Intel, Nvidia face off at Hot Chips

Source: http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208700435

Many media processors debut at Stanford confab

Rick Merritt
EE Times
(06/18/2008 1:52 PM EDT)

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. will go head-to-head with their latest graphics architectures at the 20th annual Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, August 24-26. The event will also showcase a handful of new media processors.

In an afternoon session, Intel will present a paper on its new Larrabee graphics architecture and Nvidia will describe the version of its new GTX chip that is aimed at high-end parallel computing and was announced Monday (June 16). "This will be the first time someone can see these two architectures side by side," said Kevin Krewell, an Nvidia marketing manager who is on the Hot Chips committee.

Intel is expected to make the first technical disclosures of Larrabee in a paper at Siggraph the week of August 11. It will probably also discuss the chip at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco the week of August 18.

To date Intel has only said Larrabee is based on multiple x86 cores and is aimed at graphics and technical computing. Recently Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner suggested the chip will drive an industry transition from raster graphics to ray tracing, a shift many observers said is not in the foreseeable future.

A variety of media processors will be described at Hot Chips, including a programmable multicore video processor from Advanced Micro Devices that it calls a mediaDSP. NXP Semiconductors will present its PNX5100, a video processor aimed at H.264 playback at 120 Hz, and Toshiba will describe a new derivative of the Cell processor called the SpursEngine and aimed at media processing.

Two startups will describe mobile media devices. Telegent will present a single-chip receiver for NTSC/PAL TV that consumes 300mW and is aimed at handheld systems. Audience will detail a voice processor that imitates the way human hearing works.

In addition, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences will describe the Godson-3. The chip is a multicore version of the group's earlier designs with similarities to the MIPS processor.