Intel halts development on Larrabee graphic processor

According to Intel officials, the company is delaying the 'Larrabee'' graphics processor it had hoped would compete with AMD and Nvidia GPU products. The decision follows three months of Intel demonstration of the chip at its IDF, and a month after it showcased it over-clocked Larrabee hitting 1 teraflop-mark at the Supercomputing 2009 show.

At the Intel Developer Forum held in September, Intel demonstrated its planned 'Larrabee' graphics chip, running a scene out of a 3D video game called Quake Wars on the processor.

Intel now says it is shelving the project as the development of the processor had not advanced sufficiently to market it as a product. The processor was scheduled for release in 2010.

The delay decision will hit Intel's plans to extend its architecture further into the videogame arena and to compete more directly in the parallel computing arena, where Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are pushing their graphics technologies.

Both AMD and Nvidia are aggressively pushing their products into more mainstream computing arenas, especially in the HPC (high-performance computing ) space. AMD considers its ATI GPU business as a key differentiator in their competition with Intel.

AMD development framework is structured around the OpenCL standard, which allows business applications to run in both GPU and CPU environments. Nvidia is powering its graphics technology into mainstream computing environments on the strength of its CUDA technology.