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 Xeon processors--particularly the "Harpertown" variety--dominated the top 500 supercomputer list. But IBM's Power chips made a strong showing as usual at the very top of the list. AMD's Opteron processor landed in the No. 1 and No. 4 ranked systems.
Top 10 processors in Top500 supercomputer list
(Credit: Top500.org)The Top500 List--updated twice a year--of supercomputers was released Wednesday. Intel's Xeon, AMD's Opteron, and IBM's Power chips vied for most of the spots in the list.
The most dominant chip was the Intel Xeon E54xx series "Harpertown" processor. Appearing in 116 systems for 23.2 percent of the total. The largest for any single processor model.
The Xeon 53xx series "Clovertown" processor was next, appearing in 92 systems for 18.4 percent of the total. Following Clovertown was the Xeon 51xx series "Woodcrest" processor with 18.2 percent of the total.
Harpertown and Clovertown are quad-core processors, Woodcrest is dual-core.
In the No. 4 slot was the AMD Opteron dual-core chip (8.4 percent), followed by the X54xx series of Intel Harpertown processors (7.8 percent), then by the PowerPC 440 (4.22 percent).
(Note: Combining the Intel Harpertown E54xx series and X54xx series boosts the total for this chip model to 31 percent.)
The IBM Power processors passed the AMD Opteron family and "are now (again) the second most common processor family with 68 systems (13.6 percent), up from 61 systems (12.2 percent) six months ago," Top500.org said.
AMD's strongest showing was in the top five supercomputers. Opteron processors played a major role in the No. 1 IBM Roadrunner system, which connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron chips as well as 12,240 IBM Cell chips (on IBM Model QS22 blade servers).
See: IBM's Roadrunner breaks petaflop barrier, tops supercomputer list.
The No. 4 Sun Microsystems' SunBlade system uses over 62,000 cores running inside AMD Opteron quad-core processors running at 2.0GHz.
The No. 2 and No. 3 systems were based on IBM PowerPC 450 chips.
Other Top500 processor highlights:
A total of 375 systems (75 percent) are now using Intel processors. This is up from six months ago (354 systems, 70.8 percent) and represents the largest share for Intel chips in the Top500 ever.
56 systems (11 percent) are using AMD Opteron processors, down from 78 systems (15.6 percent) six months ago.
283 systems are using quad-core processor based systems.
Intel Skulltrail motherboard
(Credit: Intel Corp.)
Intel is getting ready to launch the full-sized SUV of desktop motherboards. Expected later this quarter, the Skulltrail board packs two quad-core 130-watt QX9775 processors--which Legit Reviews said sucked up to a whopping 351 watts. In short, this is not the MacBook Air. The tiny processor in that power-stingy computer sips a mere 20 watts.
Skulltrail pulls out all the stops. It has dual 1600-MHz front side-buses connected to dual Xeon sockets and four full PCIe x16 slots, with planned support for up to four high-end graphics boards. And Xeon processors running on Skulltrail boards have been demonstrated by Intel running at 4.0GHz.
Is all of this really necessary? Or is it just a PR stunt with only a few hardened gamers snapping up the limited supply of Skulltrails. Apparently it's more than PR because Skulltrail reviews, driven by popular demand, are everywhere. TechRadar has one, [H]Enthusiast has one, Anandtech has one...and the list goes on.
Skulltrail's genesis (it was originally dubbed "V8") is sketchy but some in the tech community believe the board was created in response to AMD's Quad FX platform which, in turn, was created in response to Intel's quad-core desktop CPUs. But AMD's Quad FX was unceremoniously terminated so that question may be moot now. For those interested in seeing one in action, here's a slightly dated (January 8) Intel video showing Skulltrail running various games.
Earlier this week, Advanced Micro Devices finally introduced the first true quad-core microprocessor in the PC market, code-named "Barcelona" and launched as part of AMD's Opteron line. David Kanter provided an excellent technical analysis of Barcelona on his Real World Technologies site.
At the Barcelona launch, AMD played up its statistics on integer performance.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET Networks)Barcelona is not the absolutely fastest processor on the market. For single-core performance, both IBM and Intel offer faster chips. With multiple cores working, Intel and Sun can claim higher performance per socket--Intel because it can put two high-frequency dual-core chips in one socket, and Sun because it has an eight-core processor (the UltraSparc T2).
Although I'm sure AMD wishes it could claim those titles, there's another metric that matters even more to some customers. Barcelona delivers high ... Read more
As expected, Intel on Wednesday announced its Xeon 7300 line of quad-core chips, models geared for higher-end servers with four or more processors.
Tom Kilroy, general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, shows a new Quad-Core Xeon 7300 series processor, code-named Tigerton, at a press event in San Francisco Wednesday.
(Credit: Intel)The processors will range in frequency from a 2.93GHz for a 130-watt model to 1.86GHz for a 50-watt high-efficiency model. Intel also will offer an intermediate 80-watt class, the company said. Prices will range from $856 to $2,301 in quantities of 1,000.
The chips, code-named Tigerton, bring Intel's Core architecture to high-end x86 servers, replacing the last of the Netburst lineage. Netburst's eventual power consumption problems opened the door for Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron family, but Intel has reclaimed many of its market share losses with the higher performance and lower power consumption of the Core line.
Accompanying Tigerton is a new platform for high-end servers called Caneland that speeds up communications between chips and memory, a key bottleneck in computers in general. At the heart of the platform is the Intel 7300 chipset, which links the processor with other parts of the system.
AMD has been punished this year by Intel's resurgence, a six-month delay of its Barcelona quad-core processor and other problems, but it couldn't resist carping on Wednesday about Tigerton's memory system and the fact that it's made of two dual-core chips squeezed into a single package. Barcelona's approach, with four cores on one slice of silicon, might well offer some advantages, but given how much hay Intel has made with lower-end quad-core chips that use the two-plus-two approach, boasting about "native" quad core sure sounds like nitpicking.
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