[HN Gopher] Intel's ambitious Meteor Lake iGPU
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Intel's ambitious Meteor Lake iGPU
Author : ingve
Score : 133 points
Date : 2024-04-09 05:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (chipsandcheese.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (chipsandcheese.com)
| yread wrote:
| discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39973599
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Unfortunately a weird train wreck of wrong and strange
| statements.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Not just that but the wrong and off topic statements also get
| up voted to the top. Maddening.
| Jonnax wrote:
| It's a technical article about an esoteric topic, you don't
| usually get good discussion.
|
| Sometimes it's good for a laugh. Like I remember a commenter
| in one of the XZ posts saying that open source contributors
| should be required to have US security clearance.
|
| The top comment talking about Vista (2007), Crisis (last game
| 2011), Witcher (Last game 2015) and the Datsun name change
| (1986) is really something.
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| Yep, or the fact that such a commenter has 70k karma on HN
| is something, too.
| Uehreka wrote:
| I looked and he's one of those people who submit 2 posts
| per hour. And like, I wouldn't want to do that, but if
| you're a news junkie who feeds articles into HN soon
| after they come out and gives us stuff to talk about, it
| makes sense that you'd have huge karma in the long term
| since you're providing a service to the HN community.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Two posts per hour and deep comments that turn into word
| salad under close examination? Could be a gpt-bot as well
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My YOShInOn can't write text, at least not yet. (I am
| thinking about T5 to attach Mastodon tags) I think most
| generative models would be too polite to say something
| like that or would be more tentative.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| daniel-cussen has entered the chat
| user_7832 wrote:
| I've found r/hardware to often have good discussion. As a
| bonus, a fair number of ex-Anandtech journalists frequent the
| sub too and often chime in.
| dagmx wrote:
| /r/hardware is pretty bad about anything that isn't gaming
| oriented products and even then it's a crapshoot.
| Teever wrote:
| Feel free to correct and clarify those statements.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| What, you think that's a worthwhile endeavour? Getting
| people to change their mind in this site is far worse and a
| far more toxic experience than reddit.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Waiting for Strix Halo.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Well, the article is a bit of a mess.
|
| ... so, what exactly makes it ambitious?
|
| The article itself brands AMD as afterthoughts in "GPU" (note:
| virtually no references to actual graphics, I get it, AI pushes
| all the investment these days), and then plops down performance
| graphs that generally show AMD to be better.
|
| It talks about "compromised" gaming as the stated bar in the
| opening paragraph.
|
| I understand that Intel has shown near-complete managerial
| incompetence in discrete graphics despite trying every five years
| or so. So maybe "not totally failing" is "ambitious".
|
| Maybe at some point, GPUs are "good enough", once you can 4k
| 120FPS enough aa textured triangles, it's more about art design,
| modelling, etc (something I actually think AI will be really
| beneficial for)
|
| Alas the tantalizing prospect of real time raytracing seems to be
| backburnered under the AI hype onslaught.
|
| So maybe the "lesser" iGPU will be a new sweet spot for a couple
| generations. Maybe having all the high end cards swooped up for
| LLM training will have the PC gaming market take a breather and
| work on optimizing for a somewhat stable hardware capability.
| queuebert wrote:
| > Alas the tantalizing prospect of real time raytracing seems
| to be backburnered under the AI hype onslaught.
|
| Can you elaborate on this? Is that because ray tracing needs
| only simple vector units, while AI is driving tensor-type
| architectures?
| AkBKukU wrote:
| Not OP, but to provide some historical perspective, RTX
| hardware raytracing is very firmly a gimmick and it isn't AI
| nonsense that's going to be the end of it. It's going to go
| the way of PhysX, 3D Vision, and EAX audio. Cool, but
| complicated and not worth the effort to game devs. Game
| designers have to make all the lighting twice to fully
| implement RT, and it's just not worth the effort to them.
|
| Nvidia's own site[1] lists a total of 8 Full RT compatible
| games, half of which they themselves helped port. There are
| far more games that "use" it, but only in additional to
| traditional lighting at the same time to minimize dev costs.
| Based on that and past trends, I would personally predict it
| to be dropped after a generation or two unless they can reuse
| the RT cores for something else and keep it around as a
| vestigial feature.
|
| [1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-rtx-
| games-e...
| sgift wrote:
| "Full RT" means the game uses 100% raytracing for rendering
| (in some mode), which currently needs still far too much
| power to be a mainstream thing and is only added in a few
| games to show the prowess of the engine (IIRC a review of
| the Cyberpunk 2077 Full RT mode only a 4090 is really able
| to provide the power needed). The important entry is "yes",
| which shows far more entries and means there's Raytracing
| enhancements in addition to rasterization.
|
| So, no, it's quite the opposite of what you stated: RT gets
| more important all the time, is not a gimmick and there's
| zero reason to assume it will be dropped in the future.
| jorvi wrote:
| It is a gimmick in that you have to sacrifice far too
| much performance. An RTX 4080 will need to run at
| 1080+upscaling+framegen to get above 60 (!) FPS with ray
| tracing.
|
| No thank you, I'll take buttery smooth real 120 FPS at
| 4K. Especially because games have gotten so good at
| faking good lighting.
|
| Maybe with the RTX 6xxx series it'll be viable.
| josephg wrote:
| It does look fabulous though. I have a 4090 and
| absolutely turn RT on for cyberpunk. Even with a 4090 I
| use upscaling for a good frame rate. But the resulting
| image quality is just spectacular. That game is really
| beautiful.
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| I would hardly say it's a gimmick. Now that frameworks like
| epic's unreal engine and others implemented for the
| developer. I don't see these technologies going away. One
| can hope that nvidia's dominance lessons overtime.
|
| I believe the next big thing is generative AI for NPCs as
| soon as the models are optimized in the hardware for the
| average GPU. Let's see what the next generation of Intel
| AMD and arm produce. Windows branding of an AI is going to
| make this possible. It's going to take years though for the
| market to be saturated with hardware capable for developers
| to pay attention.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| You do realize that RT greatly simplifies the job artists
| and engineers have to do to make a scene look well lit? The
| only reason it's done twice currently is because GPUs
| aren't powerful enough yet. RT will simplify game
| production.
| nsteel wrote:
| I took the ambitious part to be changing how the gpu was
| connected to the rest of the system. Seems like a decent jump
| although not exactly risky.
|
| But the conclusion sums it up well:
|
| > Meteor Lake abandons the familiar Sandy Bridge client design
| that characterized Intel's consumer CPU offerings for more than
| a decade. In its place, we get a flexible chiplet strategy that
| lets Intel pile on accelerators in response to market demands.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| So they're basically following AMD's lead by going to a
| modular chiplet based package...
| nsteel wrote:
| I don't think it's really about followimg AMD. It's the
| only sensible thing to do given the state of scaling and
| economics.
|
| All interesting things Intel are doing are chiplet based. I
| think it's partly about showcasing their packaging tech in
| an attempt to differentiate their fab offering. You could
| argue there's nothing very special in that respect here,
| they've done this process and vendor mixing before
| elsewhere. Except this will be a high volume product line
| so they need good yield and capacity. But that's just my
| read on it, maybe it's just the cheapest way to stay
| relevent.
| clamchowder wrote:
| I simply meant it was ambitious compared to prior Intel
| iGPUs, especially stuff like Skylake GT2 where you could be
| playing at 720P low and still not get 30 FPS.
|
| The chiplet strategy is kind of ambitious too because there's
| power overhead and they're targeting battery powered devices
| with Meteor Lake.
|
| Eh, writing is hard. I never liked English class anyway
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Don't let the haters get you down, I love your articles.
| darby_eight wrote:
| If you're not gaming or doing serious gpgpu stuff, the on-board
| GPU _has_ been a sweet spot for well over a decade now.
| clamchowder wrote:
| (author here) I appreciate the feedback, but I have trouble
| understanding where you're coming from.
|
| "what exactly makes it ambitious?" I thought I outlined that it
| was much more powerful than Intel's prior (RPL) iGPUs both in
| the first paragraph, and in the conclusion. It competes with
| the powerful iGPUs AMD has been getting into handhelds.
|
| "AMD as afterthoughts" - Can you explain how you got that
| impression? I opened by noting how AMD's APUs are extremely
| competitive if not downright dominant in handhelds (Steam Deck
| and ROG Ally called out as specific examples) and threatens
| Intel in the laptop scene too.
|
| "4K 120 FPS" - uh no, you're not getting that on an iGPU unless
| it's a game from 15 years ago. I suggest checking the very wide
| variety of other reviewers who run game benchmarks on devices
| like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally. 1080P or 720P 30 FPS is a good
| target, and you might need medium or low graphics to get there.
| That's what I mean by compromised gaming. It's not the same
| experience as say, gaming on a desktop with a midrange discrete
| card.
|
| "lesser" iGPUs imo aren't a new sweet spot, the sweet spot is
| just holding on to older cards that still deliver better
| performance than these iGPUs. For example check Steam's
| hardware survey
| (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/). There are
| more people with a GTX 1080 than a RTX 4080. And PC games _are_
| optimizing for stable hardware capability. The latest games are
| usually playable on Pascal.
| vetinari wrote:
| > "4K 120 FPS" - uh no, you're not getting that on an iGPU
|
| You are not going to get that from many dGPUs either. You
| might get that from the high end in the last or previous gen,
| but not from the midrange or 2-gen-old models.
| josephg wrote:
| It really depends on the game.
|
| I have a 4090 (for work, I swear...). Cyberpunk is smooth,
| but I don't get 4k 120fps. But I also play a lot of little
| indie games. Terraria? Stardew valley? Slay the spire? This
| stuff doesn't need a dgpu at all. And I suspect a
| significant percentage of global gaming hours go into stuff
| like this now. Games that really push the hardware are
| expensive. (Well, or badly made). Either way, it's usually
| bad for business.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Basically, NVidia is the bar. Ambitious to me implies at
| least challenging NVidia. AMD makes competitive GPUs in
| certain arenas (and for Linux is the main choice due to
| drivers), but for me no definition of "ambitious" involves
| even thinking about AMD.
|
| Well, 4k 120 from an iGPU ... you're saying THAT is
| ambitious? There's the bar!
|
| Historically Intel has about every 5 years started to rumble
| about getting serious in the discrete markets, and they make
| some marketing fluff, but nothing even remotely competitive
| outside the iGPU "meh" range ever comes out.
|
| So if I hear Intel being "ambitious" and then read an article
| that basically pretends (I'm not accusing you of anything)
| NVidia doesn't exist, well, seems like a failed premise to
| me.
|
| I'm pretty negative on Intel over the last decade, you'd
| think I was a spurned contractor (I'm not, never worked
| there). Intel is definitely in the "prove it" mode. They've
| so massively failed/squandered opportunity at smartphone
| chips, SSDs, memory, graphics, and then finally screwed the
| pooch in process tech and CPUs. So clearly an engineering
| company that was hijacked by finance MBAs are driven into the
| ground, and it is _HARD_ for companies to come back from that
| poison, especially when they had about 30 years of near-
| unchallenged monopoly dominance in the marketplace.
|
| I didn't want to imply "author sux Lol" the article was
| pretty in-depth and information depth, but it remains the
| basic premise is flawed, because the source marketing/press
| release by Intel is about an 80% chance of being BS or "same
| story, different half decade".
| clamchowder wrote:
| 4K 120..."There's the bar!" - By ambitious I meant Intel's
| serious about getting competitive gaming performance in the
| handheld or thin/light laptop category. MTL's iGPU is
| ambitious compared to older standard Intel iGPUs like the
| HD 530.
|
| "Nvidia doesn't exist" They don't exist in the iGPU market,
| unless you count the Nintendo Switch. The Switch doesn't
| run the same games that Meteor Lake and Phoenix do, and
| therefore I don't think it's an interesting comparison. But
| I do have data at
| https://chipsandcheese.com/2023/12/23/nintendo-switchs-
| igpu-... if you want to factor in Nvidia. Same with
| Nvidia's discrete cards or AMD's desktop RDNA 3 variant
| (with the larger 192 KB vector register file). Neither of
| those can fit in the same form factors and power envelopes
| that Meteor Lake and Phoenix compete in.
|
| What Intel source marketing/press release stuff did you
| take issue with? I'll be honest, I didn't go over their
| Meteor Lake marketing/press release materials in detail.
| But if they did claim something crazy and didn't deliver, I
| can understand the disappointment.
| neogodless wrote:
| https://wccftech.com/gpu-market-rebounds-q2-2023-amd-
| nvidia-...
|
| > The integrated segment had a total of 48.82 million units
| shipped worldwide followed by the high-end GPU segment
| which saw 6.84 million GPU shipments, 2.59 million
| shipments in the mid-range category, and 1.81 million in
| the entry-level segment. Workstation GPUs also shipped 1.50
| million units.
|
| Integrated graphics may not have the profit margins of
| dedicated, but in sheer quantity, they dwarf add-in boards.
| Retric wrote:
| But how many of those 48.82 units are actually used in
| any meaningful capacity?
|
| Intel is spending a great deal of money manufacturing
| stuff that's then utterly wasted on any system with
| dedicated GPU's or more commonly never use more than a
| small fraction of that 3D capacity. It just seems like a
| multi billion dollar waste from a company that's so used
| to being a near monopoly it can't step back from the iGPU
| trap.
| neon_me wrote:
| Gov needs/invest in Intel chips and they will deliver paradigm
| shift soon.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Justification for the assertion?
| sixothree wrote:
| How do you pronounce Xe? I feel like that might just be a huge
| psychological barrier for most people.
| wmf wrote:
| Apparently the official pronunciation is "ex ee" (not "zee").
| itishappy wrote:
| Source:
|
| TechTechPotato: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o3-yxUwjSQ
|
| Intel Keynote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o3-yxUwjSQ&t=570s
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| So it's like gif, I'll keep saying zee.
| wmf wrote:
| Honestly nobody cares. It's not even a good GPU.
| sixothree wrote:
| I honestly felt kind of embarrassed asking (especially here).
| But also that fact means something here.
| toast0 wrote:
| X is ten, so tenny. Like a Ver, but bigger.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Yanny
| t-3 wrote:
| Zee
|
| Zeh
|
| Zay
|
| Chee
|
| Cheh
|
| Chay
|
| Hee
|
| Heh
|
| Hay
|
| Ecks-uh
|
| Ecks-Eee (really strange that this is the "real" one
| considering it doesn't resemble an acronym)
|
| Ecks-ay
| Const-me wrote:
| Intel Core Ultra 7 155H can be configured to 20-65W TDP. AMD
| Ryzen Z1 Extreme can be configured to 9-30W. Similar performance
| level at twice the power consumption doesn't look particularly
| impressive.
|
| Which is sad because things tend to stagnate without competition.
| Look at the current GPU landscape dominated by nVidia, or the CPU
| market during the decade before AMD Ryzen was released. Unless
| Intel manages to deliver something good, we gonna see similar
| stagnation with CPUs and APUs, with the market dominated by AMD
| products.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Qualcom and Apple is pushing forward so probably not a big
| issue. I'd rather say we're in a very interesting situation for
| CPUs right now (compared with 5-10 years ago).
|
| GPUs on the other hand seems much more dominated by Nvidia. It
| seems though there are some competitors (AMD aside) lurking in
| the background though (again, Qualcomm and Apple).
|
| Interesting that the new contenders seem to have a very typical
| disruptive innovation approach - moving up from the lower end
| up to more higher end products (with one specific edge; power
| efficiency). Even more interesting, this concept
| (coined/popularized by Clayton Christensen) stems from research
| in the hard drive industry! Full circle!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does the fact that the new GPU "chips" from Apple et al are
| integrated vs expansion PCIe cards give them more room for
| faster advancement from Nvidia, or just the fact that they
| started with a very mature GPU market as guides the biggest
| boost? If integration is key, will Nvidia reach a point where
| they get beat because they are external to the CPU?
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Maybe, but is the interface a significant factor here? From
| what I understand one of the biggest advantages of Nvidia
| among GPU companies is their strong software part (eg
| CUDA). That speaks to that Apple has a different kind of
| integration advantage (they probably need a much smaller
| software base because they control a lot of the other side
| of it).
|
| I must say I don't see anyone outcompete Nvidia anytime
| shortly though. I just don't see anyone having any
| significant edge. But, I didn't see Apple coming either,
| despite iPhone showing clear signs of some very exciting
| performance increases year after year. I guess I didn't
| think Apple was interested/thought it was worth it. After
| all, their market/value (imo) stems not so much from a CPU
| advantage (very clearly it didn't just a few years ago
| laptop wise anyway). And it's risky - it could end up as it
| did before with PowerVR.
| talldayo wrote:
| If Nvidia gets to a point where they have to onboard their
| GPU to keep scaling, I don't see why they couldn't do it.
| They design their own SOC packages now, and have been
| integrating Nvidia IP into third-party chips for well over
| a decade. Once the need arises for "Nvidia Silicon" beyond
| what we see in Tegra and Grace, I wager we'll see it.
|
| From a cynical perspective, Apple's focus on integrated
| graphics kinda kills any hope they had of scaling to
| Nvidia's datacenter market. I mean, just look at stuff like
| this: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/gb200-nvl72/
| GB200 NVL72 connects 36 Grace CPUs and 72 Blackwell GPUs in
| a rack-scale design.
|
| Tightly integrated packages do work wonders for low-power
| edge solutions, but it simply doesn't enable the sort of
| scaling Nvidia has pulled off as fast as they've done it.
| CUDA is certainly one aspect to it, but Apple had the
| opportunity to make their own CUDA competitor with OpenCL
| through Khronos. The real reason Apple can't beat Nvidia is
| because Apple cannot write an attractive datacenter
| contract to save their life. Nvidia has been doing it for
| years, and is responding to market demand faster than Apple
| can realize their mistakes.
| saltcured wrote:
| I haven't been following closely enough to know what the
| obstacles are, but I wonder why some of these vendors don't
| experiment with wider system memory buses to increase the
| bandwidth along with these iGPUs gaining more interesting
| cache and IO topologies.
|
| My memory is that we used to see more variation with single,
| dual, triple, and quad channel memory configurations in
| essentially prosumer/pro desktops. But lately, it seems like
| everyone has just stuck to dual channel and minor variations
| in memory timing of the same DDR generations.
| ajross wrote:
| TDP numbers aren't benchmarks, and involve lots of non-GPU
| hardware. It's fair to argue AMD has a power advantage still
| (though I'd want to see more targeted measurements). But to
| argue for a factor of two based on package thermal parameters
| is silly.
| wtallis wrote:
| Intel has never shipped a chip where the iGPU can come close to
| using the full TDP. I'm not sure the Meteor Lake iGPU can even
| reach half of the TDP. In actual gaming the CPU cores will be
| pulling more power than the iGPU as often as not.
| ines26 wrote:
| .
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