Shanghai (China) – Intel’s is showcasing the power of its upcoming processors with a new ‘Smoke’ demo which rains fiery destruction upon a virtual shack.  Slated to debut later this year, the multi-cored Hyperthreading Nehalem processors will be able to easily crunch through real-time particle physics like the one shown in the demo.

Update -  We didn't mention the processor specs in our original version of the article.  The rep told us it was a physical quad-core Nehalem running 2 threads per core (basically the new version of Hyperthreading).  So basically there are 4 physical threads and 4 virtual threads.  All of the Nehalem processors will have multithreading capability.

 

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Video of Intel's Smoke demonstration

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An Intel representative showed us the demo at the company’s Intel Developers Forum in Shanghai today.  The scene starts off quiet with a wooden shack, a small forest of trees, and several animals jumping and flying about.  But then meteors slam into the building and set everything on fire.  Of course the fire then spreads to the surrounding trees and within seconds the entire screen is aflame.

 

The rep told us that up to 60,000 particles are tracked and rendered in the demo and that nothing was “pre-baked”.  Running on a single thread, the scene visibly stuttered. Everything ran smoothly when all eight threads were enabled.

 

pics/video

Apr 01, 2008 10:56     

i am using firefox 3 beta 4 and the video window interferes with the picture slideshow when the slideshow is opened, just giving you a heads up. the ability to change the numbers of cores used and showing the change in the fire is awesome. makes me want 8 cores for future gaming.
comment report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

WHY

Apr 01, 2008 11:14     

Was the meteor not shown!
HELLO report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

pics/video P.S.

Apr 01, 2008 11:20     

Same is true for me running firefox 2.0.0.13
joe sutherland report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Ray-tracing?

Apr 01, 2008 20:28     

I assume Intel is using ray-tracing in this demo. They have been bragging about how ray-tracing is soooo much better than rasterization. It can be done using the CPU only instead of having a discrete video card. But they need 16 cores to play games like UT3 in high resolution.
Biggins report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

re: ray tracing

Apr 02, 2008 02:38     

You assume very wrong... All that was needed to be said.
random report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Um... dude calm down its only a 4-core nehalem...

Apr 02, 2008 04:57     

with HT. You figure out the rest dude.
loujob report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

WHEN - ANOTHER PAPER RELEASE?

Apr 02, 2008 10:23     

Intel "released" their new 45nm chips in JANUARY - here it is APRIL and you still can't get them ANYWHERE. Should I anounce I'm releasing the worlds fastest CPU - say it was released in January and not actually have any?
boe report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

Use a common video format pls

Apr 03, 2008 08:43     

Would have liked to have seen this. I use the latest flash plug-in from my distro and still no joy and based on the comments I've seen around the net I'm not alone.
Pete Dixon report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Re: WHEN - ANOTHER PAPER RELEASE?

Apr 05, 2008 07:56     

read intel's roadmap... Nehalem for desktops should be release in 2009 and the server version should come out late 2008 nov or dec. the new cpu's are already available but instead of 65nm they use now 45nm... just a faster core2duos
Mike report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Intel and Microsoft are killing PC Gaming

Apr 08, 2008 20:41     

First step in that direction was Vista, removal HL Audio support etc...
Luka report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

can"t play this video with firefox / Flash Player 10 plugin

Nov 27, 2008 03:52     

Hi together, i can`t play this video with the newest available Flash Player Firefox plugin. I'm alway get the info "Please install the latest Adobe Flash Player for H.264 video support". Any suggestions how to solve this problem?
anouser report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0