Rasterization on Larrabee: A First Look at Larrebee New Instructions (LRBni) in Action

Intel Japan K.K.
Thursday, 17 December | 12:45 PM - 2:30 PM | Exhibition Hall B, Tech Talks Room 1

Larrabee is Intel's revolutionary approach to extending the evolving programmability of the GPGPU to its logical end. The Larrabee architecture features many cores and threads, as well as a new vector instruction-set extension (the Larrabee new instructions - LRBni). 

This overview of LRBni discusses the major instruction features: 16-wide SIMD, multiply-add, ternary instructions, predication, built-in data-format conversion, and gather/scatter. Then it takes a close look at a specific and not obviously vectorizable application of LRBni: rasterization. This crucial stage in the Larrabee rendering pipeline demonstrates how developers can use the flexibility of the new instruction set to solve problems that are not obviously shader-like. 

Learning Objective
Understanding the function of this architecture and instruction set gives attendees information on how to design the next iteration of their game engines and the possibilities available when programming Larrabee natively.

Intended Audience and Prerequisites
This talk is designed for programmers, although it will be interesting to anyone interested in Larrabee and why processor architecture is evolving in Larrabee's direction.

Intel Japan K.K.