Intel kills Larrabee discrete GPU, will focus on integrated graphics
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 25th 2010 3:50PM
posted May 25th 2010 3:50PM
Intel's been promising to blow up the graphics market with its Larrabee GPU for over three years now with virtually nothing to show for it, and it looks like the company has finally decided to can the entire project after downsizing it to a "software platform" last year. A new Intel blog post on the matter says the company won't bring a discrete graphics chip to market, and will instead focus on integrated graphics for everyday computing and highly-parallel multicore processors for high-performance computing. Now, Intel's obviously still in the graphics game, and it's already made a strong move towards integrated graphics by building GPUs right into the Atom N470 and much of the Core 2010 line, but on a much broader level the decision to drop Larrabee means that Intel is now essentially pursuing the same strategies as its competitors: AMD is famously behind schedule with its Fusion project but plans to ship ATI-powered hybrid CPU / GPUs next year, and NVIDIA has been pushing its multicore GPU-based Tesla high-performance computing platform for a while now. We're also curious about how Intel intends to address the gaming market in the future -- its own integrated graphics obviously aren't up to the task, and it's still fighting with NVIDIA over a Core 2010 chipset license, so that's a big question mark going forward as more and more focus is placed on low-power and integrated solutions. We'll see what happens -- it's not too often the death of a vaporware product has the potential to shake up the entire industry.
Tough times, tough measures.
@furquanatique
that patent suit with intel is only over chipsets. nvidia and ati (amd, technically) can both make discrete graphics chips for any intel platform.. that whole last paragraph seems quite misinformed.
correct me if i'm wrong nilay
You can't kill what's already dead...
@furquanatique
I fail to understand this statement:
"...so right now the only high-power GPU options for Intel's faster chips come from ATI."
Intel's faster chips are the i7 9XX series that use the X58 chipset...and both Nvidia and ATI provide discrete GPUs for ANY Intel CPU...
The only thing Nvidia cannot make for the Core i3/i5/i7 is a native chipset, like past nForce series, which were great, but had their problems...
Almost all high-end Intel systems use EITHER NVIDIA graphics cards or ATI ones...and a lot of servers now have Tesla within...
Last I checked, AMD was NOT making chipsets with ATI GPUs integrated for Intel...
So how is ATI the only company providing high-powered GPU options for Intel's "faster chips" again?
@kapanak Yes, my mistake -- I copied and pasted between two versions of this piece. Fixed now!
@Nilay Patel
See...THIS is why I love Engadget...
Editors actually take time to read some comments and correct tiny mistakes and remove bias...unlike some other tech blog we all know...
@kapanak
Tell me about it. Giz couldn't even correct a Froyo Flash speed test. They just went with the worst results, and didn't even bother posting the second video. They're trying way to hard to get back on Apple's good side.
http://gizmodo.com/5546439/speed-tests-show-flash-101-slowing-down-android-22-significantly
http://pocketnow.com/software-1/round-2-android-22-froyo-web-browser-speed-test-and-comparison
On topic: Did any ever expect an excellent discrete GPU?
Not really. It is the second time Intel killed off discrete graphic chip development (In the last 10 years?). It has more to do with management/direction/design philosophy than anything else.
@Testies Testies 12 3
Who is surprised by this?
@Testies Testies 12 3
It is not dead which can eternal lie, yet with stranger aeons, even Death may die...
@daytripper I also complained about that, still they never edited the post. That is just irresponsible.
Intel knows best..
@kapanak :
And I fail to see why you're posting the same remark to each top poster. You're comment is not related to their comment, you just wanted to get your two cents in near the top instead of by posting a new comment like you should have. Please try the "Post" option instead of "Reply"
@Agrabren
The double posting was an honest mistake and I cannot remove it.
As for the posting under someone else's comment...I guess you are new to Engadget...Welcome...
@MoonWalkerCTE
/me walks into the server room and looks at the rack with Itanic server
Honestly, I'm not really that sure.
Well that was suprising
@216 Yes very, esp. when Larrabee was sort of killed off half a year ago: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/05/intels-larrabee-graphics-processor-delayed-downsized-to-mere-s/
Intel should just snap up nvidia i say!
@cyborgsattack
My god man what is wrong with you? Buying off competition is horrible for innovation, among other things.
@cyborgsattack
Nvidia is worth around 10 billion in stocks right now...that is hard to swallow, even for Intel...
@kapanak
Friend, Intel has enough cash on hand to gobble up nVidia and not even burp. Not that they'd use cash, mind you. They'd probably borrow money for cheap, since they can, and then pay that off out of cashflow without even noticing it was gone.
Of course regulators probably would not allow anything of the sort given Intel's already dominant volume position in this field.
@cyborgsattack
I doubt that that would get approved.
it seems that that can of whoopass finally popped open.
@allnighter
Indeed. Time to call in the FTC before they shove ATi and Nvidia out of the graphics arena with substandard performance.
"right now the only high-power GPU options for Intel's faster chips come from ATI"
Really? I thought the issue was with chipsets, not discrete graphics. People can't put a PCIe NVIDIA card in a Core i7 based desktop? That makes little sense.
@nak None of that sentence made sense at all. What it should read as is "For the Core i-series of CPUs, there are no other choices for chipsets other than Intel's own." The upshot is that Intel HD graphics is the only *integrated* graphics chip available for these CPUs.
@MoonWalkerCTE
I fail to understand this statement:
"...so right now the only high-power GPU options for Intel's faster chips come from ATI."
Intel's faster chips are the i7 9XX series that use the X58 chipset...and both Nvidia and ATI provide discrete GPUs for ANY Intel CPU...
The only thing Nvidia cannot make for the Core i3/i5/i7 is a native chipset, like past nForce series, which were great, but had their problems...
Almost all high-end Intel systems use EITHER NVIDIA graphics cards or ATI ones...and a lot of servers now have Tesla within...
Last I checked, AMD was NOT making chipsets with ATI GPUs integrated for Intel...
So how is ATI the only company providing high-powered GPU options for Intel's "faster chips" again?
This is actually pretty surprising. Intel was pimping Larrabee for years, based purely on the premise that real-time ray-traced graphics (as opposed to rasterized graphics, which are the mainstream) lend themselves extremely well to multi-core parallel processing ("well" as in a 1:1 ratio in performance to # of cores). Given that computing in general is trying to move away from faster clockspeeds and towards multi-core processing, the idea behind Larrabee wasn't terrible.
The bigger problem was that rasterized graphics have gotten really good at approximating real-life lighting without the huge performance hit of ray-tracing, and have been perfected over the past two decades, whereas moving to massively-parallel processed ray-traced graphics would be like starting all over, requiring new development tools, methods, and knowledge. Intel was pushing something that people wish they had 15 years ago, but is now inferior to the alternatives.
I don't think we've seen the end of real-time ray-tracing, however.
Because everyone loves Intel's integrated graphics.
Well, let's see where this is heading.
@HikaKao
Most consumers really don't need discreet GPU's or powerhouse integrated GPU's. If they did Intel would have given up making integrated stuff long ago (which I would have welcomed).
@HikaKao
Intel's integrated chips are bad for gaming, but they're fine for pretty much everything else. I had a 4500MHD in my last laptop and I was even able to play a lot of games on it okay... just stuff like Civilization, but it was more than enough to kill time. Of course, any graphics card is good enough to do things like web browsing and emailing, which is what most people use their laptops for. (Even design stuff is fine; I always laugh when designers say they need discrete graphics cards - for what?! You pushing a lot of polygons around in Photoshop and Illustrator there?)
Now I have a GeForce 310M in my current laptop and it's nice to be able to play some more intense games, but I doubt most people would even notice the difference for anything else.
If you have Intel "GPU", you can't run rich internet apps.
I'm dissapointed, I wanted some new blood on the dGPU field. However I wasn't really expecting this to compete head to head with Nvidias or AMD's top offerings in the first place.
Intel IGP's are the joke of the computer enthusiast world right now, even their newer integrated "HD" (the name being ironic because you need an accelerator chip to run HD content on the damn things) chips. But since Intel blocked Nvidia from making integrated chips for them, users of Core i-series mobile processors are stuck with the shitty Intel HD graphics come close to Nvidia's 9400m, but Nvidia's new integrated chip (found in the 13 inch MBP) doubles the performacne from that and lowers the power draw.
@Nitesh
Or you can always get a discrete nVidia chip for any i-series processor...
@badasscat
Not the mobile ones. Look at the 13' MBP.
@Nitesh
Do you mean the ULV processors? Because you certainly can get discrete graphics for the mobile i-series processors... I know, I have one. (i5-430 w/ GeForce 310M).
Not all of the mobile i-series is ULV, so I'm thinking that's gotta be what you mean.
@badasscat
I was talking about integrated graphics, when did we start talking about discreet laptop cards? You can get a laptop with the new processors and a discreet Nvidia card, but that has a higher cost and higher power requirements. Nvidia's integrated chip is far better than Intel's. Intel;s matches the 9400m (or close to matches it) but the new Nvidia integrated chip doubles the performance over that.
I held my breath and then I choke on it. But Intel is making a right decision because if they were to spread their team out focusing on two completely different department like AMD, then they might be in trouble in one department.
Man. Talk about depressing. First Microsoft junk the Courier project, and now Intel have scrapped the Larrabee project!
Please, someone bring out something new and radical - and no, a bland boring ipad doesn't count :)
Does this mean that Project Offset is no more? I've been waiting to play that game for far to long a time.
Intel should get together with Microsoft to make a dedicated internet tablet with both Intel integrated graphics and IE10. Just think of all the wonderful that would be!
"highly-parallel multicore processors for high-performance computing"
Intel should put every single penny into this.
At long last they brought it round back the stable and put it out of its misery.
nVidia and ATI will continue to exploit its customers with exorbitant prices