IDF 2009: Move along there is very little to see here.
Intel managed to briefly pique the interest of IDF 2009 attendees with a short demonstration of its upcoming Larrabee discrete graphics chip, which is said offers high throughput for applications and features a programmable graphics pipeline.
Chipzilla has been rabbiting on about its wondrous many-cored graphics architecture for ages now, but little hard evidence has been delivered until today when a very short ray tracing demo was given using a classic scene from Id Software's Quake Wars: Enemy Territory video game.
Apparently running actual pre-production Larrabee hardware, Sean Maloney treated us for the single demo - a motionless camera looking over a shipwrecked boat with pretty water effects and the odd helicopter flying overhead.
Unfortunately for the assembled masses, brief was the pertinent word and very few other details were forthcoming, which considering Larrabee based cards are supposed to be landing early next year is a little disconcerting to say the least.
Despite all indications to the contrary, Intel continues to insist that all things Larrabee continue to bowl along as per plan, but time will soon tell if that's really the case.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012