... Thanks for answering!
- nl 6y agoFor ML maybe? You can get the AMD builds of TF and PyTorch and then build a cluster out. Realistically it'd likely to be more trouble than its worth. The AMD versions are always behind the core versions.
- ehvatum 6y agoDouble precision FP, cl_khr_fp64, could not be supported by intel’s GPU silicon until Xeon phi / larabee was inevitably cancelled. That finally did happen. I would love to add more double precision compute capacity without being robbed; it’s getting tough to find 1st gen nvidia titan cards. Here’s hoping this discrete unit will have strong fp64 performance. Edit: It had been a while since I checked into current-model GPU fp64 throughput. The Titan V has outstanding DP performance!!! Order placed.
- inasio 6y agoOf note here I believe TSMC is fabbing the bigger version of this chip for intel on their 7/6 nm node.
- geogra4 6y agoWould be nice to have a pcie version of this
- charliebrownau 6y agoIsreal Intel now working with Chinese companies Anyone remmber when White Nations, employed white people to make tech without giving our tech to overseas nations (Israel/China/etc) Multi culturalism, Feminism, Diversity, Open Borders, Non white population all thanks due to ZIONIST JEWS
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoIf the standalone GPU (I am sure they will produce one soon) comes out cheap and power efficient, ironically AMD could benefit from that more than Intel. Most of the top AMD processors have no integrated GPU. I would certainly prefer 3600+Intel GPU over more expensive i7-9700.
- Traster 6y agoWell this is just outright confusing. The scale that Intel operates at means this product is going to be a drop in the bucket in terms of revenue which makes their enormous investments in dGPUs look a little silly. It fits in this really weird place where you want a little bit of extra GPU power for co-processing, but really very little extra power. I literally can't understand how this product justified the engineering effort. Which leaves us with the fact that this must be a first release of something much more significant, which means that they've been forced to rush it out the door because their main effort is behind (well 'technically' we did ship the first series of chips in this project in Q42020). However, if you watch what happens a lot in Intel - they release a compromised first version of something, that ties them to a concrete failure (this isn't going to make any money) which then allows the executive team to can the project.
- purplecats 6y agohow often are you correct about your chain of reasonings as such? if it's non-negligible, would you mind sharing where I could read more of your ponderings? thanks.
- Traster 6y agoWell, on this particular topic, I used to work for Intel so a lot of it comes from knowledge of how the company works institutionally. It's difficult to explain to an outsider but Intel has this weird combination of making enormous bets but with an incredibly ossified corporate culture. So some project will get kicked off - they'll buy a company like Nervana or they'll hire in someone like Jim Keller and give them a mandate to go off and do something huge. The problem is how this intersects with the dynamics with the Intel organisation. Firstly, there's already five teams that already do whatever you want to do, so you go up the chain saying "I need 5 engineers to do X" and the answer comes back down the chain "Team Y already has 20 people, they do X, you should get them to do it". But so now rather than doing X, you're paying Team Y to do X, oh and Team Y doesn't give a shit about X, they care about Z, so about half your budget for X is now being subtly shifted to work on Z. So the cost of your project massively inflates. Oh, and because when your project was approved they canned something else, some senior executive is saying that half your headcount should be "internal transfers" so suddenly your project has to find work for 50 software engineers at Folsom who just finished working on Intel's Modem team (before that they worked on Intel's previous GPU team too before that got canned). Now comes the real issues, because you've got all these different teams that you rely on for your project and they don't answer to you, they answer to random different org structures, it's practically impossible to hold them accountable. Which leads to hilarious dynamics where team A will fall behind on their tasks, but they already know team B has fallen behind, so team A will lie about being able to deliver, because they know they'll never have to. So the critical path on your project isn't the team that's fallen behind, it's the team that's fallen behind and all the other teams that have made the calculated judgement your work can be deprioritized because team B will sink your project anyway. Finally comes the release. All of these internal fights don't change the fact that you're responsible for delivering a product to market, and almost certainly if it's an important project it'll be part of some Group's goals (like the Datacentre group or networking group). Now, the General Manager of the group isn't going to miss her/his goals. So you'll "ship" a product, by which we mean you'll send a handful of sample products to a partner. They probably wont work, they'll be a tiny subset of the functionality you originally promised. So anyway, that's the point at which someone realises we've just spent 10,000 years of engineering effort to deliver a discrete Graphics chip that is marginally less powerful than the integrated one. But the product is out there, so you've got sales data now and revenue. So you need to agree your roadmap for the future! But the first product was shit, and getting it into any sort of state to be competitive would be an enormous amount of work because it was compromised at every point, so no one will sign off on throwing good money after bad and so what happens? Nervana? Fuck you! We're betting on Habana Labs now!
- srg0 6y agoIf it's a content creation tool, shouldn't it be compared to the Quadro series?