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

phoronix.com

651–660 of 722 posts

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

#651

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...

armchair hardware enthusiast opinion: because silicon in the high-end is expensive, and not just a matter of slapping things together.

besides the clear limitation of the memory technology they are using compared to the nvidia's enterprise solution, for such large GPU chips that could really make use of such memory, they need to make binning possible by selling cut-down versions of them as well.

nvidia can pull this off because they can sell lower-end chips at the same time. intel is barely making a dent in sales, and making a high-end chip will only be very risky, at the cost of potentially benefiting a niche crowd.

> put them as a major CUDA threat. that is a software/ecosystem problem, which hardware alone cannot solve. for all the devs that use Macs, even in AI it is only about inference at the moment. nobody is coming at CUDA for training for the near future. amd tried and failed plenty already.

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

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia's $30,000 is a 90% margin product at scale. They could charge 1/3 that and still be very profitable. There has rarely been such a profitable large corporation in terms of the combo of profit & margin. Their last quarter was $35b in sales and $26b in gross profit ($21.8b op income; 62% op income margin vs sales). Visa is notorious for their extreme margin (66% op income margin vs sales) due to being basically a…

Visa doesn't actually make a ton of money off each transaction, if you divide out their revenue against their payment volume (napkin math)... They processed $12T in payments last year (almost a billion payments per day), with a net revenue of $32B. That's a gross transaction margin of 0.26% and their GAAP net income was half that, about 0.14%. [1] They're just a transaction network, unlike say Amex which is both an i…

If you have no clue how profit margins are calculated then you're better off staying quiet.

It's quite simple. Divide revenue minus costs by revenue. Transaction volume isn't revenue. Visa only gets the transaction fee.

Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and do a proper interpretation of the number you've arrived at, its meaning is quite different and quite off topic from this discussion. What you have calculated is the total share of costs that Visa represents in that 12 trillion dollar part of the economy. It is like saying Visa's share of GDP is 0.1%.

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

#653

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...

[deleted]

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

#655
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two graphs on the page show FPS.

GP is asking what measure of FPS. The most likely value when unspecified is usually "mean FPS" but, being a marketing graph, it doesn't explicitly say.

As long as all bars show the same, is there much difference between “mean”, “minimum” as long as the settings are sensible? Keep in mind this is one benchmark (two, really) and you won’t precisely recreate the testing conditions, and it doesn’t matter because your use case is not running the tests.

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

#656

Anyone using Intel graphics cards? Aside from specs drivers and support can make or break the value prop of a gfx card. Would be curious what actually using is these is like.

I use an A770 LE for PC gaming. Windows drivers have improved substantially in the last two years. There's a driver update every month or so, although the Intel Arc control GUI hasn't improved in a while. Popular newer titles have generally run well; I've played some Metaphor, Final Fantasy 16, Elden Ring, Spider-Man Remastered, Horizon Zero Dawn, Overwatch, Jedi Survivor, Forza Horizon 4, Monster Hunter Sunbreak, et…

Appreciate the detail! I've always found the xx60 class of Nvidia cards to be the entry point for me when I'm putting together a gaming rig so might investigate Intel next time I'm putting a build together.

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

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has a huge problem with business units not competing with eachother.

Do they still lock out ECC support on Core processors? I'm still running an ancient i3 for ECC support in my home server.

ECC requires workstation/server motherboards

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

#658
post #55
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see their GPGPU software support under Linux.

The keywords you're looking for are Intel basekit, oneapi, and ipex. https://christianjmills.com/posts/intel-pytorch-extension-tu... https://chsasank.com/intel-arc-gpu-driver-oneapi-installatio...

Lots of interesting things packaged into OneAPI for developers to check out: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/onea...

I quite enjoyed using the CUDA to OneAPI migration tool. Was a bit dodgy at times, but for the most part helped me move a lot of stuff out of the NVIDIA walled garden.

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

#659
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure its been a sweet spot for a very long time for budget conscious gamers looking for best balance of price and frame rates, but 1440p optimized parts are nothing new. Both NVidia and AMD make parts that target 1440p display users too, and have done for years. Even previous Intel parts you can argue were tailored for 1080p/1440p use, given their comparative performance deficit at 4k etc. Assuming they retail at…

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.

How far away are you sitting from that monitor? Mine is about 3-4 feet away from my face and I have not had the same experience.

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

#660
post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going off of how the 4090 and 7900 xtx is arranged I think you could maybe fit on or two chips more around the die over their 12, but that's still a far cry from 128. That would probably just need a shared bus like normal DDR as you're not fitting that much with 16 gbit density

Look at the 3090, which uses 24 chips (12 on one side and 12 on another). Pushing it to 32 is doable. 32 is all you need to reach 128GB VRAM with the 32Gbit GDDR7 chips that should be on the market in the near future.

Where would you route the connection to the additional 4 groups of chips around the die? The PCIe connection needs to be there too, and they also may not like power delivery going through them
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