NVIDIA nTeresting CES Edition - 15 January 2010

In this Issue

• The next-gen Tegra was HUGE at CES driving stunning tablets and powering the Best of Show sweeper known as the Boxee Box.
• 3D was BIG at CES and NVIDIA was leading the charge with 3D Vision on 3 screens, 3D Blu-Ray notebooks and other 3D content.
• NVIDIA ION makes netbooks act like notebooks. Netbooks without ION simply will not do what you want them to do. HP Mini 311 reaps the rewards of ION from notebooks.com.
• Tesla Bio Workbench made its debut in hopes of speeding up the early stages of research.
• GPU computing is making shampoo better-who'd a thunk it.

Next Generation Tegra Debuts at CES

NVIDIA launched its Next Generation Tegra - the processor for the mobile web - at CES 2010. Lightning-fast web browsing, full 1080p HD video, complete Adobe Flash Player 10.1 acceleration and days of battery life are now possible in the new generation of mobile devices, such as tablets.

AnandTech said,

"Honestly, Tegra 2 is one of the most exciting things I've seen at CES - but it's mostly because of its dual Cortex A9 cores. While I'm excited about improving 3D graphics performance on tablets and smartphones, I believe general purpose performance needs improvement. ARM's Cortex A9 provides that improvement."

Icrontic named Tegra as one of its "Best of CES", saying

"Imagine a device the size of a short paperback that can make short work of 10Mbit 1080p video streams. That is the power of NVIDIA's Tegra 2. Based on the world's first dual core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, the device delivers 10 times the performance of your average smartphone with resolutions that are four to eight fold higher, on a mere 500mW of power. That's about 20 times less power than your average PC."

Trusted Reviews in the UK gave Tegra a ringing endorsement:

"NVIDIA demonstrated that if anything is going to make [tablets] a success, it'll be Tegra 2... NVIDIA has knocked it out the park."

The tablet was the talk of CES and NVIDIA is driving the tablet revolution with Tegra. Tablets from ASUS, Notion Ink, MSI, Compal, ICD and Quanta all debuted at CES. JKontheRun had a chance to see demos of the Tegra-powered tablets and came away impressed,

"Quite a bit from what was shown - so much so, that the new Tegra platform is timed perfectly with what the company is calling ‘the year of the tablet.' Based on the brief demos, we should see portable slates with long battery life and potent performance. One such tablet shown was running Android faster than any smartphone or MID that I've ever seen. And that includes the new Nexus One, which I've had a chance to play with for a short while."

In Ukraine ITC.ua was bowled over :

"Speed of encoding, smoothness and clearness of picture exceed all possible expectations and give the impression of unreality - I have never seen before such a good video picture quality on such a small size device! That`s what I call a serious bid for victory!"

Russian site 3DNews kept things simple:

"The NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform architecture will easily leave any competitive product in the dust."

Combining Silicon Valley technology with German Engineering, NVIDIA and Audi partnered to bring engineered and tested safety technology to current and future Audi cars. Autoblog tested this technology and commented,

"Overall, the experience on either system is impressive. The screens load and display quickly, and scrolling around the 3D map shows off the NVIDIA Tegra chipset's added oomph."

Daily newspaper Handelsblatt in Germany also picked up on the Audi partnership:

"From 2011 on the Audi A8 will be configured with Google Earth... The navigation system will include an especially powerful graphics processor from chip specialist NVIDIA to accelerate the image output and improve the output of details in the display."

Marrying the Internet with your TV, the Tegra-powered Boxee Box by D-Link also debuted to high buzz and impressive reviews. The Boxee Box won the infamous Last Gadget Standing award, as well as "Best of CES" from Popular Science, PC World and LAPTOP, among others.

Tom's Guide pointed out what Tegra brings to the Boxee Box,

"This means you're going to get Full HD video playback without a sweat, as well as Flash 10.1 support and a ‘fluid and responsive user interface that is similar to the UI performance up till now available only on full blown PCs.'"

2010: The Year of 3D = Follow NVIDIA

A common theme for CES 2010 was 3D, 3D and more 3D. NVIDIA has been a pioneering force in 3D and it showed at CES. 3D Blu-Ray players where extremely hot. Also 3D TVs were on display everywhere. ESPN also announced the first 3D network.

"At CES last week, the atmosphere at Sony's 3D gaming area and at NVIDIA's panoramic 3D Vision Surround gaming demo stations was totally different from that at the many booths with 3D TVs on display. Middle-aged regional distributors slip on the same glasses that they had just used to watch animated characters over-emote in Monsters vs. Aliens on Blu-Ray, and looked at the same LED-backlit displays, but now they were grinning like children, belting out things like "whoa" and "that's cool!"

With NVIDIA 3D Vision available and winning several "Best of the Year' awards, most recently being named a Top 10 Gadget for 2009 by Germany's Stern.de.

"More favorable is NVIDIA's version which enables the computer display to show 3D contents. Special glasses and appropriate software make games three-dimensional. With NVIDIA's 3D Vision kit and a compatible 120Hz LC display games get a third dimension"

At CES we took 3D Vision to the next level with 3D Vision surround.

"The NVIDIA booth was home to a mezmerizing setup that consisted of three projectors displaying a racing simulation across a single wide screen. The system consisted of two, soon to be released GF100 cards in SLI. We were told that one graphics card powered one of the projectors while the other GF100 powered the other two displays."

NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround is the world's first consumer, multi-display 3D solution which allows users to span 3D content across 3 high definition monitors or projectors for a truly breathtaking and immersive gaming experience!

"On the other hand, playing Avatar: The Game on NVIDIA's three-monitor setup is completely astonishing: Its use of 3D is more consistent and universally effective than in the movie."

NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround does for 3D PC gaming just like what IMAX 3D does for movies. By spanning 3D across 3 monitors or projectors, NVIDIA 3D Vision kicks it up a notch or two:

"I have been somewhat dubious about AMD's Eyefinity (although, I admit, I need to spend more time with it), in part because the presence of the display bezels tends to ruin the panoramic effect for me. But with the illusion of depth added to the mix, that problem seems to melt away. My visual system seems to filter out the bezels effortlessly, and one is left with the impression of simply looking through a window at a world of depth beyond. The illusion is more than the sum of its parts: better than panoramic displays or 3D Vision alone."

For home theater types, NVIDIA had new Blu-ray 3D software players, including Arcsoft's TotalMedia Theatre 3 and Cyberlink's PowerDVD Ultra and Blu-ray 3D content, including 3D movie trailers for Disney's Toy Story 3, A Christmas Carol, Alice in Wonderland, and more.

"I was a 3D TV skeptic, until I saw a 3D trailer for Toy Story 3 Wednesday night. For so many who have just upgraded to a 2D HDTV, how can the investment in a new big screen-not to mention all the other gear you'll need-be justified, I wondered. Then I entered CyberLink's suite at the Las Vegas Hilton. The company demonstrated an upcoming Blu-ray 3D capable version of its PowerDVD player software on a Mitsubishi WD-65736 (actually one of the more affordable 3D options, at $1,299 online). The 3D trailer of Toy Story 3 began, playing in standard-definition 2D. But then it gloriously burst forth into 3D as good as you see in the most state-of-the-art cinema. The demo took advantage of NVIDIA's 3D Vision glasses, together with an IR transmitter to get the shutter timing right for each eye's 60-Hz signal - a split 120-Hz signal requiring HDMI 1.4 connectors."

We also had the world's first sneak peek of YouTube 3D, running on a 3D technology demonstration version of the Adobe Flash Player software that is viewable with NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses in full color.

It's clear that 2010 is poised to be the year of 3D and NVIDIA is leading the charge to bring 3D to the computing masses. We proved at CES that NVIDIA 3DVision is the quickest, lowest cost and most compelling way for the consumer to get to 3D...

People Can't Get Enough ION

NVIDIA ION single-handedly transformed the netbook market by delivering premium PC performance and features in a small form factor, low-powered PCs. Look what it has done for the HP Mini 311.

"Aside from aesthetics and build quality rivaling that of a more expensive computer, ION is definitely the most impressive part of the Mini 311. If you told me a year ago that in one year I could go to the store and pick up a computer for $399 that could handle HD video playback (let alone flash HD playback), I would have called you a liar. Yet here is the Mini 311 with ION, and it can do those things very well. Not only can it handle local HD video playback very well, but with the recent release of Adobe's flash player 10.1, ION can even play flash HD videos at full framerate, which was once a task that would stutter on even powerful machines."

Let's be honest, if you get a netbook that meets Intel's artificially crippled definition you are essentially buying the same functionality of an iPhone, but you get a 10 inch screen and no phone. If you get an ION netbook instead, you get a tiny, fully functional computer.

Speeding Scientific Discovery with the "Computational Laboratory"

The first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word "laboratory" is probably a scientist, maybe a mad one, lots of test tubes, bunsen burners and maybe even a machine releasing slightly pointless bolts of electricity!

Well, this week we introduced a slightly different kind of laboratory as an integral component of a new initiative called Tesla Bio Workbench. The program consists of a new community site, with links to a dozen applications designed for biological research, such as AMBER and VMD, that have now been ported to CUDA. By using the processing power of NVIDIA GPUs, the computation times for these every day biological research tasks has, in some cases, gone from years to days!

These "computational laboratories" won't negate the need for real experiments done in a "wet laboratory", but the hope is that by speeding up the early stages of research into finding possible drug candidates for example, we can help scientists shave off a significant percentage of that development time and help get new drugs to market quicker.

Has your shampoo got CUDA?

It's not just the medical and life-science community that can benefit from Tesla Bio Workbench - it turns out that making many household products more effective and environmentally friendly is as much a computer problem as it is a balance of chemicals.

Researchers at Temple University are developing a computer simulation model that provides companies like Procter & Gamble with a fast, cost-effective and accurate tool for improving shampoos and liquid detergents. The research hinges on molecules called "surfactants", the agents that determine the cleaning capacity and texture of shampoos, laundry detergents and many other cleaning products.

Axel Kohlmeyer of the Institute for Computational Molecular Science at Temple University had this to say on the benefits they are seeing from GPUs.

"We discovered that by adding just two NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPUs, each node in our newest cluster can do 16 times more work, and thus multiplies our local compute capacity far beyond what we could previously get through the national supercomputing centers."

Axel and the team at Temple were also kind enough to let us go on campus and film them for a day to learn more about this interesting field, you can check out the video here.