Jon Peddie Blogs

2011. What was that about?

2011-12-28T21:50:51Z

Doesn’t it seem like 2011 lasted a lot longer than a mere 365 days? This was a year that was up and down and up and down. In the tech world, the year officially starts in Las Vegas as CES. That’s where we go to see the largest TV ever. I have absolutely no idea why this is important, but I think it’s a guy thing. You can’t buy the TVs they won’t be practical for year but sure as Christmas, big TVs come to CES. As one technology starts reaching a practical limit, then comes the next. And this year, like last year, the race will shift to OLEDs, bright, light displays that will make us think we need a new TV. We just saw a snazzy new slim phone with a beautiful OLED touch screen. Suddenly, my phone liked drab and fat. Kind of how a lot of us feel the day after Christmas.

Last year there were Smart TVs. They’re connected TVs and the practical manifestation of the technology has been Google TV and the Logitech’s Google TV set top box. Just this Christmas Logitech gave us the last update to their box. Logitech is getting out of the biz because the support costs and returns were killing them. It’s too bad because the latest version of Google TV really is pretty smart. The firmware upgrade came to us from Logitech seamlessly and painlessly. The interface is simple to understand and much more attractive, and when I turn on the television, there’s always something on. Really. So yeah, I might have to rent the content, or I’m already paying for it via cable or Netflix, but still, the thing really works. Maybe 2012 will be the year for Smart TVs because it sure wasn’t 2011, just like it wasn’t 2010, 2009, or 2008. Speculation has reached the near hysteria around an Apple TV of some sort. If it turns out to be true, this is going to be a really critical launch for Apple. If they can make a connected TV fly when Google, Logitech, and Sony couldn’t, and without Steve Jobs to weave the web of desire around the thing, then they shouldn’t have any trouble protecting the iPhone from Android interlopers or the iPad from Windows attackers.

Last year at CES 2011, Steve Ballmer told the world there would be a version of Windows for the ARM platform. Through the year we learned more about how that might work out. As it looks from here, it’s going to be cool, it’s going to be revolutionary, but it’s not going to be that cool or that revolutionary because it will be a Windows custom built for ARM, sort of like Windows Phone 7 is a Windows built for mobile phone systems. The difference, we all hope, is that there will be more interoperability between PCs and ARM so that content created on one side can be worked with on the other side without a bunch of conversion. But let’s not get started on all that because the odds are the technology is going to have to evolve over the next three years and heck it wasn’t even out this year.

Tablets were here all year. We have a Samsung Xoom in the house, an Asus Transformer, and a Lenovo Le Pad. Luckily there’s not too much fighting over the devices at JPR HQ. The Xoom is mine. It replaces the original Apple iPad and allows me to hold my head up high when others show off their iPad 2. Admittedly, the Android interface is more difficult to use, but we PC people learned how to stare down Mactards long ago. We tell them we actually like to tinker with operating systems and applications. We want to learn how our devices work. We are empowered by the process of learning. It’s all a bunch of lies, but we have our dignity. And, after you go through all the rigamarole to learn how to use something, you do feel sort of committed to it. Jon and Robert have each appropriated the Le Pad and the Transformer. The machines are both a little heavier than I like but they accommodate SD memory, which makes them great content machines.

And, as it so happens, in 2011 Apple has finally gotten some serious competition in media. Amazon gave the folks free storage for digital content bought from Amazon, it gave them free Apps to stream or download content to tablets, phones, and iThings. Likewise, Netflix has a good TV subscriptions service, if it can stay in business long enough to make its streaming business model pay off. In 2012, we’re going to get to see if people will continue to put up with Apple’s very well furnished walled garden or if they’ll venture out into the wilderness of Android.

Ironically, consumers seem to be ready for a little adventure, but hardware manufacturers are the scardy-cats and for good reason. They’re having to figure out how to deliver low cost machines and make a profit. In 2012 the only winners will be those companies who can subsidize the devices, to sell additional content, and right now that’s Amazon, Apple, and the console providers. Microsoft is sitting on its Zune ecosystem but it has just recently announced the death of the Zune player. Instead, Microsoft has plans for the Zune service on Xbox, phones, and ARM based tablets.

In 2012, we’re also going to see the arrival of stereographic applications that take advantage of the Kinect SDK. Microsoft has just released it, and as it turns out, the Kinect has a lot more tricks up its sleeve than just gesture recognition. And, by the way, devices are likely to get a lot talkier. It’ll be great, people will be waving their hands and talking to their toys. We’ll be like a bunch of hyperactive 3 year olds.

So, we pack up the Christmas decorations and then pack our bags for CES 2012. This might be Steve Ballmer’s last keynote. The company announced that they’re looking at new deals for 2013.
In 2011 companies put much more money into their own events than they did industry wide events like CES. If the trend continues, we’ll have more opportunities to watch movies on our tablets while traveling. We’re not so sure that’s a good thing?

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Qualcomm’s powerful new HPU the S4

2011-10-07T16:50:12Z

Initially leveraging a 28nm process from TSMC, Qualcomm has announced its Snapdragon S4 class of processors, of which the first member is the MSM8960 with an Adreno 225 GPU. The new 1.5 GHz processor (S4 will scale up to 2.5GHz) has Qualcomm’s micro-architectural design with four independent, proprietary ARM Cortex A15-class CPU cores, plus a 32-core GPU, plus 128 bit SIMD engine, plus three DSPs, plus a handful of hardwired engines for codecs and other special-purpose functions—basically a five processor+ heterogeneous processor that has an open programming environment, and a fast memory interface and manager.

The new CPU core is compatible with the ARM instruction-set architecture (ISA). It is the rumored Krait S4, with a three-level cache, the highest level and largest level gets shared with the GPU and SIMD engine. And, with all the performance this new chip has (50% or more than the “Scorpion” core in the MSM8660), it actually uses less power—25-40% less power.

Qualcomm gets these results because Krait is a full custom design (not an ASIC flow Cortex A15). Qualcomm did the SIMD too, based on the Neon concept; Qualcomm calls their 128-bit data path SIMD VeNum. This is the first fully integrated SoC with an LTE/3G modem as well as TD-SCDMA, and GSM, EDGE, PS, WiFi, and others. Power management is extreme in this device, every circuit; in some cases down to a flip-flop can have its power cut. The RISC cores and their L2 cache are asymmetric and can have the voltage and/or frequency varied on a per core basis. This gives Qualcomm the equivalency of turbo-mode as well as a better solution than the big-little approach (an alternative design approach used by some suppliers, which augments a powerful processor such as a Cortex 1-15 with a small utility processor such as an A-9). Part of the strategy behind the design was to use TSMCs Poly/SiON and just LP (low power) transistors instead of LPG transistors, which are similar but tend to leak at higher temperatures. By not going to LPG transistors the company neatly side steps the leakage current and power draining issues and still hits the performance goals with ample head room.

Better GPU too

The S4 processor family incorporates Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU technology, starting with the Adreno 225 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).

Qualcomm claims the new chip represents a 50% increase in GPU performance over the previous generation GPU, the Adreno 220, and 6 times the processing power of Adreno 200.
the Adreno 225 is a programmable GPU with a Unified Shader Architecture (USA). Qualcomm says The Adreno 225 GPU has twice the memory bandwidth of its predecessor GPU, which further contributes to better graphics performance at higher display resolutions. The APIs supported by Adreno 225 include OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0 and Windows 8 DX9.3.
These new features include:
•    Increased unified shader flexibility and capability
•    Improved texture engines with support for sRGB textures
•    Enhanced rasterization hardware with support for multiple render targets, user clip planes, instancing and other advanced features, and improved blt and interrupt performance.
Adreno GPUs also utilize a unique binning-based approach to rendering, which contributes to lower memory bandwidth consumption and maximum concurrency capability.

And a world modem

Qualcomm is claiming to have the first fully integrated world mode/multimode LTE/3G in the Snapdragon S4 processor. The modem is actually Qualcomm’s second generation LTE/3G multimode modem and its MSM8960 chipset implementation will include the latest LTE release 9 features, such as SI tunneling for enhanced CSFB performance, eMBMS, enhanced position location for E911, as well as several IMS based features such as VoLTE, SR-VCC, RCS and video telephony.

Look for DSPs in there too

In addition to designing custom CPUs, GPUs and modems, Qualcomm also designs its own custom DSP, which they brand as Hexagon DSPs. These processors have been an integral part of Snapdragon processors since 2006, Qualcomm just hasn’t spoken about them publicly very much, if at all.
These are serious processors which in addition to having a memory management unit, symmetric multiprocessing support and a hypervisor for increased capability, the Hexagon DSP’s used in Snapdragon S4 processors have dedicated L1 instruction and data caches, a dedicated L2 cache, and are designed using an interleaved multi-threading (IMT) architecture, meaning each thread is resourced with independent program counters and registers. The DSP is capable of running multiple applications concurrently much like a CPU and because it’s designed for ultra-low power it is well positioned for offloading specific tasks like audio, sensors, video, and imaging enhancement.

Hexagon DSPs play a substantial role in the area of multimedia as most multimedia functions can be more efficiently processed using a DSP. Once a function has been offloaded to a DSP on the Snapdragon S4 processor, they are unaffected by user application loads on the CPUs.

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WebOS—the short term, instant developer opportunity

2011-08-26T00:03:24Z

With all the discussion swirling around the sell off of the HP Tablet at $99 this week, there is a discussion point that has been overlooked. There is now a brand new business opportunity.

Generally it is very hard to get developers to target devices that don’t have a fairly large install base without serious incentives beyond the token free device to work with.

Developers now have an instant total available market of 500K units. Normally it would take a company like Motorola Mobility 7-12 months to reach that sell through on a single carrier focused smartphone type device.

Since the number of apps to choose from in the Web OS store is currently limited, any releases of software will be REALLY welcome by that new community of buyers. These tablet purchasers were never expecting to see anything new in their app store again.

These tablet owners will not complain if an app developer takes a short-term predatory strategy to go after them. The appetite for new mobile apps by consumers is extremely short term. You go to the top of the sales list quickly and then the audience looks for the next new shiny app in the app store.

According to the Los Angeles Times, more tablets are on the way. (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/08/hp-touchpad-tablets.html ) Even if they decide not to use the parts that were on order to build another large batch, the install base will become that much more attractive with each warehouse shipment during this sale. Developers won’t need to be thinking about what will happen to future landing zones for Web OS products. There are enough Web OS tablet devices in place to make some money right now.

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HP — breaking up the place

2011-08-23T15:54:15Z

HP’s Personal System group, PSG, is a $41 billion dollar company. It is, IMHO, a jewel, but I may be a bit biased because I have a lot of old friends there. And, like any large organization, it’s not just one thing. In macro scale it’s a desktop PC company, a notebook PC company, a workstation company, and maybe a mobile devices company. It also makes and sells monitors. In other words its five companies and anyone of them could be further subdivided.

Now if HP really wants to get rid of this prize which still boggles my midget mind, would they sell it as a whole or as parts? There are pros and cons both ways. Selling it as parts might actually yield more for the pieces than the whole (Carl Icahn has proved this rule several times.) However, selling it in pieces multiplies the transaction costs (lawyers, due diligence, etc.)

HP’s PSG was, and sadly I do mean was, a tightly run extremely efficient operation. You don’t get to be number in workstations, number one in PCs in general, and number one in notebooks without having the finest-running organization in the business. To get to that level of performance and efficiency HP was an all hands on deck all the time operation. Now the hands are distracted. Management has to worry about other things now, and employees are updating their resumes. In short, the company has been forced to take its collective eyes off the ball—not a good thing. The PR team is busy now doing damage control and reshuffling appointments.

Making what sounded like an offhand comment as Apotheker did to apparently titillate investors is one of the most bone-headed things I’ve seen in a long time. Apotheker said the company was looking at new plans for the PSG group including a spin-off. The only thing that comes close is when SGI’s CEO at the time, Rick Belluzzo said in a similar off hand way at an investors meeting that SGI would be getting out of the workstation business. Belluzzo, who had forgotten to mention his plan to the troops or to the customers, gave HP and Dell the best gift they had ever gotten—SGI’s customers. Now HP has done the same thing for Dell, Lenovo, and to a lesser extent Apple—the mouse that seems to scare the hell out of Apotheker. And just a side here—if the PC business is so bad, then how come Apple and Lenovo are doing so well?

In any case, who are the likely buyers for the company or the parts of the company?

I doubt Dell would be smart enough to make a bid for the workstation business, and I’m sure the price would be heart stopping for Lenovo. Apple wants nothing to do with the workstation business, so that leaves Fujitsu and Boxx, and maybe Penguin Computing. Fujitsu could, and maybe should pick it up, Boxx and Penguin would have a hard time coming up with the cash. SGI, as laughable as the notion is, couldn’t raise the money either. HP’s workstation group did about $3 billion in sales for the year, and that would make it worth at least $10 billion in a sale.

The company could probably get another $40 to $45 billion for the desktop group, more if you tossed in the monitor stuff, and notebooks would probably fetch $60 billion. The mobile stuff might bring in one or two billion, but most likely would be bundled in with one of the others unless someone showed up that just had to have it. Canon comes to mind.

It’s highly unlikely Dell or Lenovo would do a Fiorina-like grand play move and pick up PSG in total, and it’s also questionable if the FTC would allow it.

Microsoft would be an interesting candidate. They’ve got the checkbook, they will be impacted the most if HP fritters away its legacy, and Microsoft could take WebOS off the map once and for all (cue the FTC again).

And then there’s a management buy-out scenario. Deep pocketed investors have shown a fancy for such things in the past, e.g., Nexperia, Freescale, etc. If PSG went private for a while and then floated a public offering it could be a really big deal—on Wall Street. And that’s what this is all about isn’t it? Pimping shares to the public so the management and investors can get richer.

HP’s PSG now has a new diversion, er, I mean, project, investigating strategic alternatives for the division, including a public spin-off, sale of the business, or keeping it within HP. HP’s management, financial and legal advisers are now thrust into exploring alternatives—the full process could take 12-to 18 months.

Companies consider such things all the time, in the privacy of their conference rooms and private jets. Seldom does a company go public before a decision of such magnitude has been made. In addition to the turmoil it creates within the company and among its customers, it also weakens the company’s negotiation position. You can get a much better price if the buyer doesn’t think you’re desperate. That card has been tossed in the dust bin with yesterday’s issue of the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.

Poor Todd Bradly, he’s living the “it’s tough to remember your goal was to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators.” You couldn’t find a more able guy, and if anyone can manage this mess he can, but boy I’ll bet he ain’t going to be fun to be around for a while.

With a perspective, I’m Jon Peddie

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AMD, ARM, and all that jazz — reading between the lines will make you cross-eyed

2011-08-03T15:15:41Z

There have been persistent rumors, opinions, and speculation since AMD’s Fusion Developer’s Summit (AFDS) that because ARM was one of the keynote speakers a grand collusion was in the works—the ARMing of AMD.
The concept gets fuel from the abrupt discharge of Dirk Meyer, the company’s former president for allegedly not having a mobile strategy.
AMD’s announcement of a Fusion System Architecture—Intermediate Layer, into an open platform was one of the main messages AMD wanted to get out at AFDS. They are calling it FSAIL. AMD has said they will publish the Fusion System Architecture (FSA) virtual Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) (FSAIL), FSA memory model, and FSA dispatch. These specs will be agnostic to instruction sets for both the CPU and GPU, and will be available for all chip and system builders to use.
So, what does that mean? AMD is opening up access to its development tools for Fusion so that in theory at least, applications written to support FSAIL could be run on any processor that likewise supports the FSAIL architecture. What this now means in practice is that applications written to conform to FSAIL will run on Fusion processors because the only company building Fusion processors is AMD.
As the world stands now there are multiple island of architectures, x86, ARM, and GPUs, being the most predominate with MIPS, Power, DSP and others a distant third and so on. And, within those islands there is further segmentation. Intel has three or four internal cores, including Atom, Celeron, Core iX, and Xeon, which are translated to their overarching x86 ISA, ARM has a similar situation with multiple architectures presumably codified with the ARM ISA, and there are several variants of GPUs. With the development of FSAIL, AMD has added Fusion to the list. It’s a zoo.
ARM, clearly the most popular architecture, also has the biggest zoo, and it hasn’t launched its 64-bit ISA yet, so matters will only get worse for the zillions of developers out there. That is unless something is done. Google already put its foot down on the matter with restrictions it imposed on Honeycomb—keep it compatible or else.
And if something isn’t done it will have an economic effect of slowing adoption of ARM-based systems. ARM, MIPS, and Intel to a lesser extent, have to tread a fine line since they do not want to eliminate the raison d’etre of many of their partners. The developers of systems and SoCs need to differentiate—just not too much.
ARM is attempting to standardize some aspects of its customers’ platforms. The company has been doing this for a while without regard or concern to AMD, Intel, or Google.
As mentioned, Intel has done it. Intel’s x86 ISA looks to the outside world (external to the chip) the same. Inside it’s a different matter and the actual execution units, the ALUs and memory mangers are quite different between an Atom and a Xeon, as you would expect.
AMD approached the issue of a standard ISA from a different point of view—heterogeneously, and they call it Fusion. Fusion incorporates and X86 and GPU architectures. So, taking their grand world domination theory to its logical extreme why stop with X86 and GPUs, why not include FPGAs (AMD has some history with Cray in that area), or ARM, or MIPS, or anything? Why not indeed?
AMD socialized the concept with architects and management at a few companies. AMD was looking for a reaction and feedback, and if possible the initiation of a partnership.
They got reactions. The most often heard one was: it has to be open or don’t even start. That wasn’t a tough concept for AMD to embrace, they have been champions of open technology for years, maybe decades, and their whole techno-marketing program today is based on open.
AMD’s FSAIL hardware architecture (shared page table formats, ultimately shared MMUs, coherency between CPU and GPU, and unified address spaces etc. etc.) is so close to what ARM has been preaching for some years now, that it was no surprise that ARM was happy to discuss it at AMD’s Fusion Developer’s Summit and ARM’s presence did indeed get people thinking.
But let’s maintain perspective here. FSAIL has been introduced by AMD to bridge the gap between x86 and GPU architectures. Any thinking about sliding an ARM or MIPS CPU into that mix is fanciful—it may well be the right big picture idea for AMD, but that wasn’t why they did it.
The processor architectures (x86, GPU, RISC, DSP, etc.) are sufficiently different that to get the best efficiencies it will require careful coding for the specific architecture. You could do it AMD’s proposed way (it is technically feasible), but it has the risk of leading to inefficient code being run in the wrong place.
And, if it should even be considered being done outside of an open standard way, chaos would surely prevail.

Memory ordering. 2+2 = 4, not 5

If you believe in FSAIL you have to include the best possible optimization by the FSAIL— a “finalizer”, a dynamic compiler. That must allow the memory system architecture to be completely exploited. That means every processor behind the FSAIL fence has to have access to the system memory and it has to have it when it needs it. Prioritizing, and queuing lead to page misses, and you can just make caches so big before the chip becomes economically (and power) untenable.
Here ARM has shown the way and so has Intel. Intel has design centers in Portland, Arizona, Santa Clara and Israel, and they all have to design to the same ISA. Likewise ARM has design centers in Austin, Cambridge, and Nice and they all have to conform to a specified memory architecture.
Licenses and licensees
ARM also has something to worry about and manage that only one other company (MIPS) has to cope with—architectural licensees. Companies like Apple, Nvidia, TI, and Qualcomm who design CPUs themselves that conform to the “ARM standard”. It would be unacceptable if a CPU designed by Qualcomm did not conform to the same memory system architecture that ARM’s does (and this was close to the issue Google was trying to manage with the compatibility test suite—CTS). One of the reasons why the ARM Architecture Reference Manual went from 1200 pages to 2000 pages around ARMv6 was the detailed specification of the memory system architecture (it’s now about 3000 pages).
As for AMD licensing ARM cores/ARM architecture, well they still have an ARM license which came with the ATI acquisition, albeit for an older design. It would make all kinds of sense for AMD to practice what they preach in FSAIL and standardize on ARM’s little microcontrollers to replace the ones that AMD use all over their chips (security, power control etc.) which in most cases neither AMD nor ATI designed themselves anyway.
AMD could also benefit from ARM’s security architecture (TrustZone) to gain from the work ARM has been doing with companies like PayPal. TI has exploited this work and that helped them become the first to win Netflix certification. It might also help AMD combat their concerns about Intel and McAfee.

Servers

And there are the servers, in particular the low end servers. AMD is driving to be the “value” play in server chips. The competition there will be fierce. Price leader VIA dabbles in that area, Intel thinks Atom has a play there. MIPS licensees from China have declared that a target and at least one of ARM’s licensees will eventually take a major share of that market segment. If AMD wants to remain a player in that segment they could do it themselves by building ARM-based servers. Well, maybe.
However, AMD has two obstacles in bringing out an ARM-based (or cohabitated via FSAIL) product line. The first is limited resources. AMD has delivered one of its few profitable quarters in a long time. It’s still carrying a lot of debt, and still trimming operations to make them more efficient and in line with their ambitions for Fusion and Bulldozer.
And secondly it would be insane for the company to launch a major product line initiative without a permanent CEO. As able and stalwart as Thomas Seifert is, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want the job, so guess who’d be the first to get fired if he launched such an intuitive and the new CEO came in and didn’t like it?

Summary

AMD has the bones of a great company—it has great technology and it has great people (utterly world-class technical minds). However, if they stumble here for much longer, we are going to have to worry about their future. And sending a confusing message that gets rattled around the web with speculation is possibly one of the worst things they could do. That is not the way to keep the brand in the press.

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Tablets — the canary in the PC tunnel?

2011-07-11T13:25:38Z

The second quarter by all accounts so far has not been a blockbuster, in fact in some places it’s been a career buster. The DJIA wobbled, not many new jobs were created, and the politics in the US got even more rancorous if such a thing is possible.

In the PC industry the major bright spot had been tablets. Called computer tablets, media tablets, tablet PCs, or just tablets; reinvented by Apple and followed by a dozen or more imitators, tablets excited the industry — the latest great thing.

No one needs a tablet. It doesn’t do anything that can’t be done on various other devices. People just wanted a tablet. Of course when you want something, some new shiny toy, you can find all sorts of rationalizations for why, why you have to have it. And there are a lot of great use cases for Tablets, no doubt about it, but you don’t need one. Need and want are tricky elements in a shaky economy, and the Tablet could be the leading indicator economists, pundits, and politicians are always looking for—the canary in the tunnel.

Analysts reported that tablets shipped into the worldwide channel fell by 28 percent in the first calendar quarter of 2011, compared to shipments in the fourth quarter of 2010—28 percent—that’s a hellofa drop.

The fourth quarter is usually higher than the following first quarter as consumers frantically try to show their love and appreciation for one another by heaping gifts on each other. Most of it stuff that is isn’t needed, and often returned. But not tablets, they wouldn’t get returned, and a lot of people bought them for themselves in a perverted, hedonistic rationalization—look what I gave myself for the holidays.

And so in the cold light of Monday morning, also known in a grander scale as the first quarter, the credit card hangover came, and reality set in. Those who didn’t queue up quickly enough in the fourth quarter didn’t bother in the first.

Is the canary dead?

Far from it—but he’s not feeling well.

Although sales were impacted by a slowdown in consumer spending following the holiday sales period, analysts are raising their 2011 shipment forecast stating that the market will be aided by the entrance of competitive new devices in second half of 2011 (those dozen or so Apple wannabes). In other words, if there’s more of the thing that’s not needed, more people will buy them. HUH?

Mobile phones, in particular the high-end smartphones, suffered a similar fall-off in sales. That was rationalized away by saying sales were largely stymied by consumers’ unwillingness to sign up for the 3G/4G data plans that the carriers typically require along with these devices. Again—need vs. want.

The fact of the matter is consumers are scared. They don’t know if they are going to have a job, or in worse situations, get a job in the next month or so. The politicians are too busy trying to score points in a schoolyard brawl to give a damn about the country; and that level of uncertainty and lack of national purpose or leadership leaves the consumer—the economic engine of the western nations, cautious and unsettled. So only things that genuinely needed will get purchased. The nice-to-have items will have to wait till the economy improves. And that won’t happen until the political gamesmanship calms down in Washington.

Memo to the politicians. Want to create jobs so people will buy stuff like tablets? Then create confidence in the consumers. Indicate that you have a clue about them, and what the country really needs, and maybe for once put the nation ahead of your personal political agenda.

The canary warned you.

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WebGL Security - Kill it before it grows?

2011-06-29T15:05:57Z

When Khronos launched the WebGL specifications with strong backing from Mozilla, Google, Apple and Opera we thought at least peace had come to the 3D web valley. We should have known better; seems that there are competing vested interests in proprietary software and plug-ins that will put a few bumps in the road in WebGL’s journey to pervasiveness.

Last week we were told by Microsoft, the developers of Silverlight, that WebGL is a giant piss-hole into which any yahoo can pour viruses, spoofs, and even DoS attacks - ack! The sky is falling run run run.

In a post by James Forshaw of Context, “an independent information security consultancy,” in London, it is suggested WebGL is a great big welcome sign to all the malcontents and malicious code writers on the web, which we assume number in the millions.

Some have suggested that WebGL needs to be redesigned from the ground up due to security concerns.

Context’s view of the vulnerability of the graphics pipeline (source Context)

Khronos as you might expect, has answers to these concerns. Khronos’ view is that any new browser capability exposes new code that inevitably needs to be hardened. Any GPU accelerated capability - be it HTML, Canvas, WebGL, Adobe Molehill, Silverlight 5, etc. - will require the graphics drivers to be hardened. This is an inevitable process that needs to be managed carefully - and WebGL is the right technology to spearhead this process as it has the backing of the browser and GPU communities.

Khronos says they would welcome Context and/or Microsoft to join Khronos to help the industry move forward on secure, accelerated graphics for the Web.

Why has this come up?

It looks a little suspicious that the Microsoft Blog appeared on the same day as a Context security report that it was referring too. Why would Microsoft do such a thing? Some suspect that as Silverlight 5 will include 3D that some don’t want to see WebGL become widely used.

Conspiracy theories aside, Context did raise two valid issues to be addressed by the WebGL implementations as the industry goes through the hardening process. Context demonstrated that a shader program could implement a loop that could be used to approximately reconstruct an image from another domain - a serious potential security hole. Khronos had previously debated on its open mailing list whether this was a real-world possibility and once the exploit was demonstrated by Context worked swiftly with the WHATWG working group to mandate the CORS spec in both the HTML and WebGL specs to make sure servers have to explicitly allow access to media assets across domains.

The second valid concern raised by Context is that a WebGL shader program can, deliberately or not, take a long time to execute, causing the graphics card and system to become unresponsive, effectively a DoS attack. Khronos is fully aware of this and has posted a security white paper that explains how the group has developed ARB robustness extensions to enable a system to cleanly recover from such a situation and discussed other security issues: http://www.khronos.org/webgl/security/

Confusion in the industry as we start this hardening process

As the Context comments reports get widely reported in the press - there is a certain amount of misunderstanding around what GPU shaders are, and are not, capable off - leading to some rather hysterical fears about shader programs overwriting your disk drive and the like. Of course, GPU shaders are much more restricted in their capability than for example JavaScript running on the main CPU. Shader programs can only execute a small set of operations that revolve around computing colors and vertex positions and WebGL shaders are more restricted than OpenGL shaders (e.g. no dynamic control flow, etc) to increase portability. Additionally, WebGL implementations validate shaders to ensure there is no way to access illegal/arbitrary memory.

It’s clear that WebGL needs to continually educate the industry on the technology and the process underway here. The next step is that Khronos is preparing an imminent WebGL 1.0.1 release that will fix bugs in the current conformance tests and tighten the screws on resolving any security issues that have arisen. 1.0.1 should start allaying fears in the industry as the spec will take a 100% robust stance on security and implementations that pass the conformance tests will be able to remove the “experimental” from the getContext(“webgl”) query - giving content the confidence they are running on a secure WebGL implementation.

What do we think?

The basic security concern is that graphic drivers are being exposed to the Web in more direct ways than before - which is true - and they will need to be hardened. But that’s true of WebGL, Adobe Flash, Silverlight AND Canvas. If we can never expose any graphics drivers to the web - we can never have ANY GPU graphics in the browser - and that’s not going to happen.

Khronos has the right attitude that this is an inevitable process that needs to be carefully managed. This is why Khronos is precisely the place where WebGL needs to be developed -we need the GPU and browser vendors working side by side to make sure the browsers and graphics drivers work together to provide overall security.

If these security reports are smear tactics then they never work, always backfire, and if sponsored by Microsoft will do more to discredit the company than help it. Consumers are a lot smarter today than too many manufacturers give them credit for. And as been proven in the Mideast, communications among peers and friends is at the speed of light. There’s an awful lot of smart people in Khronos and this isn’t their first time at bat. They know the issues, know how to deal with them and they will. If Context is looking for PR, we suggest a better path would have been for them to have taken their concerns directly to Khronos. And if Context is really seriously interested moving the industry forward they should join Khronos and help fix any problems they discover.

However - security issues and bugs always occur - so we will be watching carefully to see how Khronos manages the situation. In the shorter term when issues arise browser vendors are maintaining white and black lists so compromised system can have WebGL disabled until mitigation is developed. Longer term we expect GPUs will provide increasingly robust security and multi-tasking to enable the GPU to truly become a first-class computing platform alongside CPUs.

{extended}

The real 3D - Looking at all sides of 3D reveals a future far beyond pixels

2011-06-03T21:39:37Z

3D is an illusion. Right, got that. Ever since I’ve been working around the computer industry I’ve had people tell me 3D is an illusion. Like, I didn’t know that. The computer screen is a 2D surface, and when we look at objects and turn them, or run into a 3D maze with our big ol’ gun, it’s still a 2D screen. The 3D we think we see is just the illusion of depth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. And, then at the Dimension3 conference in Paris, again, a speaker bemoaned the fact that stereoscopic 3D is just an illusion to trick our eyes into thinking we’re seeing 3D. That speaker was Pierre Vandergheysnt and he was talking about using panoptic cameras to get enough information for holographic displays — another illusion but one that you can walk around and interact with in actual space … like a model.

After the conference we wandered off to see the Zaha Hadid exhibit at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Hadid is an architect whose fluid, organic shapes are helping define the skylines of cities rising out of the sands of the Middle East. Her buildings may one day be seen as the physical representations of the new wealth that’s being created in the world as emerging economies find their strengths. The exhibit was held in Hadid’s Mobile Art Pavilion, a futuristic, modular structure that’s emblematic of Hadid’s ideas. Hadid’s practice uses parametric design software to conceptualize designs and to iterate ideas over and over again to create complementary shapes. Standing inside Hadid’s pavilion, surrounded by small cities spit out, or maybe oozed up, by 3D printing technologies, I suddenly got it. 3D on screens really is an illusion.

Now that we’ve had a couple of generations brought up inside the cold cocoon of electronic media, we’re seeing the inevitable pushback. The love affair with gorgeous pixels has paved the way for a renewed love affair with all that is hand made, natural, and crafted.

Looking at all those smoothly sculpted surfaces that Hadid’s practice has created in computers and turned out in 3D printing, makes us want to put our hands on them and feel the curves. And, that’s just grand, it’s a major step forward for 3D technology.

It’s not just aesthetic, either. The ability to create organic curves and natural shapes and to print them has enabled prosthetics that are human-scaled, and teeth that fit.

What’s next? Finally, finally, finally, after years of talking about it, there are signs that creating 3D objects is finally getting easier. New tools like SketchUp, TinkerCAD, and Autodesk’s 123D are enabling easier modeling. Likewise, Daz 3D, which has maintained the legacy of consumer 3D — or at least it has acquired much of the software developed in the 90s in the hope that consumers would pick up 3D — has released its latest version of Daz Studio. The company promises that it’s easier than ever to use, and certainly with a price tag of free, it’s easy enough to try.

Also in our travels we ran across software company Mantis Vision of Israel. They have software that enables users to video an object, with say, a mobile phone, and instantly turn it into a 3D point cloud. The applications are obvious, CTO Gur Bittan says they’re talking to people in accident forensics and manufacture, but really, there are as many uses for this technology as there are objects in this real world.

So, 3D modeling is cheap and easy (okay, easier) to use, and as we are learning there’s even more we can do with our models. The person reliant on an artificial limb, can print out a new one when needed, or maybe a different color. The Saturday engineer can print out a part that fixes the toilet. And, the kid can print out a model of a new artwork and play with it. That would be considerably more gratifying than putting it on the refrigerator. (Yeah, okay, we’ll talk about 3D displays on refrigerators later.)

3D might be an illusion but it’s getting more real all the time.

{extended}

Getting vertical – what Nvidia’s acquisition of Icera means

2011-05-09T15:10:37Z

Nvidia announced the acquisition of UK-based maker of baseband chips for 3G and 4G handsets, Icrea for $367 million in cash. This is a really big deal – not for the purchase price but for the impact it’s going to have on the industry.

Now the playing field in mobile devices is shaping up to a big three (or four) players, a normal consolidation in a broadly fragmented market. With Nvidia’s acquisition of Icera, Nvidia now has a total processor stack like Qualcomm, and Intel. Qualcomm and Nvidia are going to be head-to-head competitors. Icrea products already compete directly and quite successfully with Qualcomm. Qualcomm and Nvidia are the only suppliers with their own graphics and video processors (Intel, TI, Reneas, STMico, Marvell, all bought graphics IP from Imagination Technology, ARM, or Vivanti).

As the graphics board market growth flattens due to the impact of integrated processors, and even though Nvidia enjoys high ASPs and margins in that space, it’s not enough—even with CUDA—to make the company grow at the rate it once did.

Also, now there’s no obstacle to Nvidia is selling a total solution for smartphones and tablets. Icera’s programmable radio technology (spanning from 2G to 4G in one very small chip) is best in class in terms of programmability, range, and the physical size of the chip. The deal represents a real coup for Nvidia and it is surprising there wasn’t a bidding war for the company. Also surprising is the price Nvidia paid, just $367 million—in cash. This is possibly the deal of the decade, and you have to admire Nvidia for pulling it off and keeping it quiet. We analysts think we’re so smart—no one had a hint of this.

Icera is the company Intel should have bought, instead of the Infineon technology it did buy in 2010. And, I suspect a lot of other firms are having that same thought about now.

The possibility of building a super chip, the dream chip we’ve all spoken about and a few companies have even tried with apps processor, multimedia processor, and baseband (radio) processor all integrated, is now really possible. Icera chips are built at TSMC in the same process as Nvidia’s Tegra. The common wisdom in the past has been that modem technology, due to regulations and tower build-out doesn’t move very fast, whereas the application and multimedia processors change every year, and so it doesn’t make sense to integrate. Something is always out of sync. That thinking just got tossed out the window, and now if a handset manufacturer wants a competitive advantage of a totally integrated part, he knows where to go.

The industry just shifted a little bit, and this is going to cause a tsunami for some folks.

{extended}

Game Technology for Disaster Preparedness and Response

2011-03-17T18:01:11Z

By Ted Pollak (contributions by Jon Peddie)

Japan’s terrible situation with its nuclear power plant is heartbreaking. Especially sad are reports that some workers are exposing themselves to potentially harmful radiation levels. The bravery of these people is overwhelming.

This got me to thinking about how game technology could maybe help in situations like this and also train and educate people about risk analysis. I will disclose right off the bat that I am not an expert in this kind of thing but believe that there must be some way to modernize how we deal with such a terribly dangerous energy source. International Atomic Energy Chief Yukiya Amano seems to agree and recently made this statement in a CNN report: “The current framework for responding to emergencies….reflects the realities of the 1980’s, not of the 21st century.”

Location Specific Engineering Simulations

Game companies could use their expertise in simulated environments, physics, and graphics technology to start “serious game” divisions. There are numerous smaller shops that already do this. The large well known, branded firms could work with them to create economies of scale. Just about every power plant in the world has an advanced 3D model. It should be possible to import that model into a game environment (with a considerable amount of conditioning beforehand).

In the case of a plant like the General Electric reactors in Japan, volunteers willing to go in and work on the plant in a crisis should be able to train for it virtually, within a simulation that is graphically rich and able to simulate physical dynamics on the fly (quickly following known changes), such as a collapsed roof or wall. Perhaps mounted CCTV cameras and small remote control helicopter or ground vehicles could help collect this information with cameras able to export data into a 3D model and take other measurements.

One simple example that comes to mind is the model of the Chernobyl plant found in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.

Additionally all environmental and personal parameters could be incorporated into the simulation, such as radiation levels and player specific factors. Using a hazmat suit and carrying equipment can restrict the speed one moves as well as endurance. Visor glass can become fogged or dirty. All this can also be simulated.

The simulation could help with situations before disasters strike as well. External environmental factors could be modeled like a flood or tsunami, with accurate fluid dynamics. This data could be used to evaluate the placement of critical systems like backup generators.

Also, with an open model environment such as is found in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for example, trainees could explore and, just as in the game, discover things that were not predicted or expected. The serendipity and opportunity for discovery and creative new ideas would be a major contribution to overall plant and personal safety.

The cost of such a product could be tens of millions of dollars making it one of the the most expensive games in the world. It would proably be best sold as a combination software/hardware package that could include:

an accurately modeled and textured 3D building and surrounding environment with modeled material dynamics
game sofware engine to import the data into with advanced physics engine, realistic lighting and consideration for wind, and other environmental elements
internal and external fixed mount 3D cameras with other sensors, double or triple redundancy battery backup systems, and multiple wireless transmission stations
wheeled remote control drones; 3D, thermal, and radometer equipped, (with r/c relay amplification ability for extended range of other drones)
tracked remote control drones; 3D, thermal, and radometer equipped (with r/c relay amplification ability for extended range of other drones)
helicopter or hover based r/c drones; 3D, thermal, and radometer equipped
mobile remote control drone command center (with optional suticase based secondary command stations)
etc.

Sounds expensive, sure, but the money could be trivial in comparison to the costs of not dealing with a situation in the most advanced way that modern technology allows. Security of course is a concern too. The 3D data and simulation would have to be protected at the same level that other electronic engineering data is protected.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. seems like it could be a good starting point for the plant operators and government regulators, since it is a modifiable game. Its engine could provide a base for the import of the CAD model.

One of the main elements in a simulation systems (regardless of the subject, whether its finance, engineering, war, emergency systems, etc) is the injection of problems. A teacher puts in deliberate challenges, sometimes impossible to solve challenges to see how the students will deal with it.

Game players would be another good source of imaginative challenges. And even if the operators took the position, “that can never happen,” testing for the reaction and cure would be helpful because guess what? If you can think of it, then it CAN happen.

Perhaps governments and power companies should be playing these games too on different levels depending on their areas of responsibility. Does the phrase China Syndrome come to mind?

{extended}

What is a PC?

2011-01-28T19:21:53Z

The debate continues among suppliers, analysts, pundits, and web forum participants as to whether tablets (specifically the Apple iPad) should be counted as a PC or not. From our perspective the issue is defined (if it can be) by the processor.

Fragmentation is finally affecting the PC market. Options such as tablets, E-books, consoles, and even talented phones are doing jobs PCs could do. Also, consoles and Kindles. These other devices are not replacing PCs, but they’re shifting interest and mind share. They’re enabling people to leave devices at home for vacation and short trips. No more lugging a computer to a tradeshow. And a side-effect is that these alternative devices are reducing the urgency to upgrade machines. The money might be spent on new devices instead.

But for a market analysis we need a tighter definition – what is, and what isn’t a PC?

Software
Is the differentiator the OS and applications?

No. If you restrict your definition of a “PC” to being one that is uses a specific operating system such as Microsoft Windows and DirectX then devices running Linux (and its Android variations) and Apple’s implementation (OS X) with Open GL or iOS with Open GL ES are disqualified so that won’t work because clearly a Mac is a PC.

If you expand the definition of a PC to any device that uses a graphics API, then Smart phones and tablets that use graphics APIs would qualify but E-books which don’t use a graphics API would be excluded from the count – even though they display images.

If you restrict the definition to the ability to run certain applications like office productivity applications (word-processing, spreadsheets, etc) then E-books are excluded (for now, that Nook is getting smarter and smarter) but Smart phones aren’t. However, point of sale devices (for example) and other embedded systems use a GPU or IGP, and don’t run office applications, yet they get counted as PCs.

So software can’t be the defining issue for what is or isn’t a PC.

Hardware?
The broadest public definition of a PC is: A small digital computer based on a microprocessor and designed to be used by one person at a time. The definition gets expanded by some to: Personal computers have their own operating systems, software, and peripherals, and can generally be linked to networks. Notice, display characteristics don’t get mentioned.

And there is a hardware definition: In general, it applies to any personal computer based on an Intel microprocessor, or on an Intel-compatible microprocessor. That definition would of course include Intel x86 Atom processors and AMD Fusion processors which of course will be found in tablets and maybe Smart phones. It also conveniently includes Apple computers, and nicely excludes ARM, MIPS, and IBM processors (so no game consoles will be included as a PC.)

Contrarian POV
The market research firm Canalys includes tablets as PCs. Canalys Senior Analyst Daryl Chiam said, “Any argument that an pad is not a PC is simply out of sync. With screen sizes of seven inches or above, ample processing power, and a growing number of applications, pads offer a computing experience comparable to netbooks. They compete for the same customers and will happily coexist. As with smart phones, some users will require a physical keyboard, while others will do without.”

That nicely side-steps the technological definitions and excludes Smart phones through screen size.

JPR’s position
We will use the hardware definition and constrain (for the time being) the meaning of a PC to be a device with an x86 CISC processor. That will include tablets that use x86. Also we won’t make screen size a distinction, but will us a graphics API distinction.

Why this is defendable – for now
Software – If I want to run a specific application, such as a PC-based FPS I can only do it on an x86 machine. However, soon it will be possible to use a light-weight non-x86 based client and run such a game from the web. You can kind of do that now with a light-weight x86 machine.

Kathleen Maher suggests this is like a Turing test. When I can run any application I want on a PC or other device and it’s totally file compatible, and function compatible, how do I know (or care) what the hardware is?

As Microsoft ports Windows to ARM, and someday other RISC processors, and if Direct X is part of it, then it is conceivable to think that there will be sufficient processing power for all sorts of emulations which will allow me to run my favorite applications on any machine.

I don’t doubt that day is coming. I can’t predict exactly when – maybe three, five, worst case ten years. Till then we will use our admittedly constrained definition of what qualifies as a PC.

Tablets impact on graphics shipments
Now that our Q4 2010 quarterly report has been released, which showed disappointing results: Quarter-to-quarter down 2.6%, year quarter-to-year quarter down 7.7%, we are asked if tablets are impacting graphics sales? Possibly. We don’t think tablets are cannibalizing PC sales in that people are buying tablets as an alternative to a PC. But we do think that some people have bought tablets and postponed their PC upgrade or new system, and so in that sense tablets are impacting graphics sales.

{extended}

Welcome to App World

2011-01-27T00:12:43Z

This blog is being written with the full assumption that it’s going to have to be rewritten in the next day or so, but sitting right here, right now, it sure does look like MacWorld has become iPad world … not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The good news is that after pre-registering for the conference, I’m getting plenty of email from exhibitors pleading for my august presence. It looks like there’s plenty of exhibitors. The bad news is that we don’t really cover apps that manage social networks, or games that go boop.

So lets go back to thinking positively. There is an entirely new market opening up right in front of our eyes and it’s far from clear how it’s going to end up. The examples from the news today vary wildly. In addition to all the apps that are appearing for the iPad, there is plenty of cross development for Android, and, in fits and starts, a new generation of Palm devices from HP. The PC people are also getting into the act. We’ve talked about CAD giant PTC’s creation of an app store for its product line. (Now they’re trying to figure out how to explain to people that an app version of Pro/E isn’t going to cost $9.99.) Just this morning Graebert, the CAD company that has developed DraftSight as a free 2D CAD drafting tool for Dassault and SolidWorks announced its own sort of app store: Graebert market for DraftSight. When it officially launches in April, Graebert hopes to have an array of CAD add-on apps for electrical engineering, rendering, landscaping, home design, parts catalogs, to keep customers coming back for more. Hey, it worked for Autodesk.

It’s not really about iPads, or apps, or big companies looking for new ways to distribute. Really, it’s about direct connections to the user. There’s another announcement today that points to new directions for computing and that’s the news that Disney is laying off half of their game development staff. The first takes on the news suggest that Disney, like much of the game industry is turning its attentions from big, expensive game development to more lightweight casual games and social gaming. The shrinking of big game development teams is endemic through the industry. To some of these companies behind the eight-ball of expanding budgets and decreasing sales, moving to simple little apps for mobile Facebook is looking mighty enticing.

App stores, whether they’re selling CAD add-ons, games to go boop, or an application to turn on your television, forge a direct link to the customer. It can be a conduit through which the money can flow and that’s what the people moving to small decentralized teams, small apps, and (usually) small prices are thinking.

I’ll let you know what’s really up with MacWorld when I get back.

{extended}

The new sneaker net has no shoes.

2011-01-18T20:21:35Z

Let’s face it, it’s been more than 30 years since ethernet claimed the vast mainstream of the networking business, and still there are network nightmares.
Vista set our office back for weeks as we tried to get all the computers calmed down and willing to talk to one another again. The Mac is still pretty standoffish, there are only a couple of computers in the office it will deign to talk to.
Granted, most offices probably have more competant IT services than we do here at JPR HQ but then again there are lots of families who are more mystified than we are about getting things to work together. Ironically, we’re finding it easier to get the entertainment systems set up and working with at least one computer than it is to get the office networks running smoothly. It’s our own fault, because we’re always bringing in new computers to try out for a while.
Lately, life has gotten a lot easier thanks to the cloud. It started with Google Docs and the idea has been further refined by services like Dropbox, SugarSync, and Apple’s iDisk to name three.
Yes, it’s easy enough to walk the iPad over to the Mac and connect them so they can exchange the news of the day with each other, but it’s a bother. Likewise, I can move an external drive from machine to machine after first getting a little help from MediaFour’s MacDrive to convince the external disc to talk to both a Mac and a PC. All of that requires more than a few seconds, and that’s a few seconds more than I really want to spend on such a mundane task. And, it doesn’t solve the problem of keeping that information in sync with the other machines I’m liable to be using in the office or out in the world. Admittedly, keeping active projects in the cloud, might not be the most secure way to manage projects but it’s a great way to maintain the integrity of a document even if I’m working with someone else on a project. Anyway, the devoted hacker is generally going to be mighty disappointed with the results of hacking my iDisk or Dropbox.
Apple has done a pretty good job of offering sync services for documents, calendars, pictures, music, and emails, but it all works a lot easier if you work within the Mac universe and compared to free or nearly free services, you’re getting relatively little for your $99 a year to pay for the service. Just before Steve Jobs took off for a medical break he told people to expect a considerably improved MobileMe and iDisk. As sadly nerdly as it is, I find myself very excited about what might be coming from Apple on this front.
After all these years, sneaker net still exists, we’re still forced to work around cranky networks, or cranky IT managers in some cases, but now the it’s all in the air and it’s a lot more elegant than a pair of sneakers.

{extended}

Calling all old pixel pushers

2011-01-17T21:08:15Z

I’m proud to say that I have been elected president of the Siggraph Pioneers for 2011 and 2012.

My first act in this role is to invite new members to the organization.
If you’ve been involved with computer graphics for the past 20 years or more you’re eligible, and you should join us.

Why?
Because you have valuable experience you could share with others, and in particular youngsters entering the field.
Because you’ll get to see some old friends, and maybe share some old memories.
Because you’ll be recognized for your contribution to the industry
And last but not least because I invited you.

Computer Graphics Pioneer is an earned member category under ACM SIGGRAPH.
1. Membership is earned after twenty (20) years of contributions to some aspect of computer graphics and/or interactive techniques. All members of the computer community are welcome, engineers, academics, artists, sales and marketing representatives, etc.
2. Members commit to perform some service to the computer graphics community. This service may include conference or journal paper reviews, financial support of the mentoring program, serving as a mentor, or some other service as needs or opportunities arise.
3. Dues - Member dues are $47.00 per year - Regular ACM SIGGRAPH dues are $42. Pioneer dues are $47, so they are only $5 more.
Don’t let the price scare you off, if you’re already an ACM member it’s a small uplift.

We meet at Siggraph every year for a dinner, networking, and a presentation by one of the luminaries who helped get this industry going. It’s kind of like Facebook Live: you get to see old friends you haven’t heard from for a while BUT THERE’S A LOT MORE WE CAN DO.

And speaking about SIGGRAPH 2011, this year it’s going to be in beautiful Vancouver Canada. You should check the Visas & Passports data at this site. http://www.siggraph.org/s2011/content/visas-passports

To start or renew your membership:
* Online: https://campus.acm.org/Public/qj/login_gensigqj.cfm’rdr=promo=QJSIG&offering=415P&form_type=SIG&CFID=17011319&CFTOKEN=97045466
* Call ACM Member Services 800-342-6626 (click here for details)

I’d like to hear from you. Contact me: jon@jonpeddie.com, if you have ideas to help the Pioneers help the graphics community, I’m anxious to hear them.

Jon

{extended}

Nvidia looks good

2011-01-11T15:24:24Z

Nvidia like many companies in the past two years has gone through some dramatic and bruising changes. How a company comes out of those events is the key to predicting their future.

I’m not going to review the past, if you don’t know it, you probably aren’t reading this.

Here’s what I see on the horizon for Nvidia.

Tegra, the company’s smallest product, smallest ASP, smallest results to date is probably going to show some life in 2011. The company is shipping Tegra 2 and will soon introduce Tegra 3 to OEMs – the rest of the world will not get much information on it anymore than they did on Tegra 2. News and leaks of design wins in phones and tablets have been dribbling through webosphere for the past nine months as the industry waited and watched for the results Nvidia predicted at their press conference at CES in January 2010. Few of those predictions happened and a lot of people wrote off Nvidia as a player in the SoC market. But one of the qualities of a great company is that they don’t quit; they keep pushing and redoing till they get it right. Nvidia believes in Tegra and has not only kept up its investment in R&D and marketing, but has actually increased the spend. That’s commitment and it’s got to pay off – 2011 may show the results.

News of Microsoft making Windows run on ARM will help propel Nvidia’s fortunes in the SoC space.

Tesla and CUDA. 2010 was actually the tipping point for Tesla. For evidence consider the almost clean sweep of HPC companies with Tesla based server chassis, starting with IBM, HP, Penguin and followed by others. Vector or parallel processor competitive products either failed, or flailed. Cell, FPGAs, direct GPU competitors, dedicated multiprocessor processor arrays, and multicore CPUs couldn’t deliver the bang for the buck in FLOPS/dollar/watt, nor did they have the infrastructure and tool set to make them useful. Nvidia’s long term and unwavering investment in Tesla and its CUDA tools are paying dividends. Although the HPC element will not be a big unit or dollar market it will be significant, measurable, and most of all influential. GPU-compute will not be limited to HPC and will find homes in everything from photo-editing to plastic molding. GPU-compute will also be a very high margin segment for Nvidia, and that contribution makes all the products better.

Fermi. Fermi is finally firm. After the redesign in 2010 which yielded the 500 series parts, Nvidia has a world class GPU again, and one with legs that will let it find product categories from laptops to mainstream PC, to gaming boards, to professional graphics and HPC. Fermi, like Tegra, was a long term, and difficult investment, with a very long range vision behind it. The company suffered severe criticism for abandoning the mainstream and gamer with the original 400 series Fermi design, and for being late with their DirectX 11 part. AMD capitalized on that and increased their market share. There was speculation that Nvidia had been scared out of the mainstream by Intel’s Larrabee and was concentrating on different areas. Chip design, and re-design doesn’t happen overnight, and so Nvidia’s redesign of Fermi could have been a reaction to the failure of Larrabee to arrive. Regardless, the 500 is a solid product and Nvidia will exploit the design for several years.

Quadro the cash cow. Nvidia has historically done very well financially in two small highly profitable segments: the enthusiast gamer and the professional graphics markets. At its peak Nvidia had 65% of the enthusiast gamer segment (now at about 55%) and has gone from 20% in 2004 to 92% in 2010 in the professional market. The growth was the result of Nvidia’s investment in the segment, support for the application developers, and paying attention to users. Nvidia got a little help from ATI’s difficulty in focusing in the workstation space. We expect Nvidia to hang on to a dominate position in professional graphics, but with such a tremendous lead in market share they will logically lose a few points. Nvidia gets better margins for their professional graphics than AMD.

Stereovision and Optimus. Nvidia was the leader in stereovision beginning in 2009 and still is, however, it’s just a small market (~300k units). But as stereovision grows, and it will, Nvidia’s brand is so strongly identified with it, that most people think Nvidia invented PC stereovision. Meanwhile, Optimus is Nvidia’s ticket to regaining its lost laptop market share. Optimus is a truly useful feature for anyone who needs high performance and long battery life and it has been adopted by several OEMs, along with Intel’s new Sandy Bridge EPG CPU.

Intel settled. The recent settlement with Intel that will put $1.5 billion into Nvidia’s bottom line is just one more bonus for the company removing management distraction and padding the profits. It’s also a moral win for the company.

Summary

Nvidia has invested heavily over the past two to three years in the company’s vision, a vision of “T”s – Tegra and Tesla. It suffered after being shut out of the IGP market by Intel’s claim of limited license, and it lost significant market share in laptops with its discrete GPUs as well. During those difficult years the company, reported its first losses in a decade; its share price plummeted and pundits described the company as being on the ropes. Maybe, but it survived (the second time), didn’t have massive layoffs, and is poised to enjoy the improving economy with a product portfolio that is very impressive.

{extended}