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This 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 b
by dvdkon 6y ago
This 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.