Intel Lacking Logic?

[patrickjp93]

It just sorta hit me: why the Hell hasn't Intel released Iris Pro 5200 E3 Xeons? Gen 7.5 graphics supports double precision, and the ECC is already existing, so why haven't they done it? 832GFlops of OpenCL and OpenGL compute is a potent amount for an entry-level workstation or GPU-accelerated home server. This seems like a perfect $600 price point chip that can start chipping (NPI) away at AMD's and Nvidia's low-end FirePro/Tesla/Quadro sales.

 

Thoughts?

 

For reference, the Quadro lineup by price and flops is as follows.

K420 $132.49 (Amazon) 299.52 GFlops (base nvidia stats)

K620 $169.99 (Newegg) 792.84 GFlops (base nvidia stats)

At this point Iris pro falls behind, but the price tags of quadros shoot through the roof, and you don't get full ECC coverage (RAM and CORES) until the K5200/K6200.

http://www.develop3d.com/reviews/Nvidia_Quadro_Maxwell_Kepler_CAD_Creo_Solidworks_CAE_iray_review

 

The first two are actually based on Maxwell 1.0 architecture. What happens to them going forward is anyone's guess.

 

This raises another point: why no ECC laptop chips? Isn't the Macbook Pro supposed to be a mobile workstation? Is there something going on behind the scenes?

[TheKDub]

Maybe they are working on improving it? or are waiting for the right time?

[patrickjp93]

Maybe they are working on improving it? or are waiting for the right time?

It's not like they had a better time to strike than Kepler. Maxwell puts Nvidia's architecture at the same electrical efficiency as Intel's (about 7% less efficient after some stupid long, but basic, math) and means their Maxwell-based quadros will pack way more FLOPs than the previous generation. Iris Pro 5200 is more powerful than the bottom 3 Quadros/Teslas. If my predictions hold, it will barely be more powerful than the lowest-level Maxwell quadro due out in March.

[-rascal-]

I'm sure they would eventually roll them out if they see fit.

AMD already has something similar going on for some time -- workstation APUs with a FirePro GPU.

[patrickjp93]

I'm sure they would eventually roll them out if they see fit.

AMD already has something similar going on for some time -- workstation APUs with a FirePro GPU.

I think those only exist for enterprise though. I don't think as a consumer you can get an ECC AMD APU. Am I wrong?

[vm'N]

You would need to be looking at Intels binning-process.

I don't think it can be economically doable, without increasing the product price.

[The_Strict_Nein]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it may be something to do with the SODIMM form factor that means you can't do ECC RAM, as it requires a lot of ICs to manage and there just isn't room