We never intended any subtle messages when we juxtaposed two videos from the Intel Developer Forum on Sept. 28 – one from Day One in which Intel designers showed off the graphic capabilities of the Larrabee multicore graphics engine, and one from Day Two in which Intel launched the Light Peak optical communication project, and we warned that Intel often touted high-speed communication efforts one month, only to drop them a few months later. Honest, we weren’t intending to make a subtle suggestion that Larrabee might suffer the same fate – or were our subconscious intentions even sneakier than that?
Turns out that Intel is playing one of its “oops, never mind” tricks again, sending around an email Dec. 4 that Larrabee will be pushed back indefinitely. Information Week speculated over the Dec.6 weekend that this could be a nice way of cancelling such a project – which is certainly what Nvidia would want users to believe. Or maybe high-end, parallel-channel graphics simply represented too big a challenge for Intel.
We’re willing to believe that the latter case may yet be true, and that Larrabee could live again. But as we pointed out in the case of Light Peak, Intel has to be careful about talking up architectures to which it says it is committed, only to drop them later - like the i960 and i860 processors. Like PCI Express Advanced Switching. Like Intel Connects Cables. Like USB 3.0, apparently. Like Larrabee, possibly. Atom, of course, will be a contender in both netbooks, and perhaps even smartbooks. The real issue lies not in balancing Windows and Moblin interests, but in making sure Intel doesn’t cancel more ongoing programs. Its reputation is at stake.
Loring
