Intel "Larrabee" GPU System Surfaces with Working Drivers

Recovered drivers have reportedly restored 3D acceleration to an Intel "Larrabee" prototype, offering the community a rare chance to test the company's abandoned graphics project. Reddit user "pkellythompson" discovered the hardware in equipment purchased at a storage auction, along with two USB drives containing Intel's development software. The Intel Visual Adrenaline system includes a DX58SO motherboard, a C0 stepping "Larrabee" sample, and a diagnostic board. Getting it running required using DVI instead of HDMI and adjusting the storage controller's BIOS settings, so Windows 7 could boot. The recovered archives, approximately 82 MB and 728 MB, include drivers, documentation, development utilities, and VBIOS instructions.

First publicly detailed in 2008, the "Larrabee" project aimed to challenge NVIDIA and AMD's dedicated graphics cards. Larrabee handled much of its graphics processing through software running on simple in-order x86 cores with wide vector units, assisted by dedicated texture hardware. Intel canceled its consumer graphics launch in December 2009 after development fell behind expectations, although the architecture later powered Xeon Phi accelerators. The restored prototype reportedly ran Crysis at 1280×720p with Medium settings and antialiasing disabled. Initial results exceeded 17 FPS, with another recovered driver boosting performance to around 36 FPS. Read full story