Intel’s Larrabee delayed again

Brian Ambrozy 4 Dec, 2009 at 5:53pm ET Article published in Tech

Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer today announced that Larrabee, Intel’s grand re-entrance into the discrete GPU market, has been delayed.

Now slated to be released as an SDK only, actual silicon launch is now delayed until some time “next year.”

Knupffer, also known as “IntelNick“, said, “Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we hoped to be at this point in the project. As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone discrete graphics product.”

Larrabee is said to use an array of x86 engines which are harnessed to work in parallel. Intel had hoped to pit it against the latest GPU offerings from NVIDIA and ATI in 1Q10, but now it appears as if Red and Green get a chance to pull even further ahead.

Comments

4 Dec 2009 ~ 6:06pm Cliff_Forster And AMD enjoys a higher margin on 5xxx series cards a little longer.
5 Dec 2009 ~ 5:32am Snarkasm Did anybody think Larrabee was even going to remotely compete with the Radeon 5000 series? Come on, Cliff.
5 Dec 2009 ~ 9:24am lordbean Intel thought it was going to. They hoped it would rival Fermi, too.

Personally, I didn't see it happening. A company with no discrete card experience suddenly jumping into the high end? Yeah right.
5 Dec 2009 ~ 10:33am MathieuB I'm not surprised either. This IS a complex project, Intel is trying something that has never been done before (A graphic card based on X86 cores), with hardware and software to develop for it.

I'm thinking that performance is not where they want it to be. Or, if you prefer, performance is not high enough to be competitive enough to sell Larrabee at a high enough price to cover costs.

Either that, or their drivers suck a usual...
5 Dec 2009 ~ 1:26pm primesuspect They do have discrete card experience, Lordbean. The i740 debacle, even though it was a joke back in the day.
5 Dec 2009 ~ 1:35pm lordbean

primesuspect wrote:

They do have discrete card experience, Lordbean. The i740 debacle, even though it was a joke back in the day.

Lemme rephrase... a company with no recent discrete card experience.
5 Dec 2009 ~ 7:24pm Cliff_Forster

Snarkasm wrote:

Did anybody think Larrabee was even going to remotely compete with the Radeon 5000 series? Come on, Cliff.

Not me of course. Intel can't produce a decent graphics chip to soldier on their own chipset.
7 Dec 2009 ~ 9:30am Thrax

Cliff_Forster wrote:

Not me of course. Intel can't produce a decent graphics chip to soldier on their own chipset.

Not that it matters, given their market share. I don't think it's a matter of can vs. can't, I think it's a matter of can vs. need. Intel is the largest supplier of graphics chips in the world... Why lay out billions for a marginally better IGP?
7 Dec 2009 ~ 11:42pm Cliff_Forster My point is that Larrabee has been a hot topic for the geek hype machine. I understand when NVIDIA says, here is FERMI, hold on to your shorts, its going to be awesome, and they miss delivery and everyone is still buzzing about how incredible its going to be. NVIDIA has earned that. In Intel's case, Larrabee is not hype worthy. Intel has never produced a graphics product that is even okay much less any good, but yet, people talk about Larrabee as if its going to be a game changer just because Intel may have talked about ray tracing or something in a demo. I never understood the hype surrounding Larrabee. There comes a time where you need to either "put up or shut up"
7 Dec 2009 ~ 11:50pm lordbean Intel is and will remain a major player in the graphics sector as long as their processors (and therefore chipsets) remain a major player. Most office workstations have no need for extra dollars spent on discrete graphics setups, so by implementing an inexpensive, low-power IGP on their motherboards, Intel will automatically sell their graphics technology to a very large segment of the computing industry.

This being said, Larrabee did nothing to make my geek sense tingle. Ever since I heard that announcement, all I could think was "well, they got their work cut out for them".