NVIDIA Analyst Day: Jen-sun Goes to the Mat With Intel
by Derek Wilson on April 11, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Tenderloin and the Two Buck Chuck
As for the idea of Intel integrating a GPU onto their CPUs, NVIDIA painted a rather distasteful picture of mixing together something excellent with something incredibly sub par. The first analogy Jen-sun pulled out was one of someone's kid topping off a decanted bottle of '63 Chateau Latour with an '07 Robert Mondavi. The idea of Intel combining their very well engineered CPUs with their barely passable integrated graphics is an aberration to be avoided at all costs.
This isn't to say that CPUs and GPUs shouldn't work together, but that Intel should stick to what they know. In fact, NVIDIA heavily pushed the idea of heterogeneous computing but decried the idea that taking a system block diagram and drawing a box around the CPU and GPU would actually do anything useful. NVIDIA definitely wants their hardware to be the manycore floating point compute hardware paired with Intel's multicore general purpose processors, and they try to paint a picture of a world where both are critical to any given system.
Certainly CPUs and GPUs are currently needed and unless Intel can really pull out some magic that won't change for the foreseeable future. NVIDIA made a big deal of relating this pair to Star Trek technology: you need both your impulse engines and your warp drive. Neither is useful for the task the other is designed for: short range navigation can't be done with a warp drive, and impulse engines aren't suitable for long distance travel requiring faster than light speeds. The bottom line is that hardware should be designed and used for the task that best suits it.
Again, this says nothing about what happens if Intel brings to market a competitive manycore floating point solution. Maybe the hardware they design will be up to the task, and maybe it won't. But Jen-sun really wanted to get across the idea that the current incarnation of the CPU and the current incarnation of Intel's GPU technology are nowhere near sufficient to handle anything like what NVIDIA's hardware enables.
Coming back the argument that it's best to stick with what you know, Jen-sun stated his belief that "you can't be a great company by doing everything for everybody;" that Intel hardware works fine for running operating systems and for applications where visualization is not a factor at all: what NVIDIA calls Enterprise Computing (in contrast to Visual Computing). Going further, he postulates that "the best way for Google to compete against Microsoft is not to build another operating system."
Making another back handed comment about Intel, Jen-sun later defended their recent loss in market share for low end notebook graphics. He held that the market just wasn't worth competing in for them and that other companies offered solutions that fit the market better. Defending NVIDIA's lack of competition in this market segment, he doesn't say to himself: "Jen-sun, when you wake up in the morning, go steal somebody else's business," but rather "we wake up in the morning saying, 'ya know, we could change the world.'"
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Wiz33 - Wednesday, June 4, 2008 - link
Intel have no bargaining power in the gamer circle. Even if they withheld licensing for the next gen platform. Gamer will just stay with the current gen chipset for nVidia SLi. Since games are usually much more GPU bound than CPU.In my case, I'm a serious gamer (but FPS lite)). I just clocked over 40 hours on Mass Effect PC since installing it last Thursday evening. In my current setup with a E6750 and 8800GTS. I still have tons of upgrade path both in CPU and GPU without moving onto the next Intel platform.
sugs - Sunday, May 11, 2008 - link
As an IC designer, I can tell you right away that 3D graphics on the scale of the products that NVidia/ATI produce is not easy. Just look at the demise of Matrox, S3 and others.I think Intel is going to have problems getting the performance of their offerings to a competitive level in the near future but they do have alot of resources and it might be different 5 years down the line.
kenour - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
Dear Jen-sun,All Intel want is SLI on their chips (AS DO A LOT OF GAMERS)... so neck up you little arrogant prick and licence it to them! Don't come out with your little chest puffed our playing the tough guy! If you lease SLI technology to Intel so their highend chipsets will support SLI (Officially! Without having to use hacked drivers) for say $50US, and Intel SLI enabled all their X38/X48 boards, imagine the money that would come in. But you're too busy trying to hold on to the pathetic market share of your pathetic chipsets. There are so many gamers like me out there that would gladly purchase a second high end nvidia card and SLI them, but wont, because there is no way we would use an nvidia chipset... I would pay a $50US premium on a mobo to have SLI on an Intel chipset, and then I would buy another high end card. So put your pride aside and give them (AND US) what they want! More money for you, better gaming platform for us.
Lots of Love,
Kenour.
p.s. Yes I'm still pissed off about the rumour that SLI would be available on the X38 :P It was reported here and Tom's from memory, then retracted a week later... Was the happiest week of my life :P (well, in regards to the PC world).
ielmox - Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - link
I think nVidia is holding on to SLI as a marketing gimmick, because SLI doesn't make economic sense except for an extremely small market of wealthy and elitist gamers. I don't see any real value to SLI aside from the bragging rights of somewhat increased performance at a huge cost, and I think nVidia's strategy is guided by this knowledge.SLI uses a lot more power, generates much more heat, is buggier, harder to set up, and all this while offering diminishing returns compared with a dual or even single GPU card. In fact, unless you're SLI'ing the latest and greatest cards, you are better off with a non-SLI setup. Realistically, only a very tiny minority of gamers would ever go for an SLI set-up, so I'm guessing nVidia understands there is not much potential for financial gain.
SLI is a bit of a white elephant to most people.
gochichi - Monday, April 14, 2008 - link
The intel/nvidia combo is totally the "it" combo in computer gaming and has been for some time. AMD is working on "tidy-little-packages" with their new integrated graphics platform that can just about "game" right now, not in 2010.Nvidia, not Intel are the people that need to be working on an Intel platform equivalent in the integrated sector.
I am glad to be an Nvidia customer, I am also glad to see their not taking cheap-shots at AMD. They even came out kind of defending AMD which is understandable, both are smaller companies and both respect each other's products.
I can just picture it now: AMD laptops with synergy for $500 or less and no equivalent Intel solution due to a lack of cooperation with Nvidia.
perzy - Monday, April 14, 2008 - link
Well the thing is I think that Intel has no choice. The x86-cpu is DEAD . The heatwall keeps the frequenzy down (seen any 4 GHz chip's lately?)and well they cant keep adding another core forever. Intel is in dire PANIC, belive me. They must branch out and the GPU, PPU and maybe a little audioPU is the chips with any development years left in them.
And no there are no quantum or laser chips yet...
Come on, if a blond guy from Sweden like me can understand this why dont you spell it out for everybody?
Galvin - Monday, April 14, 2008 - link
Actually hitting 4gz for intel would be easy. hell a lot of people get those things to 4gz on air.So yeah they could do 4gz if they wanted to :)
perzy - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
So do you think that Intel is content and everything is going according to plan? We should be at 10 GHz now if according to that plan, and using the netburst architecture...The 3,8 GHz P4 was so hot that Intel had to ship it with high-expensive thermal paste. Otherwise it throttle constantly.
It's strange to me that everybody(hardware sites for example) seems to think this heat thing is a little snag, a bump in the road. It isen't !
'Oh lookey, not i get 2 cores for the price of one. How nice!'
The chipmakers are trying to hide the crises their in. (Stock prices..)
Why else do they buy GPU and PPU-makers?
Galvin - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
I dont think intel has a leg to stand on in the graphics market.The point i was making is if intel wants to sell core duo at 4GHZ its very doable since people can clock these to 4GHZ today on air cooling. Thats the only point I was making.
Galvin - Sunday, April 13, 2008 - link
I listened to the whole presentation.Nvidia has a whole computer on a chip. Didn't even know they had this. Was impressed, this will be nice for mobile devices. Have to wait and see where this goes.
Cuda known it for as long as anyone else. I cant wait till compressors for zip, Encoding, etc all become real time. Something no CPU will ever pull off.
We all know intel is weak in graphics, intel has tons of cash. I dont think Nvidia is going anywhere and they'll most likely get bigger in time.
Theres only 2 companies in the world that can make this kind of graphics technology AMD/Nvidia. To make claim that intel can just magically make a gpu to compete in a few years is crazy imo.