Larrabee by Intel

Larrabee, code name for a graphics processing unit (GPU), this draft processor developed by Intel is currently under development, along with other lines of graphics accelerators designed by Intel. The graphics cards offering processors Larrabee intend to compete with the GeForce Radeon and NVIDIA and AMD / ATI.

In addition to speeding up graphics, Intel Larrabee set to conquer the market GPGPU and high-performance computing, where NVIDIA and AMD are now past masters with the NVIDIA Tesla and map FireStream of AMD. Intel provides for the production samples of Larrabee by the end of 2008, with production for the general public towards the end of 2009 or early 2010.

The project appears to already have followers, including Apple. The company, which has always opted for ATI and Nvidia, seems poised to adopt Larrabee as soon as it is available on the market. This choice seems to stem from the nature of the project that Intel is putting in place especially with its concept hybrid CPU / GPU, which marry perfectly technologies and Grand Central Open CL Apple, which will be integrated into Snow leopard, by the end of 2009.

Larrabee is in the process of advancing the pace of technology ATI and Nvidia, but it would offer certain advantages such as more support for x86 platforms with the 'context switching', 'preemptive multi-tasking' and 'page swapping 'And the management of advanced virtual memory cache with a' full coherency.

On a more practical level, with regard to performance, we can do nothing except wait for the public release of Intel project.