Intel: No Larrabee in 2009
PrintIntel's Larrabee project might rank as one of the most anticipated technology releases in a long while, and it looks like we'll have to wait just a bit longer than originally thought. It was expected that Intel would launch its many-cored cGPU sometime in late 2009, however the chip maker is now saying it plans to launch Larrabee in 2010.
Not a whole lot of details are known about Larrabee, only that it's a x86-based discrete graphics solution built around the second generation Pentium processor technology with the P54C core. When Larrabee launches, it will come in several iterations, the lowest of which will comprise no less than 8 cores. On the higher end, look for at least 32 cores and a 2GHz or faster clockspeed.
While it all sounds impressive, Intel's Jospeh Schultz did say that it would be a "big challenge" to compete with products from Nvidia and AMD.
Image Credit: Intel
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RAMBO
December 13, 2009 at 2:53am
DIE Larrabee DIE, Hope not to ever see it in any PC!!!
Power to the EndUser...
Happy Holiday's All...
JupiterTrooper
May 16, 2009 at 7:20am
Its too bad that larabee wont be out this year. next year though will be quite the year and I am interested to see what AMD does to try to take the lime light away.
http://pctalkonline.blogspot.com
Keith E. Whisman
May 15, 2009 at 11:00am
It'll come out just as soon as Duke Nukem Forever is released. Oh god we are never going to see Larabe.
AndyYankee17
May 14, 2009 at 6:56pm
so it's using pentium II CPUs?
does this mean I can dig up the old cartridges and put them on a pcie card like you could put old ram on the soundblaster AWE 32?
emepror
May 14, 2009 at 5:02pm
what i dont get is why they used pentium and not something more advanced like nehalem as thier base processor for the larrabee
StormEffect
May 14, 2009 at 5:21pm
Nehalem cores are insanely huge, they wouldn't be able to fit very many on Larrabee. Pentium core designs can be modified with certain useful updates, and they are much smaller than Nehalem cores, meaning many more of them can be placed on Larrabee. This is all about parallelism, so in this case more cores is better than better/faster/larger ones.
comptech08
May 14, 2009 at 6:58pm
okay i am no expert on core sizes or any sizes about processors, but i was led to believe that Nehalem cores were smaller because they are built on the 45nm archtecture. So how could a pentuim be smaller?
JuiceJones
May 15, 2009 at 5:46am
The manufacturing tech (i.e. 45nm) refers to how small the transistors can be etched onto the die, it does not have anything to do with die size itself. As the manufacturing tech shrinks, more powerful processors can be crammed into the same space, and older processors can be shrunk for better cooling/clock speed.
Hence these old Pentium based cores are all very tiny at 45nm, since they were originally 250nm or so, and clock much higher.
mesiah
May 14, 2009 at 7:33pm
This isn't just a bunch of old PIIs soldered onto a board. These are new chips made with new technology. They stated they could run at 2Ghz, whens the last time you saw a P2 running at 2Ghz without extreme cooling? So, yes, its a bunch chips using P2 technology because its cost friendly (could you imagine paying for a board with 32 nahalems on it? even at the 920 price thats over $10k) and the industry is very familiar with them. However, they are new updated chips that would outperform the old ones, not just a bunch of spare p2s that they had laying around from the 90s.
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