Larrabee is the CPU manufacturer Intel’s first real attempt to make an external video circuit, and based on current information it will be something quite different from the solutions of the competition (AMD and NVIDIA). Larrabee we are told will feature tens of CPU cores and be made with an effective manufacturing process that enables the circuit to scale very well performance wise when combining multiple chips. The first version of Larrabee is expected to be fitted with 12 P55C based CPU cores. Since Intel just showed us the first silicon wafers with the very first cores, guesses on the size of the circuit itself has been made as well as the amount of transistors it will house.
One of the first 300mm silicon wafers with Larrabee circuits
Larrabee will be manufactured using a 45nm process at its introduction in Q4 2009 and the circuit will be about 600mm2 in size. This calculates to 1.65-1.70 billion transistors, which can be compared against NVIDIA’s GT200 which houses 1.7 billion.
How these billions of transistors will be able to cope with the 3D games of tomorrow is still an unanswered riddle. As Intel’s new circuit differs quite a lot from what we and game programmers are used to.
Source: BSN
