Larrabee GPU designer is joining Intel’s graphics team under Raja Koduri

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Intel continues to flesh out its graphics team as it aims to release a discrete GPU in 2020.

Raja Koduri, the former graphics boss at AMD who spearheaded the launch of Vega, is still assembling a team at Intel where he now works. His mission is similar—to release discrete GPUs and bolster Intel's graphics business. To help do that, he is bringing on board Tom Forsyth, a familiar face in Santa Clara.

Forsyth was largely responsible for Larrabee, which failed to launch as a consumer 3D graphics card like Intel hoped. Bringing back Larrabee's chief architect might not instill confidence in Intel's present and future graphics play, but if you ask Forsyth, Larrabee was not actually a failure. He said as much in a blog post two summers ago.

"Every month or so, someone will ask me what happened to Larrabee and why it failed so badly. And I then try to explain to them that not only didn't it fail, it was a pretty huge success. And they are understandably very puzzled by this, because in the public consciousness Larrabee was like the Itanic and the SPU rolled into one, wasn't it? Well, not quite," Forsyth wrote.

He goes on to outline the various ways in which he views Larrabee as a success, though does ultimately admit he has mixed feelings about the architecture being scrapped as a graphics device. It's worth a read if you have a few minutes to spare.

As for what exactly he'll be working on at Intel, he's not sure yet. Since he's joining Koduri, it's assumed Forsyth will be heavily involved in graphics, though whether that entails gaming GPUs, graphics chips for data center accelerators, or any other sector remains to be seen.

Forsyth joins Raja along with other familiar names like Chris Hook, another former employee who worked at Intel's rival for 17 years, dating back to the ATI era. Intel is planning to launch its first discrete GPU in 2020.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).