Despite the fact that the Larrabee discrete graphics card won’t be launched until 2009, Intel has already started talking to possible add-in board partners.

It looks that Intel won’t be selling its graphics cards directly to the distributors and stores and it will rather sell chips to its partners and enjoy the profits from the silicon. This is a business model that Nvidia and ATI have been exploiting for years and for them it turned out to be a most enjoyable one. We can confirm that Intel probed some of the partners and talked about the partnership with Larrabee discrete cards.

Years ago, ATI was selling its cards directly, but it withdrew from that business model as eventually ATI was competing with its partners and that has created a rather unhealthy environment.

Intel will find a lucky few who will try to push Larrabee and we hear that 2009 is the year for retail products, probably later rather than earlier. You can be sure to see some Taiwanese names, as they are the most disloyal ones.

This reminds me of the first Athlon boards that surfaced back in summer 1999 when Asus released the first Slot A-based motherboard called K7M in a white OEM package, as it was scared of Intel’s retaliation. I guess history will repeat itself roughly ten years after this, and add-in board partners will start secret talks with Intel about discrete graphics; but they will be careful not to upset Nvidia or ATI/ AMD.  What goes around comes around.