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Intel delays Larrabee graphics processor indefinitely

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: December 7, 2009, 10:20 AM EST

It looks like Nvidia and AMD won't have to deal with Intel in the
discrete graphics market anytime soon after all. According to company
spokesman Nick Knupffer, the chip giant has indefinitely delayed plans
to market a consumer version of Larrabee, opting instead to release it
as a software development platform for both graphic and high
performance computing.

Intel originally planned to launch the chip in 2008. Multiple delays
forced them to push those plans until "sometime in 2010," but
apparently the company has fallen behind where it hoped to be in
silicon and software development at this point, and don't believe
their product would be suitably competitive with Nvidia and AMD's
alternatives by the time of release. The idea behind Larrabee was to
offer graphics and parallel processing with the full programmability
of an x86 CPU, using a many-core architecture based on the original
Pentium design.

The announcement came as a bit of a surprise considering the company
had been working on the project for the last two and a half years. It
also showed off a system based on Larrabee just three months ago at
IDF.






Intel Larrabee to come back from the dead, eventually

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: March 18, 2010, 2:26 PM EST

Intel spent quite some time talking up its Larrabee graphics processor
ever since it officially announced the x86-derived chip in 2008. In
theory it sounded like a real threat to both Nvidia and ATI, but after
facing several delays and complications, plans to market a consumer
version of Larrabee were indefinitely put on hold last December.

The reason cited for the program stoppage was that the silicon and
software development for the chip had not met Intel expectations and
the fear was Larrabee would not be able to compete with ATI and Nvidia
offerings. Now, however, the folks at TechEye have reportedly heard
from a "key member" of the team at Intel that a whole product plan and
roadmap is still in place for Larrabee.

Apparently there's some development being done, with many of the
people originally hired for the project still hovering around waiting
for Larrabee to come online again. Last we heard, Intel planned to
release Larrabee sometime this year as a software development platform
for both graphic and high performance computing. If the anonymous
sources are indeed right, we would probably still have to wait for an
improved second-gen design before a Larrabee GPU arrives. That could
be a while, but we know Intel won't just drop its plans to get a piece
of the discrete graphics market that easy.