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2Inside Intel Larrabee – CPU-GPU Convergence
Intel believes Larrabee is the incarnation of the merge between CPU and GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) performance. Pushed to the edge of performance, CPUs are adding cores and computing power. Motivated by higher-quality graphics and data-parallel programming, GPUs are being tapped to do more general computing tasks.
3Inside Intel Larrabee – Larrabee Key Differences from Typical GPUs
Each Larrabee core is a complete x86 core: context switching and pre-emptive multitasking; virtual memory and page swapping; fully coherent caches at all levels of the hierarchy. Efficient interblock communication: ring bus for full interprocessor communication; low-latency, high-bandwidth Level 1 and Level 2 caches; fast synchronization between cores and caches. Fixed function logic doesn’t get in the way: no back-end blender between cores and memory; no rasterization logic between vertex and pixel stages. Result: flexible load balancing and general functionality.
4Inside Intel Larrabee – Larrabee Processor Block Diagram
5Inside Intel Larrabee – Larrabee x86 Chip Block Diagram
6Inside Intel Larrabee – Larrabee Vector Unit Block Diagram
Vector complete instruction set: scatter/gather for vector load/store; mask registers select lanes to write, which allows data-parallel flow control; this enables mapping a separate execution kernel to each VPU lane. Vector instructions support: fast read from L1 cache; numeric type conversion and data replication while reading from memory; rearrange the lanes on register read; fused multiply add (three arguments); Int32, Float32 and Float64 data.