Issue #7

In a time of transition, crazy things happen. The new paradigms haven’t reached fruition, and the priorities of the old paradigms are in flux. Look at CPUs and GPUs. How many CPUs does a user need? The answer depends on several factors, including the amount of system load, how the user’s applications are threaded, and the number of processing cores in each package. The variables are similar with GPUs, but now we can add more questions. How many graphics slots can be used? Which company’s GPU "teaming" technology can come into play?

Even the big names of the graphics field are in doubt. Intel is already the market leader in graphics solely on the strength of the integrated graphics in several of its chipset northbridges. Starting in early 2007, though, Intel acknowledged that it would make a major push into the discrete graphics market with a product still code-named Larrabee, an x86-based, multi-core GPU due to yield "first silicon" late this year. Whether Larrabee will affect the consumer or workstation markets or address something altogether new remains to be seen, but the point is that big change is coming.