Intel hired a lot of departed ATI software guys to tweak the drivers and the 3Dlabs people can be counted in hundreds.

It looks like Larrabee will launch as a workstation chip as its easier to make OpenGL driver that works the professional 3D application than both OpenGL and DirectX driver at the same time.

ATI is known for being good with drivers, at least in the last two years, and 3Dlabs was one of the leaders in the professional 3D workstation area.

Larrabee is clearly mid to late 2008 production so it will take some time, but we can tell that both ATI and Nvidia are concerned.