| NVIDIA nTeresting 30 October 2009 |
| Written by NVIDIA - Brian Burke | ||||
| Friday, 30 October 2009 | ||||
NVIDIA nTeresting 30 October 2009In this Issue
Intel Chip Sets Extend Long History of MediocrityNVIDIA nForce chipsets have traditionally been full of innovative features, even better than Intel's own chipsets. NVIDIA ION has redefined the netbook category. However, it has been widely reported that NVIDIA is will not be making any new chipsets for the Intel platform until our dispute with Intel is resolved. A lot of innovations on the PC platform come from the chipsets. Just a few weeks after the news hit, we learn that Intel is postponing USB 3 introduction until 2011. With no competition in chipsets, it seems Intel has decided that innovation is not needed for USB any time soon. "It's hard to commit to an emerging technology like this when the key silicon enablers are not making it a priority." With no one to push Intel to innovate, PC enthusiasts are left with Intel chipsets and the features and performance they deliver, or lack there of. And in ... Uhhh...cough, cough... unrelated news: The chief economist for the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday maintaining competitiveness in the technology sector is important to assuring economic innovation. "I think openness to new ideas - better ideas - wherever they may come from is key to innovation policies, especially for the most interesting kinds of innovations, the ones that require imagination," Joseph Farrell, director of the FTC's economics bureau, said at an appearance before a high-tech association here on Tuesday. "Especially in innovative industries, we want to make sure the market stays open to better offers." Just sayin'..... Intel Appears to be OvercompensatingI first noticed it when my Acer Aspire Revo showed up from Newegg. As I eagerly opened the brown shipping box I was greeted by a giant Intel sticker. This thing was huge, measuring a full 3 inches across. Then an office mate got new a HP Mini 311. Guess what...same giant sticker. Color me paranoid, but in 15 years I have seen exactly two products with these massive Intel logos stickers placed on as an afterthought to the packaging. Both of them have been in the last month, and both of them were NVIDIA ION-based products. Coincidence? Perhaps Intel would have you believe that their processor is the key ingredient in these PCs. "It (NVIDIA ION) will shift the netbook from web surfing and email machine to a movie and gaming portable." Shouldn't there be a rule that the sticker should be in direct proportion to the chip's contribution to the product? No word yet on the new convertible Intel has on order but their hair plugs look very natural....really they do. NVIDIA Technology, Get it on your ListION is hot for the holidays. DigitalTrends calls it out by name. "Netbook computers made a huge splash last year with unbelievably low price tags, but this year, the big news will be all the newfound features and power. NVIDIA sops up a majority of the credit with its new ION graphics processor, which gives the anemic Atom processor a major shot in the arm. Unlike last-generation notebook systems, which couldn't play any games from the last decade and choked on high-quality Hulu videos, Ion-equipped netbooks will play relatively demanding computer games and even full 1080p HD video. Screens have also stretched from 10 inches all the way up to 12, and a newfound focus on industrial design has produced some netbooks that are downright pretty." They name the Lenovo S12, Samsung N510 and HP Mini 311 100R as top picks. PC World has a list of the 100 Best Products of 2009 and it is chucked full of NVIDIA goodies:
(See how that just flows?) New Entry-level Mobile GPU Raises the BarPeople love the GeForce 9400M. People will love GeForce G210M even more. ".. and while the GeForce 9400M G integrated graphics are better than any other current IGP, the G210M appears to be at least 50% faster. When you don't need graphics performance, you can also shut off the G210M and used the GMA 4500MHD. It's a design that simply works." GeForce GPUs offer graphics performance that is second to none, and "Graphics Plus" features including:
Come on Feel the NoizeRudy Sarzo of Quiet Riot and Ozzy fame is a fan of CUDA, and even had a session at GTC talking about CUDA and audio processing. He has posted the latest installment of his "Audio Video Tech Blog" on how he created the music video for "Vicious Circle" on a shoestring budget in 2001. He contrasts it with today's GPU computing technology. "The whole creative process of editing and choosing the preferred B-Roll footage took me about four hours but in contrast the rendering process to a 720x480 AVI took me over two hours. Just to show how far technology has advanced over the years, I can now render that same video with my NVIDIA Quadro video card in 6 minutes or less by taking advantage of NVIDIA's CUDA GPU driver." GPU Computing is the use of the massively parallel architecture of the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a computational engine using high level languages and APIs. It has changed video processing for the better. From the user's perspective, the application just runs faster because it is using the high-performance of the GPU to boost performance. CUDA Shows DirectCompute the WayThe Taranfx blog has a story about DirectX 11 and touches on CUDA as a precursor for DirectCompute. "NVIDIA's CUDA marked an evolution. Microsoft wasn't about to let the GPGPU market get away and now has its own language for using the GPU. The model they chose, like OpenCL, appears to be quite similar to CUDA, confirming the clarity of NVIDIA's vision. The advantage over the NVIDIA solution lies in portability-a Compute Shader will work on an NVIDIA or ATI GPU and on the future Larrabee, plus feature better integration with Direct3D, even if CUDA does already have a certain amount of support. " We have demonstrated our support for DirectCompute by being the first to release support for DirectCompute in our GPUs. We support open standards, plus standards that allow NVIDIA to offer new innovations to customers well in advance of industry standards, such as CUDA C. Our goal is to lead the industry in new amazing directions and create value for our customers. Fastest. Notebook. Ever.Remember all the hub-bub that transpired when NVIDIA sent out some benchmarks we ran in house and proclaimed the GeForce GTX 280M SLI-based Alienware M17x notebook was the fastest notebook on the planet? Some sites called them ‘dodgy'. Well, PC Gamer is the latest media outlet to put us to the test. "Oh, and it is the fastest laptop in the universe. Well, at least the fastest I've ever tested, and by a wide margin." PC Gamer- Holiday Issue 2009 (print) They gave the machine another Editor's Choice award. That makes about 2 dozen, most with quotes that say it is the fastest ever. Wonder how many news links you will get if your headline reads: NVIDIA benchmarks are honest! GPU Leadership HPCwire's Micheal Feldman does a good job for connecting the dots one three announcements from NVIDA:
His take: "NVIDIA is continuing its campaign to nudge the CPU from its dominant position at the center of the computing universe. A trio of announcements this week provides a rough outline of how the company intends to expand its GPU computing footprint." A modern PC should have two processors: a graphics processor (GPU) and a central processer (CPU). We see the future as co-processing. Jen-Hsun InterviewsTwo interviews with NVIDA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang hit this week. First in Xbit Labs: ""In the future, software is the most important thing; anyone can make chips, it is really expensive, but anyone can do it. The hard part is to inspire people to create amazing things. We have software, systems, architecture, tools, compilers, and languages, whatever it takes..," Then with CHW: "Of course there is challenge that the scientific community wouldn't take us seriously but don't forget that many of my customers are Scientists. Yesterday you saw a presentation from the CEO of Technyscan, this company does breast cancer early detection, the way they found out about CUDA was from the engineer and he found out about CUDA was because he was a gamer. So when we invented CUDA instantaneously he understood how he can help people with CUDA, it took him almost one year to convince the company to use CUDA, he was our best sales men, remember there are millions and millions of gamers out there and they are smart, so you want the gamers from your side." Quadro Makes a DifferenceWe had a pair of Quadro related announcements this week. NVIDIA announced that Hess Corp., a leading global independent energy company, is using HP Z800 workstations outfitted with NVIDIA Quadro GPUs and NVIDIA SLI Multi-OS technology to investigate reducing IT costs while increasing productivity for geosciences professionals. NVIDIA and Visualization Sciences Group (VSG), a leader in 3D development solutions for the oil & gas industry, announced today that the newest release of the Open Inventor 3D Graphics Toolkit will employ the NVIDIA CompleX scene-scaling acceleration engine, enabling the visualization and manipulation of huge data sets required for energy exploration. Open Inventor 8.1 by VSG integrates the CompleX engine, enabling advanced 3D applications to fully scale across the multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) powering NVIDIA Quadro Plex visual computing systems. This technology turns a single workstation into a visual supercomputer, providing engineers and scientists an immersive, ultra-high resolution experience capable of handling extremely large visual scenes, such as those used in seismic interpretation and other oil & gas-related research.
|
||||
