Intel can release Larrabee when it wants, not just when the market wants it

Mar 13, 2010 08:30 GMT  ·  By

Until late last year, Intel had been working hard on creating a graphics processing unit (GPU) based on the x86 architecture that would have been able to compete with products from NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices. These plans, however, seemed to have collapsed into oblivion when the Santa Clara chip maker announced that the project was being delayed indefinitely. When that announcement was made, NVIDIA and AMD no longer felt challenged, but it is possible that the industry left the Larrabee for dead a bit too soon.

According to a TechEye report, a hardware designer at Intel said that Larrabee would have changed the whole industry if it had come out on time, because it was more flexible, in terms of programmability, than AMD or NVIDIA products, even while it retained x86 compatibility.

Naturally, NVIDIA and AMD now have the time to develop their own products, but even if they do manage to make them as flexible as the Larrabee would have been, they will not be x86 compatible. This compatibility gives the Larrabee an edge, because it can easily be used by developers in many-core configurations for multi-threaded, non-graphics applications.

The report also says that, according to the engineer, there is still a roadmap in place that includes the Larrabee and that, as opposed to other companies, Intel can decide when it wants to launch a product regardless of whether the market agrees or not.

“Intel is not a one-shot company. But there is a whole product plan and roadmap still in place,” an anonymous Larrabee engineer reportedly said. “Intel has the luxury of being able to release stuff in its own time, there are not too many other companies that can do that.”

Of course, AMD and NVIDIA have their own advantage, in the way that they also have carefully established roadmaps that let the industry know, more or less, what to expect. When it comes to the Larrabee, however, software developers can't really know why and what to develop for the upcoming Larrabee.