Chip giant Intel recently forwarded the information that its high-profile product code-named 'Larrabee' - a standalone multi-core chip especially designed for advanced graphics - has hit a major roadblock due to which the company is cancelling it.

Larrabee, the much hyped Intel product since April 2007, was being touted as a "many-core x86 architecture for visual computing," which would apparently have generated complex graphics for videogames, as well as performed other high-performance computing chores.

In the simplest of terms, the design of the Larrabee chip would have comprised thirty-two X86 CPU cores, bound together with a right of cache memory which would have resulted in fast, inter- processor communication.

The Larrabee technology would have spelled increased Intel competition against rivals like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) - the market leaders for the high-performance graphics chips which are often sold in cards that plug into personal computers.

In an e-mail statement pertaining to the cancellation of the proposed multi-core graphics engine, an Intel spokesman said: "Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we had hoped to be at this point in the project. While we are disappointed that the product is not yet where we expected, we remain committed to delivering world-class many-core graphics products to our customers. Additional plans for discrete graphics products will be discussed some time in 2010."