Amit Chowdhry | December 9, 2009 | 778 views | Comments Categorized under Intel, NVIDIA
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is rumored to be in talks with buying out NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA). NVIDIA has a market cap of about $8.7 billion and Intel has a market cap of about $109 billion. The only part being worked out right now is the price. nVIDIA is more than likely trying to squeeze more than just a market cap equivalent out of Intel.
In the past week, Intel cancelled their Larrabee GPU project. Larrabee was supposed to be a competitor to nVIDIA and ATi. ATi is a part of AMD Corporation, Intel’s biggest competitor. Intel wants to integrate nVIDIA’s processing units into all of their PC and mobile chips. nVIDIA’s Tegra AXP chips have become very popular in mobile and media devices.
Things between Intel and nVIDIA got really heated when the GPU company announced last month that they were suspending the development of chipsets for new Intel processors. nVIDIA is also working on a System-on-Chip processor optimized for portable Internet devices and is challenging AMD/ATi’s Fusion CPU/GPU hybrid by creating something similar.
Amit Chowdhry | August 10, 2009 | 267 views | Comments Categorized under NVIDIA
NVIDIA has spent $119.1 million around the last 4 months to fix faulty die and weak packaging that was used in graphic chips. This is the second time NVIDIA has had to spend money over a similar problem. NVIDIA spent $196 million to cover warranty and product replacement.
Last July, the problems were first reported. NVIDIA chips were overheating due to weak packaging materials. Then there was a problem with soldering chips. The chips are used by Dell, HP, and Apple. NVIDIA has to change the BIOS settings for laptops to run fans continuously and had to replace PCCs that were failing due to faulty chips.
NVIDIA made a big announcement at the SIGGRAPH 2009 conference in New Orleans, MO earlier this week. The company announced that they have built the world’s first interactive ray tracing engine. This engine will be used on a line of application acceleration engines. The acceleration engines include the OptiX ray tracing engine, the CompleX engine, the PhysX engine, and the SceniX engine.
“Thousands of applications are being created today that harness the phenomenal power of GPUs, a clear sign that GPU computing has reached a tipping point. The world of computing is shifting from host-bound processing on CPUs to balanced co-processing on GPUs and CPUs,” stated NVIDIA GM of Professional Solutions Jeff Brown. “NVIDIA application acceleration engines arm developers with the tools they need to further revolutionize both real-time graphics and advanced data analysis.”
SceniX is a scene management engine used for real-time 3D graphics applications. CompleX is used for scene scaling engines that allow applications for managing interactivity while working with complex models. And the PhysX engine provides real-time physics to applications.
Nvidia product manager Chris Daniel said in a blog post that Windows 7 is “the first Windows operating system to treat the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a real peer to the CPU.” Windows 7 will offer improved graphics performance by efficiently delegating graphics intensive work to video cards.
One noteworthy factor behind the operating system’s speed boost is DirectX Compute. DirectX Compute is an API that allows developers to utilize the parallel computing power built into newer graphics processors.
Windows 7 has been released to manufacturers and will be available to everyone else on October 22nd.
The NVIDIA Tegra processor architecture is based off of the ARM chip technology. The Tegra was designed primarily for mobile, MIDs, and PDA devices. Recently it was confirmed that the Microsoft Zune HD will be powered by the NVIDIA Tegra processor architecture. The rumor was confirmed in a podcast on Zune Insider, hosted by Matt Akers. Listen to a clipping from the podcast below:
Adobe Flash is the most commonly used video streaming services on the web. The only problem with it is that, streaming video takes up many CPU cycles. Intel Atom processors are generally used in netbooks and they cannot handle too many CPU cycles. That is a netbook’s greatest flaw.
To correct this issue, Nvidia and Broadcom plans to push for smoother playback of HD Flash video so that much lower CPUs are used. The Flash upgrade won’t happen until at least the first half of 2010.
In less than a few days after Intel was fined for having unfair prices and for giving rebates to PC makers by the European Union, Nvidia decided to give their opinion on the chip maker company. The European Union decided to investigate Intel after AMD filed a report against them.
Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of Nvidia said that Intel chip pricing was unfair but said that they are not planning to file an antitrust action lawsuit against Intel for now. Intel sells Atom chips for $45 for a single unit, but sells three-chip sets for $25. The extremely discounted price for bulk units lures customers away from AMD. “That seems pretty unfair,” stated Huang. “We ought to be able to compete and serve that market.”
“We compete fairly. We do not force bundles on any computer makers and customers can purchase Atom individually or as part of the bundle,” responded Intel spokesman Bill Calder. “If you want to purchase the chip set, obviously there is better pricing.”
NVIDIA is starting to embrace Mac hardware now more than ever. The GeForce GTX 285 won’t be available for just PCs any more. The 285 takes DirectX 10 to gaming beyond HD with a top of 2560×1600 resolution. No price tag yet on the Mac version, but expect it to be pretty pricey.
The NVIDIA Tegra processor architecture is based off of the ARM chip technology. The Tegra was designed primarily for mobile, MIDs, and PDA devices. Recently it was confirmed that the Microsoft Zune HD will be powered by the NVIDIA Tegra processor architecture. The rumor was confirmed in a podcast on Zune Insider, hosted by Matt Akers. Listen to a clipping from the podcast below:
