Intel has once again shelved plans to come back to the discrete graphics market, with the much talked about GPU codenamed Larrabee. In a recent post by Director, Product and Technology Media Relations Bill Kircos on the company blog, it was detailed that the company's priorities at the moment lie with releasing industry-leading processors that have the graphics-processing horsepower for everyday computing. The Intel HD graphics will only get better with the 2011 series of Core processors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture, where the iGPU core will be completely integrated with the processing complex.
http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2010/05/an_update_on_our_graphics-rela.php
In a nutshell, Intel has three visual computing efforts. The first is the aforementioned processor graphics. Since we began integrating graphics inside our chipsets back in 1999 (and now integrate graphics inside our processor products), the majority of PC users are now using integrated solutions. Second, for our smaller Intel® Atom™ processor and System on Chip efforts, and third, a many-core, programmable Intel architecture and first product both of which we referred to as Larrabee for graphics and other workloads. Here’s the latest:
1. Our top priority continues to be around delivering an outstanding processor that addresses every day, general purpose computer needs and provides leadership visual computing experiences via processor graphics. We are further boosting funding and employee expertise here, and continue to champion the rapid shift to mobile wireless computing and HD video - we are laser-focused on these areas.
2. We are also executing on a business opportunity derived from the Larrabee program and Intel research in many-core chips. This server product line expansion is optimized for a broader range of highly parallel workloads in segments such as high performance computing. Intel VP Kirk Skaugen will provide an update on this next week at ISC 2010 in Germany.
3. We will not bring a discrete graphics product to market, at least in the short-term. As we said in December, we missed some key product milestones. Upon further assessment, and as mentioned above, we are focused on processor graphics, and we believe media/HD video and mobile computing are the most important areas to focus on moving forward.
4. We will also continue with ongoing Intel architecture-based graphics and HPC-related R&D and proof of concepts.
http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2010/05/an_update_on_our_graphics-rela.php
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