Intel Larrabee is history.

[TheMailMan78]

Man I was kinda looking forward to Larrabee too...

Intel Larrabee: Many-core graphics card is cancelled
Larrabee is history. Intel revealed that the project won't reach the retail market. Reasons for this decision are not clear, but apparently Larrabee wouldn't stand a chance against AMD and Nvidia in its current form. Research does continue though.

With Larrabee Intel at least kept the chance alive that someday an alternative or even replacement for the current graphics card technology might be released. But that won't happen very soon now. Intel is said to have confirmed to US media that graphics cards based on the first generation of the Larrabee technology will not hit the retail markets. But the research project is continued.

At the last IDF Intel had nevertheless shown a graphics card which even exceeded the Teraflop limit if you spurred the chip a little. But this device will never hit the mass markets. Intel is said to have reasoned that the currently running Larrabee project did not match the expectations set into hard- and software. Which most likely means: Currently AMD and Nvidia cannot be beaten.

But it is clear that Intel is convinced by the technology. Therefore the current Larrabee project is supposed to become valuable next year - for software development. Of course new rumors are spreading fast, saying Intel is focusing research on the development of the second Larrabee generation to contain hardware problems.

Source

Intel said Friday that its Larrabee graphics processor will initially appear as a software development platform only.

This is a blow to the world's largest chipmaker, which was looking to launch its first discrete (standalone) graphics chip in more than a decade.

"Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we hoped to be at this point in the project," Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer said Friday. "As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone discrete graphics product," he said.

"Rather, it will be used as a software development platform for internal and external use," he added. Intel is not discussing what other versions may appear after the initial software development platform product, or "kit," is launched next year.

Graphics chip analyst Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, said Intel is not hitting performance targets and this became apparent at the SC09 supercomputing conference last month.

"Justin Rattner (Intel Senior Fellow) demonstrated Larrabee hitting one teraflop, which is great but you could walk across the street and buy an ATI graphics board for a few hundred dollars that would do five teraflops." A teraflop is 1 trillion floating point operations per second, a key indicator of graphics chip performance.

Larrabee, a chronically delayed chip, was originally expected to appear in 2008. It was slated to compete with discrete graphics chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit.

Intel would not give a projected date for the Larrabee software development platform and is only saying "next year."

Intel says its plans are unchanged to deliver this month the first chip with graphics integrated onto the CPU. This new Atom processor is referred to as "Pineview" (the platform is called "Pine Trail") and will be targeted at Netbooks.

Updated at 4 p.m. PST throughout.

Updated on December 7 at 1:05 p.m. PST: adding comments about actual teraflops versus theoretical teraflops: The one teraflop cited by Rattner was actual, measured teraflops. Whereas the teraflops number that AMD has cited was theoretical. So, a straight comparison cannot be made.

Source 2

 

[WhiteLotus]

check the news section bud

 

[TheMailMan78]

check the news section bud

I know I know. I missed that. Pie to the face indeed. Would a mod kindly lock this thread.

I should have known better too. Bta would never miss something like this.