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Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

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Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#241

Post by Der_Einzige »

DSingularity wrote: post #224
talldayo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And indeed that's exactly what will be required for any serious attempt to cut into their monopoly position. You misunderstand why and how Nvidia is a monopoly. Many companies make GPUs, and all those GPUs can be used for computation if you develop compute shaders for them. This part is not the problem, you can already go buy cheaper hardware that outperforms Nvidia if price is your only concern. Software is the is…

I feel people are exaggerating the impossibility of replacing CUDA. Adopting CUDA is convenient right now because yes it is difficult to replace it. Barrier to entry for orgs that can do that is very high. But it has been done. Google has the TPU for example.

They're not exaggerating it. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nvidia and AMD had the exact same relationship 15 years ago that they do today. The AMD crowd clutching about their better efficiencies, and the Nvidia crowd having grossly superior drivers/firmware/hardware, including unique PhysX stuff that STILL has not been matched since 2012 (remember Planetside 2 or Broderlands 2 physics? Pepperidge Farm Remembers...)

So many billions of dollars and no one is even 1% close to displacing CUDA in any meaningful way. ZULDA is dead. ROCM is a meme, Scale is a meme. Either you use CUDA or you don't do meaningful AI work.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#242

Post by shmerl »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #176

I wanted Intel to do well so I purchased an ARC card. The problem is not the hardware. For some games, it worked fine, but in others, it kept crashing left and right. After updates to drivers, crashing was reduced, but it still happened. Driver software is not easy to develop thoroughly. Even AMD had problems when compared to Nvidia when AMD really started to enter the GPU game after buying ATI. AMD has long since so…

Do you mean on Linux and are those problems with anv? Radv seems to be developed faster these days with anv being slightly more behind.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#243

Post by heraldgeezer »

jmward01 wrote: post #103

12GB max is a non-starter for ML work now. Why not come out with a reasonably priced 24gb card even if it isn't the fastest and target it at the ML dev world? Am I missing something here?

This is not an ML card... this is a gaming card... Why are you people like this?

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#244

Post by m3kw9 »

treprinum wrote: post #26

Why don't they just release a basic GPU with 128GB RAM and eat NVidia's local generative AI lunch? The networking effect of all devs porting their LLMs etc. to that card would instantly put them as a major CUDA threat. But beancounters running the company would never get such an idea...

Because they can’t

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#245

Post by zamalek »

zenethian wrote: post #226

These are pretty interesting, but I'm curious about the side-by-side screenshot with the slider: why does ray tracing need to be enabled to see the yellow stoplight? That seems like a weird oversight.

It's possible that the capture wasn't taken at the exact same frame, or that the state of the light isn't deterministic in the benchmark.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#246

Post by heraldgeezer »

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #160
enragedcacti wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I missing something here? Video games

It's insane how out of touch people can be here, lol

I have been trying to hold my slurs in reading this thread.

These ML AI Macbook people are legit insane.

Desktops and gaming is ugly and complex to them (because lego is hard and macbook look nice unga bunga), yet it is a mass market Intel wants to move in on.

People here complain because Intel is not making a cheap GPU to "make AI" on when that's a market of maybe 1000 people.

This Intel card is perfect for an esports gaming machine running CS2, Valorant, Rocket Leauge and casual or older games like The Sims, GoG games etc. Market of 1 million + right there, CS2 alone is 1mil people playing everyday. Not people grinding leetcode on their macs. Every real developer has a desktop, epyc cpu, giga ram and a nice GPU for downtime and run a real OS like Linux or even Windows (yes majority of devs run Windows)

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#247

Post by seanmcdirmid »

vlovich123 wrote: post #167
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't people been saying that for the last decade? I mean, eventually they will be right, maybe "about" means next year, or maybe a decade later? They just have to stop making huge improvements for a few years and the investment will dry up. I really wasn't interested in computer hardware anymore (they are fast enough!) until I discovered the world of running LLMs and other AI locally. Now I actually care about com…

What makes local AI interesting to you vs larger remote models like ChatGPT and Claude?

Control and freedom. You can use unharmonious models and hacks to existing models, also latency, you can actually use AI for a lot more applications when it is running locally.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#248

Post by jsheard »

p1esk wrote: post #228
jsheard wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M4 Max needs an enormous 512bit memory bus to extract enough bandwidth out of those LPDDR5x chips, while the GPUs that Intel just launched are 192/160bit and even flagships rarely exceed 384bit. They can't just slap more memory on the board, they would need to dedicate significantly more silicon area to memory IO and drive up the cost of the part, assuming their architecture would even scale that wide without hit…

Apple could do it. Why can’t Intel?

Because Apple isn't playing the same game as everyone else. They have the money and clout to buy out TSMCs bleeding-edge processes and leave everyone else with the scraps, and their silicon is only sold in machines with extremely fat margins that can easily absorb the BOM cost of making huge chips on the most expensive processes money can buy.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#249

Post by talldayo »

DSingularity wrote: post #224
talldayo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And indeed that's exactly what will be required for any serious attempt to cut into their monopoly position. You misunderstand why and how Nvidia is a monopoly. Many companies make GPUs, and all those GPUs can be used for computation if you develop compute shaders for them. This part is not the problem, you can already go buy cheaper hardware that outperforms Nvidia if price is your only concern. Software is the is…

I feel people are exaggerating the impossibility of replacing CUDA. Adopting CUDA is convenient right now because yes it is difficult to replace it. Barrier to entry for orgs that can do that is very high. But it has been done. Google has the TPU for example.

The TPU is not a GPU nor is it commercially available. It is a chip optimized around a limited featureset with a limited software layer on top of it. It's an impressive demonstration on Google's behalf to be sure, but it's also not a shot across the bow at Nvidia's business. Nvidia has the TSMC relations, a refined and complex streaming multiprocessor architecture and actual software support their customers can go use today. TPUs haven't quite taken over like people anticipated anyways.

I don't personally think CUDA is impossible to replace - but I do think that everyone capable of replacing CUDA has been ignoring it recently. Nvidia's role as the GPGPU compute people is secure for the foreseeable future. Apple wants to design simpler GPUs, AMD wants to design cheaper GPUs, and Intel wants to pretend like they can compete with AMD. Every stakeholder with the capacity to turn this ship around is pretending like Nvidia doesn't exist and whistling until they go away.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#250

Post by Sparkyte »

treprinum wrote: post #26

Why don't they just release a basic GPU with 128GB RAM and eat NVidia's local generative AI lunch? The networking effect of all devs porting their LLMs etc. to that card would instantly put them as a major CUDA threat. But beancounters running the company would never get such an idea...

Because you can't stack that much ram on a GPU without sufficient channels to do so. You could probably do 64GB on GDDR6 but you can't do 128GB on GDDR6 without more memory channels. 2GB per chip per channel is the current limit for GDDR6 this is why HBM was invented.

It is why you can only see GPUs with 24GB of memory at the moment.

HBM2 can handle 64GB ( 4 x 8GB Stack ) ( Total capacity 128GB )

HBM3 can handle 192GB ( 4 x 24GB Stack ) ( Total capacity 384GB )

You can not do this with GDDR6.

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