Larrabee (microarchitecture)

Larrabee is the codename for a cancelled GPGPU chip that Intel was developing separately from its current line of integrated graphics accelerators. It is named after either Mount Larrabee or Larrabee State Park in Whatcom County, Washington, United States, near the town of Bellingham.^[1][2] The chip was to be released in 2010 as the core of a consumer 3D graphics card, but these plans were cancelled due to delays and disappointing early performance figures.^[3][4] The project to produce a GPU retail product directly from the Larrabee research project was terminated in May 2010^[5] and its technology was passed on to the Xeon Phi. The Intel MIC multiprocessor architecture announced in 2010 inherited many design elements from the Larrabee project, but does not function as a graphics processing unit; the product is intended as a co-processor for high performance computing.

Almost a decade later, on June 12, 2018; the idea of an Intel dedicated GPU was revived again with Intel's desire to create a discrete GPU by 2020.^[6] This project would eventually become the Intel Xe and Intel Arc series, released in September 2020 and March 2022, respectively - but both were unconnected to the work on the Larrabee project.