Hard-disk drives will hold back the performance benefits of Intel's upcoming high-end graphics chip Larrabee
With the first generation of Intel’s high-end graphics chip – code named Larrabee – only a few months away from shipping, Intel is trying to set some expectations in regards of its performance.
Speaking at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., Intel’s desktop “performance guy” François Piednoël pointed that the performance and the user experience of a Larrabee-based PC will be “less interesting” with a hard-disk drive installed, highly recommending a solid-state drive (SDD) instead.
Hard-disk drives are what is holding PC performance back
Luckily, it so happened that the Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker had recently shipped its next-generation 80GB SSD for about $220. At this price, Piednoël argues, consumers will begin to pay attention on this new category of devices.
“On a lot of benchmarks you will get more performance benefits to put an SSD into a laptop than having a discrete graphics card… This accelerate dramatically the user experience.”
A statement that I largely agree with having experienced a jump of performance after I installed a Kingston’s SSD on a MacBook used for video editing. The jump in performance was immediately noticeable and would have only been possible if I had upgraded the processor and/or the Nvidia discrete graphics.
With that in mind, Intel’s heavy investment in SSD technologies makes a lot more sense. “The CPU and the SSD are intimately linked. The faster the SSD is, the more you need processing power, and vice-versa.” CQFD.
Follows 2 video excerpts of Piednoël’s presentation at the Flash Memory Summit:
And why Intel is so interested in SSDs:
Posted by TechPulse 360 
