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Friday, June 06, 2008, 06:55 pm
Apple said to have sights on Nvidia's CUDA technology
Apple may adopt and roll into its own set of developer tools a version of Nvidia's CUDA technology that will allow programmers of everyday Mac apps to reap the parallel computational benefits of the chipmaker's graphics processors.In an interview with CNet News.com's Tom Krazit earlier this week, Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang dropped hints that Apple was extremely interested in the technology, so much so that it plans to distribute its own flavor of the technology to its developer base.
"Apple knows a lot about CUDA," Huang said, adding that the Mac maker's implementation "won't be called CUDA, but it will be called something else."
Essentially CUDA, short for Compute Unified Device Architecture, is a proprietary set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allows developers of various types of applications -- not just those specialized for graphics operations -- to leverage the parallel processing capabilities of Nividia's latest graphics chips, such as the GeForce 8600M found in the new MacBook Pros.
In the weeks leading up the launch of those MacBook Pros, AppleInsider reported that Nvidia was preparing to deliver its first Mac-based graphics chips that support CUDA. Since then, the Santa Clara-based chip maker has gone on to say that programs developed for the GeForce 8 series will also work without modification on all future Nvidia video cards.
CNet, which actually visited Nvidia's headquarters for the interview with Huang, noted that engineers "demonstrated how a CUDA-enabled version of a program similar to QuickTime running on a desktop or laptop could dramatically speed up the processor of transcoding a movie or television show into a format suitable for the iPhone."
While Huang declined to share any further details regarding Apple's intentions for his firm's technology, the speculation is that Mac developers could hear some specifics as early as Monday's opening keynote address at the company's annual developers conference in San Francisco.
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apple will need to put a nvidia card in the mini or have a mid-tower with a nvidia card to get the most use out of this.
In an interview with CNet News.com's Tom Krazit earlier this week, Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang dropped hints that Apple was extremely interested in the technology, so much so that it plans to distribute its own flavor of the technology to its developer base.
Well, not now they won't. Steve will gut Huang like a fish.
Maybe they can use this to make the Pro Apps run better than it does with the old ATI X1900 XT card. It looks like 10.5.3 improved things a tiny bit, but the ATI is still better for pro apps than the 8800.
Is Apple also going to implement ATI's competing CTM programming support? I can't really see Apple providing acceleration features for only nVidia GPUs since Apple seems to like to dual source most components. ATI's CTM actually seems to have a larger installed base too since it works with the previous generation X1k architecture while nVidia's only starts on their newer 8xxx generation. Supposedly though ATI's CTM provides low-level programming access so you could theoretically implement nVidia's CUDA interface on top of ATI's CTM, so I guess CUDA is the best way to go.
Ironically, with the rumours of Carbon's depreciation and the future being Cocoa and Objective-C, CUDA seems to be standard C based.
This begs the question of how Intel will react to it. Given the close relationship between Apple and Intel.
Intel has Larabee coming up in 2009. Which will be x86 graphics with Advanced Vector Extensions.
If intel want any sort of penetration in the Graphics Industry Apple has got to be the first customer on their wish list.
Or would Apple play save and have Nvidia as their Graphics partner so they dont put all eggs in one basket.
And ATI has always been a historical partner with Apple. Lots of their previous generation product uses ATI Gfx. Given how Intel Hate AMD more then anything else, would we still see an Apple implementation of CUDA working on ATI?
In regards to Larabee, seeing that it's x86 based it probably wouldn't take that much effort to develop accelerated apps on it, which I think it the point. So I don't think it's an either or proposition. The resources could be spent on CUDA integration since it won't take as much to bring Larabee on stream. Why would Apple want to do both? Well, I'm pretty sure the current targets for Larabee are for IGP and as co-processors. Neither will effect the usage of nVidia or ATI discrete GPUs, and in the case of co-processors, likely in the Mac Pro, Larabee and CUDA could work in tandem. Eventually Larabee will probably try to reach into higher-end discrete GPU markets, but that is still a ways off, and they would be fighting uphill into an entrenched market.
In regards to Larabee, seeing that it's x86 based it probably wouldn't take that much effort to develop accelerated apps on it, which I think it the point. So I don't think it's an either or proposition. The resources could be spent on CUDA integration since it won't take as much to bring Larabee on stream. Why would Apple want to do both? Well, I'm pretty sure the current targets for Larabee are for IGP and as co-processors. Neither will effect the usage of nVidia or ATI discrete GPUs, and in the case of co-processors, likely in the Mac Pro, Larabee and CUDA could work in tandem. Eventually Larabee will probably try to reach into higher-end discrete GPU markets, but that is still a ways off, and they would be fighting uphill into an entrenched market.
Isn't the Intel graphics built into every Intel consumer chipset now? The benefit of including support for that would be that all the Apple computers would have it whether or not they have a separate graphics chip, except for the server and the workstation. And I suppose the server & workstation chipsets could include it too. Servers often don't need much better than framebuffer graphics anyway, and just standardizing on that for every chipset of any level would help Apple.
Isn't the Intel graphics built into every Intel consumer chipset now? The benefit of including support for that would be that all the Apple computers would have it whether or not they have a separate graphics chip, except for the server and the workstation. And I suppose the server & workstation chipsets could include it too. Servers often don't need much better than framebuffer graphics anyway, and just standardizing on that for every chipset of any level would help Apple.
No, not all Intel Chipset have the Intel IGfx in it. And their implementation of Unified Shader is rather poor. So unless there are some miracle happen i dont see much power we can harness from it.
Isn't the Intel graphics built into every Intel consumer chipset now? The benefit of including support for that would be that all the Apple computers would have it whether or not they have a separate graphics chip, except for the server and the workstation. And I suppose the server & workstation chipsets could include it too. Servers often don't need much better than framebuffer graphics anyway, and just standardizing on that for every chipset of any level would help Apple.
Larabee is not the same as Intel's current graphics architecture.
My understanding of Larabee is that it is to x86 CPUs what the SPEs in the Cell on the PS3 is to PowerPC. Basically, the SPE is kind of like a glorified Altivec engine that specializes in vectorized floating point computation. Larabee will consist of many glorified SSE execution units that also specialize in vectorized floating point computation. Larabee is then useful as a co-processor to speed up multimedia processing, but will still need a general purpose CPU for other tasks. Games are of course floating point intensive, so the hope for Intel is that Larabee can also be a basis for them to make more progress in the graphics card market now that AMD has acquired ATI, starting with incorporating Larabee in IGPs and hopefully moving into discrete graphics cards.
The benefit of Larabee over current GPUs is that the architecture is x86 similar to current CPUs so that minimal programming is required to allow a Larabee GPU to accelerate programs other than games. I believe Larabee being x86 also allows a lot more programming flexibility for games too since I don't believe you would have to program a game through DirectX or OpenGL anymore. Games probably still would since those are so entrenched and optimized, but more options are still nice.
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