Intel recently briefed the tech community on its CPU GPU hybrid Larrabee. According to Intel vice president Steve Smith, the Larrabee is based on the x86 instruction set found in CPU architecture and is not just a GPU, but a multi-core die capable of any stream processing task. Back in 2006 when the development was started, the Larrabee was made up of 16 cores (each core capable of operating in excess of 2GHz), but in future it can scale to several thousand cores.

Initially Intel will release standalone Larrabee GPUs in early 2009, and around second half of 2009 it'll be embedded in Nehalem architecture.

DailyTech said, "Intel’s hybrid CPU and GPU chips are set to be released in two flavors, both of which will be based on the Nehalem CPU architecture. The first version, dubbed Havendale, will be a desktop chip, while the second version, dubbed Auburndale, will be a notebook chip. Auburndale and Havendale will have two Nehalem cores paired with a graphics subsystem. The twin cores will share 4MB of L2 cache and feature an integrated dual-channel memory controller that supports memory configurations up to DDR3-1333."

[Via DailyTech]