Intel has confirmed reports that it will not release its next-generation graphics processor widely known as Larrabee as a discreet GPU. Instead, most reports indicate that the company will move ahead with its many-core processor as a design and development platform aimed at graphics rendering and high-performance computing.

The idea behind Larrabee was relatively simple: combine a bunch of Pentium-class processor cores with coherent cache, add some SIMD vector and texture sampling units, and tie them all together with x86 instructions and write extensions where necessary. Viola! A super-fast general purpose CPU that's programmable with C/C++ and performs graphics processing too. Problem was, Larrabee was too slow. Initial performance figures were about a fifth of where they needed to be to compete with AMD and NVidia, according to Wikipedia . It also was widely reported that demonstrations given at IDC in September were unimpressive.

The news comes just weeks after the late-November revelation that IBM would not advance its Cell processor, found in Sony's PlayStation3. It's been rumored that Larrabee was under consideration by Sony as next in line, but I guess that rumor is now laid to rest.

Larrabee appears to have caused confusion right from the start. Intel's plan to produce a graphics processor first surfaced publicly in early 2007, amid media speculation and reports of a conflicted marketing message.