Summer 2009: Intel Launches Larrabee

What with the abundance of rumors surrounding Intel's upcoming discrete graphics card, the Larrabee, it's only understandable if some of you have already grown a bit weary of it, especially as none has revealed, so far, an estimated release date and all we had to make do with was pure speculation. Today brings us yet another rumor but, this time, what we get with it is actually the very first likely timeframe for the highly anticipated Larrabee chip.

According to fudzilla, users will have to wait until next summer before having the opportunity to feast their eyes on the new product. In fact, this looks like something of a deadline for the people working on the development of the Larrabee, since they are expected to come up with the first working cards by the end of the year. To cap it all off, these working samples might actually be the very first to surface on the web, as it usually is the case with most forthcoming hardware products.

The Santa Clara-based chip manufacturer plans to give out the Larrabees to gaming developers who will try to tune their games in order to work with the new card. As most of you already know by now, said card is poised to change the face of the graphics industry and, were that to really happen, gaming developers will have to take a considerable interest in the new product. As a matter of fact, according to recently reported rumors, it is likely that the launch of Intel's Larrabee coincide with the release of six new games.

Should all of the above materialize, by end of this year, more details of Intel's upcoming chip are bound to surface which, in turn, will eventually make computer enthusiasts rethink their options for their next graphics upgrade. Even more, by this time next year, Intel will most probably have assumed the role of the leading manufacturer of high-performance graphics, leaving NVIDIA and AMD behind, to dispute for the mainstream or even the entry-level market.