It's that time of the year for Intel developers and customers alike. Several thousand will make a pilgrimage to San Francisco this week, where weather is reportedly going to be in the 90 degree range, for the Intel Developer Forum, to find out what the chip giant has in store.

This will be the first IDF without Pat Gelsinger, the former CTO who created the Intel event in 1997 and was a prominent and popular speaker at the event. He jumped ship to become President and Chief Operating Officer of storage giant EMC last week, and will be replaced on stage by Sean Maloney, executive vice president of the Internet Architecture Group. Intel CEO Paul Otellini will give the opening keynote Tuesday.

Larrabee, Intel's GPU project, may well make an appearance at IDF to quiet fears and gossip that it's behind schedule. Intel has consistently said Larrabee would be available in the first half of 2010 and has not deviated from that date, noted Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research.

"I expect to see something about Larrabee. I'm not sure what but it should be proof of concepts of Larrabee," Peddie told InternetNews.com. He also had one pretty wild speculation: that Intel would show off new optical communications techniques that use fiber optics to replace the traditional cabling in computers.

"If 'the big surprise of the show' is not Larrabee I don't know what it's going to be," said Nathan Brookwood, research fellow with Insight 64. If Larrabee is delayed in any way, then he doubts Intel will talk much about it.

This past May during Intel's annual meeting with financial analysts, Larrabee only came up once, and in passing. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. A spokesman for Intel said there would be an update on Larrabee at IDF, but declined to give details.