Intel said it will not release its first implementation of Larrabee, a multi-core x86 processor geared for consumer graphics and technical computing. The chip targeted the high-end graphics markets of AMD and Nvidia beyond the reach of Intel's existing low-performance integrated graphics cores.

Now Intel plans to release the first chip as part of a software developer's kit to seed the market for next-generation Larrabee chips. Intel will announce in 2010 its plans for the development platform as well as future Larrabee chips, said a company spokesman.

Intel said running graphics on an array of x86 cores was it would make programming easier that developing for the even larger arrays of proprietary graphics cores used by AMD and Nvidia. However, that advantage appears to be narrowing.

Microsoft's Windows 7 includes a DirectCompute applications programming interface to run big parallel jobs on traditional graphics processors. Meanwhile, the OpenCL API developed by the Khronos group and backed by a broad range of companies including Apple Inc. is also gaining traction.

By: DocMemory
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