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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

#441

Post by ubercore »

duskwuff wrote: post #275
p1esk wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bleeding edge processes is what Intel specializes in. Unlike Apple, they don’t need TSMC. This should have been a huge advantage for Intel. Maybe that’s why Gelsinger got the boot.

> Bleeding edge processes is what Intel specializes in. Unlike Apple, they don’t need TSMC. Intel literally outsourced their Arrow Lake manufacturing to TSMC because they couldn't fabricate the parts themselves - their 20A (2nm) process node never reached a production-ready state, and was eventually cancelled about a month ago.

Wasn't it cancelled in favor of 18A?

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

#442

Post by genewitch »

bayindirh wrote: post #321
WanderPanda wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you don‘t need much bandwidth between cards for inference

Copying daemons (gdrcopy) is about pumping data in and out of a single card. docker-nvidia and rest of the stack is enablement for using cards. GPU-Direct is about pumping data from storage devices to cards, esp. from high speed storage systems across networks. MIG actually shares a single card to multiple instances, so many processes or VMs can use a single card for smaller tasks. Nothing I have written in my previo…

i've run inference on Intel Arc and it works just fine so i am not sure what you're talking about. I certainly didn't need docker! I've never tried to do anything on AMD yet.

I had the 16GB arc, and it was able to run inference at the speed i expected, but twice as many per batch as my 8GB card, which i think is about what you'd expect.

once the model is on the card, there's no "disk" anymore, so having more vram to load the model and the tokenizer and whatever else on means there's no disk, and realistically when i am running loads on my 24GB 3090 the CPU is maybe 4% over idle usage. My bottleneck, as it stands, to running large models is vram, not anything else.

If i needed to train (from scratch or whatever) i'd just rent time somewhere, even with a 128GB card locally, because obviously more tensors is better.

and you're getting downvoted because there's literally lm studio and llama.cpp and sd-webui that run just fine for inference on our non-dc, non-nvlink, 1/15th the cost GPUs.

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

#443

Post by rowanG077 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #362
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…

> The M4 Max needs an enormous 512bit memory bus to extract enough bandwidth out of those LPDDR5x chips Does M4 Max have 64-byte cache lines? If they can fetch or flush an entire cache line in a single memory-bus transaction, I wonder if that opens up any additional hardware / performance optimizations.

A single memory transaction is almost always a 16n burst for LPDDR5x.

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

#444

Post by singhrac »

Novosell wrote: post #192
philistine wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm baffled that PC gamers have decided that 1440p is the endgame for graphics. When I look at a 27-inch 1440p display, I see pixel edges everywhere. It's right at the edge of losing the visibility of individual pixels, since I can't perceive them at 27-inch 2160p, but not quite there yet for desktop distances. Time marches on, and I become ever more separated from gaming PC enthusiasts.

Gaming at 2160p is just too expensive still, imo. You gotta pay more for your monitor, GPU and PSU. Then if you want side monitors that match in resolution, you're paying more for those as well. You say PC gamers at the start of your comment and gaming PC enthusiasts at the end. These groups are not the same and I'd say the latter is largely doing ultrawide, 4k monitor or even 4k TV. According to steam, 56% are on 10…

I recently recently upgraded my main monitor from 1440p x 144hz to 4K x 144hz (with lots of caveats) and I agree with your assessment. If I had not made significant compromises, it would have cost at least $500 to get a decent monitor, which most people are not willing to spend.

Even with this monitor, I'm barely able to run it with my (expensive, though older) graphics card, and the screen alarmingly flashes whenever I change any settings. It's stable, but this is not a simple plug-and-play configuration (mine requires two DP cables and fiddling with the menu + NVIDIA control panel).

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

#445

Post by knowitnone »

bayindirh wrote: post #264
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...

Disclosure: HPC admin who works with NIVIDA cards here. Because, no. It's not as simple as that. NVIDIA has a complete ecosystem now. They have cards. They have cards of cards (platforms), which they produce, validate and sell. They have NVLink crossbars and switches which connects these cards on their card of cards with very high speeds and low latency. For inter-server communication they have libraries which coordi…

yes but if Intel provided the base, people will flock to it build software for it. Intel doesn't even need be involved but they should.

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

#446

Post by knowitnone »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #269
p1esk wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bleeding edge processes is what Intel specializes in. Unlike Apple, they don’t need TSMC. This should have been a huge advantage for Intel. Maybe that’s why Gelsinger got the boot.

Intel Arc hardware is manufactured by TSMC, specifically on N6 and N5 for this latest announcement. Intel doesn't currently have nodes competitive with TSMC or excess capacity in their better processes.

Serious question, why don't they have excess capacity? They aren't producing many CPUs...that people want.

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

#447

Post by throwaway48476 »

qwytw wrote: post #411
throwaway48476 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel sold their GPUs at negative margin which is part of why the stock fell off a cliff. If they could double the vram they could raise the price into the green even selling thousands, likely closer to 100k, would be far better than what they're doing now. The problem is Intel is run by incompetent people who guard their market segments as tribal fiefs instead of solving for the customer.

> which is part of why the stock fell off a cliff Was it? Their GPUs sales were insignificantly low so I doubt that had a huge effect on their net income.

They spent billions at TSMC making Alchemist dies that sat in a warehouse for a year or two as they tried to fix the drivers.

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

#448

Post by ac29 »

treprinum wrote: post #195
chessgecko wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we don't really disagree, I just think that this shape isn't really a gpu its just a cpu because it isn't very good for graphics at that point.

That's why I said "basic GPU". It doesn't have to be too fast but it should still be way faster than a regular CPU. Intel already has Xeon Phi so a lot of things were developed already (like memory controller, heavy parallel dies etc.)

I wonder at that point you'd just be better served by CPU with 4 channels of RAM. If my math is right 4 channels of DDR5-8000 would get you 256GB/s. Not as much bandwidth as a typical discrete GPU, but it would be trivial to get many hundreds of GB of RAM and would be expandable.

Unfortunately I don't think either Intel or AMD makes a CPU that supports quad channel RAM at a decent price.

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

#449

Post by bastloing »

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...

I would think someday we can use AI to port the software. Maybe even use AI to design the cards.

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

#450

Post by genewitch »

phkahler wrote: post #365
beAbU wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is nVidia or AmD offering 128gb cards in any configuration?

You can run an AMD APU with 128GB of shared RAM.

you can do that with nvidia too but it takes you from 6tok/s to 6s/token or worse (not even exaggerating)
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