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Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

arstechnica.com

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Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#51

Post by dragontamer »

byefruit wrote: post #48
dragontamer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ROCm supports Vega, Vega 7nm, and CDNA just fine. The issue is that AMD has split their compute into two categories: * RDNA -- consumer cards. A new ISA with new compilers / everything. I don't think its reasonable to expect AMD's compilers to work on RDNA, when such large changes have been made to the architecture. (32-wide instead of 64-wide. 1024 registers. Etc. etc.) * CDNA -- based off of Vega's ISA. Despite bei…

That makes a lot more sense, thanks. They could do with making that a lot clearer on the project. Still handicaps them compared to Nvidia where you can just buy anything recent and expect it to work. Suspect it also means they get virtually no open source contributions from the community because nobody can run or test it on personal hardware.

NVidia can support anything because they have a PTX-translation layer between cards, and invest heavily on PTX.

Each assembly language from each generation of cards changes. PTX recompiles the "pseudo-assembly" instructions into the new assembly code each generation.

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AMD has no such technology. When AMD's assembly language changes (ex: from Vega into RDNA), its a big compiler change. AMD managed to keep the ISA mostly compatible from 7xxx GCN 1.0 series in the late 00s all the way to Vega 7nm in the late 10s... but RDNA's ISA change was pretty massive.

I think its only natural that RDNA was going to have compiler issues.

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AMD focused on Vulkan / DirectX support for its RDNA cards, while its compute team focused on continuing "CDNA" (which won large supercomputer contracts). So that's just how the business ended up.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#52

Post by kllrnohj »

paulmd wrote: post #44
judge2020 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*AMD/Apple is using. Nvidia's always-sold-out Ampere-based gaming chips are made in a Samsung fab. https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-ampere-samsung-8nm-process/

if NVIDIA cards were priced as ridiculously as AMD cards they'd be sitting on store shelves too

Nvidia doesn't price any cards other than the founder's editions which you'll notice they both drastically cut down on availability for and also didn't do at all for the "price sensitive" mid-range tier.

Nvidia's pricing as a result is completely fake. Like the claimed "$330 3060" in fact starts at $400 and rapidly goes up from there, with MSRP's on 3060's as high as $560.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#54

Post by pier25 »

Exmoor wrote: post #11

As TFA rightly points out, unless something drastically changes in the next ~6mo, Intel is going to launch into the most favorable market situation we've seen in our lifetimes. Previously, the expectation is that they needed to introduce something that was competitive with the top end cards from nVidia and AMD. With basically all GPU's out of stock currently they really just need to introduce something competitive wi…

Exactly. There are plenty of people that just want to upgrade an old GPU and anything modern would be a massive improvement.

I'm still rocking a 1070 for 1080p/60 gaming and would love to jump to 4K/60 gaming but just can't convince myself to buy a new GPU at current prices.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#56

Post by r-bar »

jeswin wrote: post #15

If Intel provides as much Linux driver support as they do for their current integrated graphics lineup, we might have a new favourite among Linux users.

They also seem to be the most willing to open up their GPU sharding API, GVTG, based on their work with their existing Xe GPUs. The performance of their implementation in their first generation was a bit underwhelming, but it seems like the intention is there.

If Intel is able to put out something reasonably competitive and that supports GPU sharding it could be a game changer. It could change the direction of the ecosystem and force Nvidia and AMD to bring sharding to their consumer tier cards. I am stoked to see where this new release takes us.

Level1Linux has a (reasonably) up to date state of the GPU ecosystem that does a much better job outlining the potential of this tech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXUS1W7Ifys

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#57

Post by BuckRogers »

opencl wrote: post #23
voidfunc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has the manufacturing capability to really beat up Nvidia. Even if the cards don’t perform like top-tier cards they could still win bigly here. Very exciting!

Intel is not even manufacturing these, they are TSMC 7nm so they are competing for the same fab capacity that everyone else is using.

This is a problem for AMD especially, but also Nvidia. Not so much for Intel. They're just budging in line with their superior firepower. Intel even bought out first dibs on TSMC 3nm out from under Apple. I'll be interested to see the market's reaction to this once everyone realizes that Intel is hitting AMD where it hurts and sees the inevitable outcome.

This is one of the smartest moves by Intel, make their own stuff and consume production from all their competitors, which do nothing but paper designs. Nvidia and especially AMD took a risk not being in the fabrication business, and now we'll see the full repercussions. It's a good play (outsourcing) in good times, not so much when things get tight like today.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#58

Post by kop316 »

jeswin wrote: post #15

If Intel provides as much Linux driver support as they do for their current integrated graphics lineup, we might have a new favourite among Linux users.

This was my thought too. If their linux driver support for this is as good as their integrated ones, I will be switching to Intel GPUs.

Re: Intel’s Arc GPUs will compete with GeForce and Radeon in early 2022

#59

Post by ayngg »

Exmoor wrote: post #11

As TFA rightly points out, unless something drastically changes in the next ~6mo, Intel is going to launch into the most favorable market situation we've seen in our lifetimes. Previously, the expectation is that they needed to introduce something that was competitive with the top end cards from nVidia and AMD. With basically all GPU's out of stock currently they really just need to introduce something competitive wi…

I thought they are using TSMC for their gpu, which means they will be part of the same bottleneck that is affecting everyone else.
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