Monday, December 7th 2009
Intel Larrabee Fails as a GPU Project
Intel's ambitious attempts at building a discrete GPU have been shelved, as reports emerge of the company canceling the silicon's first implementation as a GPU, but rather as a "software development platform for internal and external use." In a statement issued to Internetnews.com, Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer explained the company's current position of Larrabee, saying that development of Larrabee's silicon (the chip) and software were behind schedules. "Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we hoped to be at this point in the project," he said. "As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a stand-alone, discrete graphics product, rather it will be used as a software development platform for internal and external use."
Larrabee as a discrete GPU made a lot of news in its short public-life, it was given much credibility as it was coming from Intel, an IT industry heavyweight. Earlier this year, Intel demonstrated a Larrabee-based product (including actual product design of the "Larrabee card"), at last month's SC'09 show. The company seemed to have avoided calling it a discrete GPU, instead a "computational co-processor for the Intel Xeon and Core families." It was reasonable in calling it that, since by design, Larrabee is a many-core processor which uses 32 IA cores interconnected by caches. At SC'09, Intel demonstrated its computational power which peaked at over 1 TFLOP, but not before overclocking it.
Market analyst Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research remains optimistic. "I believe they will definitely come back. Intel's commitment has not slackened. The part is being repositioned as a HPC co-processor where I think it will do very well," he said. "They learned a whole lot from this. A whole lot. They are not going to throw that investment or knowledge away. I wouldn't be surprised to see them come back in a few years with a graphics part. Intel could decide to follow the high performance trail like AMD is doing with Fusion," he added.
Larrabee as a discrete GPU made a lot of news in its short public-life, it was given much credibility as it was coming from Intel, an IT industry heavyweight. Earlier this year, Intel demonstrated a Larrabee-based product (including actual product design of the "Larrabee card"), at last month's SC'09 show. The company seemed to have avoided calling it a discrete GPU, instead a "computational co-processor for the Intel Xeon and Core families." It was reasonable in calling it that, since by design, Larrabee is a many-core processor which uses 32 IA cores interconnected by caches. At SC'09, Intel demonstrated its computational power which peaked at over 1 TFLOP, but not before overclocking it.
Market analyst Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research remains optimistic. "I believe they will definitely come back. Intel's commitment has not slackened. The part is being repositioned as a HPC co-processor where I think it will do very well," he said. "They learned a whole lot from this. A whole lot. They are not going to throw that investment or knowledge away. I wouldn't be surprised to see them come back in a few years with a graphics part. Intel could decide to follow the high performance trail like AMD is doing with Fusion," he added.