Intel introduced “Sandy Bridge” on Monday as a chip that would revolutionise the PC, with analysts agreeing it was part of a graphics trend that could reshape the industry.
Sandy Bridge will compete with rival products from AMD and Nvidia, with chipmakers focusing on consumer interest in watching and processing high-definition video as the best use case for the extra capability they are adding to processors.
Sandy Bridge represents the latest annual refresh of Intel’s microprocessors on it’s so-called “tick-tock” timeline.
The “tick” year is when Intel shrinks the size of the circuitry on chips as it did with “Westmere” chips this year, narrowing it to 32 billionths of a metre.
The “tock” year is when the chips are redesigned and Sandy Bridge marks a major overhaul of the Intel architecture.
The Silicon Valley company has long been a leader in selling integrated graphics chips embedded in PC motherboards as a cheap if less powerful option than competing “discrete” graphics cards that take up their own upright slot in the PC - AMD’s ATI division and Nvidia dominate this category.
With Sandy Bridge, Intel has been able to put its graphics processor on the same chip die as the central processing unit (CPU) microprocessor for the first time. This means they can share resources, such as memory on the chip, making computers more energy efficient.
“Sandy Bridge will revolutionise PCs again,” Paul Otellini, chief executive, told the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.“This chip has unprecedented feature integration for us: on one single chip, we’ve put in place all the critical capabilities for computing.”
AMD acquired ATI in 2006 to achieve its ambitious vision of “Fusion” computing, where the CPU is merged with the GPU (graphics processing unit) on a single chip. It has suffered delays, but its “Zacate”, “Ontario” and “Llano” “accelerated processing units” are finally due in the first half of next year.
“The GPU on Sandy Bridge is still their little integrated graphics processor put on the die,” said John Taylor, AMD spokesman.
“It’s a much smaller fraction of the overall die area than what we’re doing with Fusion, where we’re delivering a true discrete-level GPU, true parallel-compute engine, in addition to the multi-core x86 microprocessor.”
Dual-core Zacate and Ontario should appear in products early in the New Year around the same time as Sandy Bridge, Zacate drawing 18 watts will challenge it in laptops and all-in-one PCs, while Ontario at 9 watts is a netbook processor rival. The more powerful Llano has been delayed and should appear in products by mid-2011, says AMD, in both dual-core and quad-core configurations.
Nvidia has specialised in GPUs and discrete cards, but has been challenging Intel in devices such as netbooks with its Tegra microprocessor in recent months.
In a response to the unveiling of Sandy Bridge, it said: “Intel’s been proclaiming the death of discrete graphics for years, but real GPUs just keep getting more important. Today’s visual computing applications - like photo and video editing, playing games, and browsing the web - use a GPU for the best experience.”
We are likely to get the first sight of desktop PCs and laptops running Sandy Bridge chips, probably labelled as second-generation Core i3/i5/i7 processors, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.
Intel showed a laptop prototype running Sandy Bridge and displaying the same graphics capabilities as a laptop with a discrete card.
Nvidia said consumers didn’t need to wait for Sandy Bridge: “There are excellent Nvidia GPUs today at every price point that run rings around Sandy Bridge. Of course, our GPU performance will increase again next year to maintain our advantage.”
A study released today (above) by Jon Peddie Research says an inflection point is occurring with the combination of CPU and GPU on the same chip that will make traditional integrated graphics processors extinct by 2015. Discrete graphics cards will also decline to 10 per cent market share by then, from 30 per cent today, it suggests.
“[These combination chips] will truly revolutionise the PC and associated industries,” the study predicts.
“The amount of computation capability available in the size, weight, power consumption of systems equipped with [these chips], and for the price they will be offered, will upset the market dynamics like never before, and maybe not since the introduction of the PC.”
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