I'm happy another old hardware nerd got that dated reference :D.
I was convinced back in the day that Larrabee would change the world. It seemed like such an amazing technology especially since multi-core CPUs were just starting to take off in consumer hardware.
Honestly it could have, if Intel had invested in the platform for more than a few generations and built the software ecosystem around it. It had on package HBM before it was cool with all the modern AI GPUs and APUs. Intel had the opportunity to build the CUDA ecosystem, and chose to shelve it. I'll never understand the obsession that new platforms must be profitable immediately. Seems they take ~10 years to develop, and planning for that should be part of what's expected before the decision is made. Gelsinger seemed to understand at least that much.
Well, they did half-heartedly try at it. Intel Phi was produced from 2010->2020.
I think the problem is that Intel pigeonholed the product, relegating it to just supercomputers. I also think Intel has historically done a bad job of supporting the software needed to power their hardware.
The reason CUDA was so successful (IMO) is because it was highly available and the software is a better quality to competitive software. OpenCL was supposed to be the answer to CUDA and ultimately it was just a weird, hard to work with, and minimally supported language.
I don't think that's all Intel's fault. Apple's dumb war against Khronos has really undermined a lot of progress for anyone doing GPGPU programming.
I was convinced back in the day that Larrabee would change the world. It seemed like such an amazing technology especially since multi-core CPUs were just starting to take off in consumer hardware.