Intel's Larrabee GPU put on ice (2009)

The main issue behind the delay, it appears, was the hardware. That's not surprising, because Larrabee is a big, complex part, and it's quite a departure from anything that Intel has done. The hardware delay would have resulted in a software delay, and if Intel were to launch Larrabee with an immature software stack then it would be roadkill as a GPU.

Even though Intel couldn't have the Larrabee software ready on a timeframe that would make it competitive with NVIDIA and ATI (again, Larrabee is really a hardware/software hybrid GPU), the chipmaker can still push out the hardware itself and let others have a go at using it for graphics and HPC. Hence the plan to release it as a development platform for doing multi- and many-core research for HPC and graphics.

The Larrabee delay is obviously great news for NVIDIA, and even better news for AMD. This leaves both competitors to share the market for discrete GPUs, and quite possibly next-gen game consoles, for the next two years. NVIDIA's underlying long-term problems (the death of its integrated graphics processor market and the ongoing decline in the high-end discrete GPU market) are still there. And AMD still has well-documented challenges of its own as it struggles to regroup and return to growth after a brutally punishing few quarters of layoffs and cost-cutting. But execs at both companies have got to be high-fiving each other right now.

As for Intel's long-term future in the discrete GPU market, we'll have to wait until next year before we know more. Thankfully, that's just around the corner.