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Intel has upstaged Advanced Micro Devices at DreamWorks Animation. The movie studio has decided to drop AMD and go with processors from Intel, citing better performance and a more promising roadmap.

DreamWorks specifically mentioned Intel's upcoming Nehalem processor and Larrabee graphics chip as reasons for the switch.

Intel and DreamWorks announced Tuesday that they had formed a strategic alliance for 3D filmmaking technology. DreamWorks plans to produce all its feature films in stereoscopic 3D--which requires the viewer to wear special glasses for enhanced 3D--beginning next year. Intel will provide DreamWorks with "the latest high-performance processing technologies, including future chips with multiple processing cores," the companies said.

This is a setback for AMD. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker rolled out its quad-core Barcelona last year at George Lucas' Lucasfilm campus in San Francisco to make a point: Barcelona would be big player in the movie industry. But a series of delays related to a processor bug put a damper on the high expectations for Barcelona.

"AMD maintained a long and fruitful relationship with DreamWorks Animation, beginning in early 2005. Earlier this year, AMD and DreamWorks decided not to extend our marketing and technology relationship. However, DreamWorks Animation is still an important and respected AMD customer and we look forward to having the opportunity to work with them again in the future," AMD said in a statement.

Essentially, DreamWorks looked down the road and liked what it saw coming from Intel better. "When we look at the Intel roadmap, it is more closely aligned with our needs," John Batter, president of production at DreamWorks Animations, said during a conversation with Nanotech: The Circuits blog. "The rendering times have been going up because of the complexity and richness of the images. Then you layer on top of that 3D. Something that's already growing--and doubling it."

Intel had the best technology, Batter said. "You need a lot more horsepower. On Intel's upcoming generation, the number of cores is going to help us satiate the big spike in our needs."

DreamWorks had been in a three-year partnership with AMD, Batter said.

He explained that Intel is also helping DreamWorks to redesign its animation tools. "Our animation tools are all proprietary here. Intel is rearchitecting our software tools...to take advantage of multicore and make our renderer highly scalable as well as making our character animation tools highly scalable."

DreamWorks uses rendering farms with as many as 5,000 cores to create animation and its tools need to be adapted to the increasing number of processor cores, Batter said. The Nehalem chip, for example, is expected to integrate as many as eight cores. Currently, Intel offers no more than four cores per chip. Larrabee is expected by many to offer as many as 32 cores.

Intel Nehalem architecture

(Credit: Intel)

Batter specifically mentioned both Nehalem and Larrabee as a reason for the switch to Intel. He said that Larrabee would be "complementary" to Intel's general-purpose CPUs.

Nehalem is due in the fourth quarter of this year and Larrabee is expected in the 2009-2010 time frame.

The first Intel-Dreamworks release will be Monsters vs. Aliens, which is slated to hit movie theaters in March 2009.

Intel is telling software developers to start thinking about not just tens but thousands of processing cores.

Intel Tera-scale multicore research

(Credit: Intel)

Intel currently offers quad-core processors and is expected to bring out a Nehalem processor in the fourth quarter that uses as many as eight cores.

But the chipmaker is now thinking well beyond the traditional processor in a PC or server. Jerry Bautista, the co-director of the Tera-scale Computing Research Program at Intel, recently said that in a graphics-intensive environment the more cores Intel can build the better. "The more cores we have the better. Provided that we can supply memory bandwidth to the device."

On Monday, an Intel engineer took this a step further. Writing in a blog, Anwar Ghuloum, a principal engineer with Intel's Microprocessor Technology Lab, said: "Ultimately, the advice I'll offer is that...developers should start thinking about tens, hundreds, and thousands of cores now."

He said that Intel faces a challenge in "explaining how to tap into this performance." He continues: "Sometimes, the developers are trying to do the minimal amount of work they need to do to tap dual- and quad-core performance...I suppose this was the branch most discussions took a couple of years ago."

Now, however, Intel is increasingly "discussing how to scale performance to core counts that we aren't yet shipping...Dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of cores are not unusual design points around which the conversations meander," he said.

He says that the more radical programming path to tap into many processing cores "presents the 'opportunity' for a major refactoring of their code base, including changes in languages, libraries, and engineering methodologies and conventions they've adhered to for (often) most of the their software's existence."

"Eventually, developers realize that the end point is on the other side of a mountain of silicon innovations...Program for as many cores as possible, even if it is more cores than are currently in shipping products."

Intel issued a statement about USB 3.0, a subject threatening to cause a full-blown controversy among several chipmakers. The company also said it would present a paper on its upcoming "Larrabee" graphics technology in August.

The Intel statement on USB 3.0 is meant to clarify the difference between the basic USB specification and the "host controller specification"--the latter a point of dispute with rivals Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia. The statement also tries to dispel rumors that Intel is "holding back the specification" from others in the industry.

AMD and Nvidia are claiming that Intel is trying to hijack the specification. Intel denies this.

USB 3.0 is a next-generation high-speed connection standard due in 2009. It is significant not only because all future PCs and devices will use connectors based on the standard, but also because it will offer 10 times the speed of USB 2.0--used in virtually all PCs introduced in the last few years--or roughly 5 gigabits per second.

"There has been a lot of unanswered speculation recently regarding USB 3.0 and Intel's involvement; I thought it was about time to set the record straight," Intel's Nick Knupffer said in a post Wednesday.

"Much of the incorrect speculation...so far has centered on what the USB 3.0 spec is, and who is creating it. There are two separate standards being developed, USB 3.0 and Intel's Host Controller spec in support of the USB 3.0 standard."

First, Knupffer wants to make it crystal-clear that the USB 3.0 is not an Intel specification. "It is being developed by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group (including Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, NXP Semiconductors, and Texas Instruments)...This spec is expected to be made publicly available by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, along with an adopter agreement, early in the second half of 2008. (Very soon)."

Second, he describes the host controller specification, which has become a bone of contention with AMD and Nvidia. "Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man-hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology," he said.

"Think of the host controller spec as a Dummies guide to building a USB 3.0-compatible piece of silicon; it is NOT the USB 3.0 specification itself."

And here's the crux of the matter from Intel's standpoint: "The industry is keen to get this guide as it will allow them to build USB 3.0 compatible circuits without repeating the massive investment undertaken by Intel."

"Intel plans to make this spec available early in second half of 2008 with a no-royalty licensing obligation (Basically: free, gratis, unpaid, zero dollars, free of charge, at no cost, on the house)," he said.

Knupffer asserts that Intel is not holding back the specification, and he alludes to AMD and Nvidia. "No, Intel isn't holding back the specification...The impatience of our fellow chipset makers to leverage Intel's investment and begin to design great USB 3.0-supporting devices of their own is, however, very encouraging and should aid a fast USB 3.0 adoption ramp."

Finally, he refutes speculation that USB 3.0 is simply lifted from the PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) specification, as AMD has claimed. "No, not true. The USB 3.0 specification has not borrowed heavily from the PCI (special-interest group)." PCI is a connection standard used in all PCs today.

Intel to detail future graphics technology in August

On another front, CTO Justin Rattner said Intel would detail its future Larrabee graphics chip in August, and he dropped more hints that the company is shifting its research focus away from traditional graphics to a technology known as ray tracing. Rattner was speaking at Intel R&D Day in Mountain View, Calif. on Wednesday.

Intel has demonstrated games running solely on multi-core CPUs (central processing units) using ray tracing. A rare feat because games are typically very GPU (graphics processing unit)-centric.

UPDATE: At the R&D Day, Intel demonstrated ray tracing on ET: Quake Wars running in basic HD (720p) resolution. The game was running at 14-29 frames per second in 1280x720 mode. The demonstration was done on a 16-core Tigerton system running at 2.93 GHz.
(See Tom's Hardware)

"If you ever dived into a swimming pool or sea and looked up" you see a distorted world. "Now, ET: Quake Wars has the very same effect," according to Tom's Hardware.

The topics of ray tracing and Larrabee have triggered some debate with Nvidia, which currently favors more traditional raster-based graphics.

Intel said it would present a paper on its upcoming multi-core, x86-architecture-based Larrabee graphics chip at Siggraph in August. To date, information about Larrabee has been sketchy, tending toward broad statements about Intel's vision of where graphics technology is headed. Larrabee is expected sometime in the second half of 2009.

Rattner reiterated that Intel's vision means that today's graphics technology--based on rasterization--will become obsolete. Intel, however, emphasized that this vision is long-term.

"Ray tracing isn't about to extinguish rasterization any time soon, and our Larrabee product is designed with rasterization in mind...But the research possibilities are compelling," according to an Intel statement.