The chip behemoth also reckons the research will come in handy for a smorgasbord of other services including financial, scientific, data modeling, medical imaging and, last but not least, gaming.

surely Gaming should be the first and most important priority, lol =þ

Does this have something to do with the fact that Saarland University have made a ray tracer already and Intel's Larrabee is in development. Maybe they want to use that technology?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Processing_Unit

/offtopic
Did I just see someone use the word "smorgasbord" in English?!
Well, I learn something new every day :)