Research Summary:

• Prototypes memory sharing between CPUs and Larrabee
• Creates a “hybrid” IA platform where both of engines can work on the same data
• Extra performance to improve 3D graphics and other throughput applications

The arrival of Intel’s Larrabee will open new doors for visual computing applications due to its flexibility and programmability. It will also become possible to more tightly couple this co-processor with the main CPU. This research prototypes memory sharing between the two processors to accelerate the simulation of collisions between “soft” objects in a 3D environment such as a game. The interactive demo shown above uses Sony's open source Bullet physics engine in which the soft-body collisions have be offloaded to a simulated Larrabee co-processor.