Larrabee is an ambitious project - to merge the flexibility of a CPU with the number-crunching power of a GPU. But it's not just hardware - we must then write what can only be described as a "GPU emulator" - software that allows it to run the existing DirectX and OpenGL APIs.
This talk will highlight the major hardware architectural features of Larrabee and how they allow massive computing power within the existing accessible and well-understood x86 framework. It then discusses some of the principles and challenges of writing efficient software for such a radical system, and shows how those principles shape the software rendering pipeline, and how these in turn shaped the hardware.
Slides:
Download the slides for this talk in PDF format.
About the speaker:
Tom Forsyth is a software and hardware architect on the Larrabee project at Intel. His focus is the design and evolution of the Larrabee instruction set, and the architecture of the graphics software running on it. In his past he has written animation middleware for RAD Game Tools, game graphics engines for three published games for Muckyfoot Productions, and Direct3D video card drivers for 3Dlabs.
Outside work, Tom has done a wide variety of graphics-related research with a heavy focus on shadows, and has written and edited many books and articles, notably as part of the ShaderX series.
Contact information:
Tom Forsyth
Intel Ronler Acres, 2501 NE 229th Ave
MS: RA2-406
Hillsboro OR 97124
425 279 3589
503 214 5973
tom.forsyth@intel.com