Larrabee (microarchitecture)

Larrabee is the codename for a cancelled GPGPU chip that Intel was developing separately from its current line of integrated graphics accelerators.

[1][2] The chip was to be released in 2010 as the core of a consumer 3D graphics card, but these plans were cancelled due to delays and disappointing early performance figures.

The Intel MIC multiprocessor architecture announced in 2010 inherited many design elements from the Larrabee project, but does not function as a graphics processing unit; the product is intended as a co-processor for high performance computing.

[5] The Intel MIC multiprocessor architecture announced in 2010 inherited many design elements from the Larrabee project, but does not function as a graphics processing unit; the product is intended as a co-processor for high performance computing.

Its coherent cache hierarchy and x86 architecture compatibility are CPU-like, while its wide SIMD vector units and texture sampling hardware are GPU-like.

For example, it might have performed ray tracing or physics processing,[10] in real time for games or offline for scientific research as a component of a supercomputer.

One tech journalism site claims that Larrabee's graphics capabilities were planned to be integrated in CPUs based on the Haswell microarchitecture.

Being integrated onto motherboards (newer versions, such as those released with Sandy Bridge, are incorporated onto the same die as the CPU) these chips were not sold separately.

Though the low cost and power consumption of Intel GMA chips made them suitable for small laptops and less demanding tasks, they lack the 3D graphics processing power to compete with contemporary Nvidia and AMD/ATI GPUs for a share of the high-end gaming computer market, the HPC market, or a place in popular video game consoles.

In contrast, Larrabee was to be sold as a discrete GPU, separate from motherboards, and was expected to perform well enough for consideration in the next generation of video game consoles.

[22] Intel's SIGGRAPH 2008 paper describes cycle-accurate simulations (limitations of memory, caches and texture units was included) of Larrabee's projected performance.

[23] A June 2007 PC Watch article suggested that the first Larrabee chips would feature 32 x86 processor cores and come out in late 2009, fabricated on a 45 nanometer process.

[28] In 2022 another card was demonstrated by YouTuber Roman “der8auer” Hartung, which was shown to be working and outputting a display signal but was not capable of 3D acceleration due to missing drivers.