Larrabee to Be Detailed at Siggraph Next Week

Intel, the world's leading vendor of computer processors, is expected to deliver details on its much-anticipated Larrabee chip, the company's first attempt in the world of discrete graphics, at the upcoming Siggraph 2009 conference and exhibition, to be held in New Orleans next week. The Larrabee chip is one of the manufacturer's most talked-about projects, as it will bring Intel in a market segment that is currently dominated by the likes of NVIDIA and AMD, both of which are also expected to update their GPU lineups before the end of this year or in early 2010.

According to previous reports, Larrabee has been designed as x86 alternative to current GPUs, which are built with specialized processing cores that enable graphics cards to deliver support for high-quality videos. By comparison, the Larrabee chip is expected to use many x86 cores, taking advantage of Intel's expertise in the x86 architecture, combined with specialized logic components. The design is to enable developers to adopt their programming to Intel's x86-based solution, as an alternative to today's parallel processing capabilities in the AMD and NVIDIA graphics chips.

Santa Clara, California-based chip maker is expected to hold two talks about its upcoming Larrabee chip at the upcoming Siggraph conference next week. One of them, which will be held on August 4, will cover vector programming and will deliver details on Larrabee's instruction set. Following the August 4 talk, Intel will host another one, titled “Preparing for Larrabee,” where it plans to familiarize developers with said chip.

The company is already a leading vendor in the graphics market, mainly due to its integrated graphics chips, which are featured in the majority of computer systems. However, with Larrabee, Chipzilla will make its foray into the discrete graphics market, where NVIDIA and AMD's ATI have the majority.