Intel has canceled at least the first product iteration of its graphics chip, code-named Larrabee, company representatives confirmed.

Intel originally launched Larrabee as a response to the general-purpose GPU products at Nvidia and at rival AMD, which were known as Tesla and Fermi at Nvidia, and Fusion at AMD. Although specific details were hazy, the first iteration of Larrabee was designed to counter the Fermi and Tesla products at Nvidia.

Separately, Intel also developed a series of CPUs that began integrating graphics capabilities, the Arrandale and Clarkdale processors due next year. Over time, more of the Larrabee functionality was expected to make its way into succeeding generations of the "Dales" chips, as Intel sometimes calls them.


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From what I understand, Larrabee is not truly dead. It will not be released in 2010 as a video card (at least not in the first three quarters). It is not considered by Intel a good platform for video at this time. However, as a secondary processor, Intel is planning to keep it around. There is nothing solid yet, but there are hints of a PCI card, like Mercury's secondary processor card that has an IBM Cell 8xi processor, in the works. It would be a card for processing large amounts of streaming data at high speeds, similar to the cards using Cell processors.

This idea is not new. Years ago, there was a card, I think "Clear Stream", that used 6, 8, or 12 low power MIPS processors in parallel to do basically the same thing. Folding@Home even experimented with a high performance client for these cards. Unfortunately, they started at about $7K, and I think went up to $11K, so there was little market presence.

Also, the idea of a streaming data co-processor has some merit. The Zii stem cell processor can turn processing elements into streaming processors. Also, if it ever materializes, the Chinese powers behind the Godson 3 processor have discussed the idea of the high-end HPC core being eight processors, four "CPU" units, and four streaming processor units (like the Cell's SPE units).

I could see Intel having an HPC platform (workstations though supercomputers) that are Core (or i7 / i9) CPU's and Larrabee SPU's (?, Streaming Processor Unit) on the same board.

And yes, there will be a BOIC and SETI client for it.