Intel chap claims discrete graphics card market will die

Ron Fosner, an Intel Graphics and Gaming Technologist and former video game programmer, claims multi-core processors will drive multi-GPU "madness" out of the market. Fosner claims people probably won't need discrete cards in the future. This seems a pretty odd remark considering how much money Intel is pouring into the development of Larrabee.

Fosner made these comment while demonstrating Intel’s ‘Smoke’ demo at the Technology Showcase at IDF. We posted a short version of the demo a few days ago and you can watch that video here. Today we went back to get some more detailed answers.

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Fosner told us that multi-core CPUs are more than capable of rendering complex scenes that used to be reserved for top-end graphics cards. He argued that Intel processors offered “more bang for the buck” and that it was more economical to go from single to multiple core processors versus popping multiple graphics cards into a machine. “The fact of the matter is that you’re going to have one graphics card, you may have a dual graphics card, but you’re not going to have a four graphics card or eight graphics card system,” said Fosner.

Another advantage to CPU graphics and physics programming is that people won’t need to continually keep up with the latest programming techniques of all the newest cards – this means futzing around with shader models and DirectX programming will be a thing of the past. Fosner said that “everybody” knows how to program for a CPU and that this new way of programming will “get rid of” a path of graphics obsolescence.

When asked if discrete graphics cards will be needed in the future, Fosner answered, “Probably not”. He explained that computer didn’t have discrete graphics in the 80s and that CPUs are becoming powerful enough to take over that role.

Source: TG Daily