Jon Peddie Blogs

Gaming PCs and consoles; those damn numbers

2010-08-24T18:10:43Z

Someone said you can make statistics prove anything you want and that person is right. It all comes down to what you use for definitions of the item under scrutiny. It also has to do with how you count things.

The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA) recently put out a press-release that stated, “Annual shipment volumes for the PC Gaming hardware market in 2009 were over two times larger than the combined Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 console units shipped in the same period. They then estimated the worldwide number of consumers gaming with discrete graphics solutions on their PCs (Desktop and Notebooks) shipped in 2009 to be 61.5 million PCs (Desktop and Laptops) shipped in 2009 that can largely be associated with PC gaming as a key usage scenario. The news release is available here.

Recently iSuppli said, “sales of tablets and notebooks will depress discrete graphics device shipments from 73 million in 2009 to 62 million in 2014.” That press release is here.

And those lovable folks at JPR said, “In 2009 119.5 million desktops and notebook discrete GPUs capable of playing DirectX 10 or better games were shipped, and that number should rise to 226.5 million by 2014.” Read our release here.

How could all vary so widely? It’s all in how, and what you count, and what the point is you’re trying to prove.

Because we get the shipment numbers directly from the chip suppliers (and have done so for a couple of decades) we tend to think our data is more accurate. But we report raw numbers, and some of those GPUs don’t go into conventional PCs, some are in the distribution channel waiting to be bought, and some PCs have more than one of them.

IDC thinks there were 296 million PCs shipped in 2009 and Gartner thinks 290.7 million shipped. Of course a lot of those machines had integrated graphics in them, and neither Gartner nor IDC include the embedded PCs found in ATMs, scientific instruments, and various industrial or military systems.

Although the PCGA claims “Gaming PCs Outgrow Console Gaming Systems,” they didn’t state how many consoles they thought shipped in 2009. The number is almost 42 million.

Console shipments in 2009

So, no matter whose PC or discrete GPU numbers you use, PCs capable of gaming clearly outsold consoles in 2009.

But here again you run into that definition thing. Of all those gaming-capable PCs, how many are actually used for gaming? And what percent of the time? A console is used about 80% of the time for gaming (the rest for watching movies or listening to music.) We think maybe 70 million PCs are used in some form of gaming, and maybe two million PCs are dedicated to gaming, the rest are time-shared with various other applications.

Who cares about these statistics? Do you think they influence a consumer on a buying decision? Can you imagine someone in a shop saying, “Gee, PCs out sell consoles, maybe I better buy a PC.” Well, actually I can imagine some people saying that, but not too many of them.

Pirates, ports, and BS

The people who care the most about these stats are the game developers. They try to use them to make big dollar decisions on what games to develop and for what platform. However, the numbers don’t seem to have much influence on their logic. The game publishers still prefer the console. For one thing it’s only DirectX 9, therefore development is easier. For another, it’s stable so developers can reuse assets developed in 2005. The number 1 excuse the game developers themselves offer for their loyalty to the console, is that PC games can be pirated. They seem to completely overlook the fact that console games also get pirated - over 9.78 million in just December of 2009, according to a recent study conducted by the International Intellectual Property Alliance and the Entertainment Software Association.

The publishers also like consoles because it’s relatively easy to do a port to a PC from a console game, especially an Xbox game.

So what?

So we and all the other bean counters will continue to, well, count the beans, and publish reports about them, and draw conclusions about what it all means. And the game publishers will continue to ignore us and put out mostly crappy remakes of older games. But we’ll have damn fine DirectX 11, multi-core CPUs and 21-inch 1980 displays to play them on – and in stereo.

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Social Media #2 — Getting Started

2010-08-15T16:08:52Z

Social media—1:1 marketing and communications is so new, it sounds glamorous. Some see it as a new sense of freedom, romantic even. Just you and him (or her) bonding, building a relationship, building sales.

The first thing the company has to do is forget about employing their mass advertising thinking to social media. People don’t want, expect, appreciate marketing messages being pushed at them on the Web. According to a study by Digital Brand Expressions, nearly all of the firms surveyed in the consumer industry are committed to carrying out a social media program.

Research where respondents at participating companies were asked who in the company should be dealing with the social media activities shows how clear “ownership” really is:
   - 94% said it is a marketing activity
   - 71% thought public relations should handle it
   - 55% said social media should be of the sales related activities
   - a mixed number said HR and customer service should be involved

Meanwhile, most companies appear to be shooting from the hip, with no cohesive game plan or measurement systems in place.

Over-Planning Fails
According to Digital Brand Expressions, less than 41 percent of companies have a cohesive, strategic social media plan. Fewer yet have policies/protocols for handling/managing the activity. 52% of social marketers are operating “without a game plan.” The majority of the firms with plans in place admit that the policies and programs are not widely distributed within the organization.

Even among those with a plan, few have written policies and communications protocols in place, leaving the organization exposed to problems arising out of employees communicating in ways that inadvertently hurt—rather than help—their company brands.

However, there is strong consensus in what the company wants to do, what it wants to achieve in the social media arena. Their goal is to build/protect the organization’s brand, develop an effective team of brand advocates who are very active in the consumer marketplace and build a reserve of positive support that can be drawn upon when problems occur. To achieve this they want to enhance/enrich product coverage, work with/support consumers who are positive toward the company and the products and either win over or nullify negative online customer discussions.

The uncertainty of responsibility/authority over social media should not deter a company from becoming involved today!

It will inspire fundamental business improvements through:
•   Emergence of new social media-enabled business models.
•   Ability to increase the “stickiness” of relationships by improving loyalty through customer engagement.
•   Use of communities to improve innovation by providing quick feedback on products and services.

As social media evolves, so will a company’s social media programs. The company’s product information/support Web site areas are good – albeit less glamorous – places to start. Consumers go to sites to learn about a company, discover products and services, for information needed to make choices, for support, and, perhaps, to make a purchase or find out how to make a purchase.

One Small Step
Once the fundamentals are in place, you’ll probably want to move to brand monitoring. Microblogs such as Twitter have become very effective means of providing customer service and gathering customer feedback. Negative remarks can be quickly monitored. As more things migrate online, complaining seems to rise to the top…quickly.

Anyone can Twitter, and an estimated 50% of the tweets are idle chatter. However, according to ROI Research, 33% of active Twitter users share opinions about companies, products, 32% make recommendations and 30% ask for recommendations.

Some organizations have created their own content to offset negative consumer opinions. Faked or camouflaged responses are quickly uncovered, often amplifying the issue. Many manufacturers and retailers use Twitter as a customer service tool because they can:
•   Offer immediate customer advice/assistance
•   Build their brand as a customer-centric business.
•   Solve problems quickly.

There are many useful tools available to help put Twitter to work. For example, check out Monittor.com. This site enables you to track real-time keywords on Twitter. Another site, Tweetbeep keeps track of Tweets that mention your company, products, your areas of interest.

To ensure you’re aware and can give prompt attention to discussions, set up Google Alerts which can be sent to your inbox daily or weekly. Again, it identifies who, what, where discussions of your business/products/services. You can then determine how to best handle negative comments/feedback or even positive comments/feedback to enhance your customer relationship.

Establish one or more Google Profiles about your company, your products/services, yourself.   Using Google templates, you can quickly/easily produce a Profile page. You write it about your business, why it is special, what it uniquely provides and can be linked to your website, blog, social site page or other online area.

The profile will always be on page 1 of a Google search about your company, your products. To see how this works, Google “Gideon Marken.” At the bottom of Page 1, you will see a Google Profile – our son’s. By preparing your firm’s Google profile you can always be certain one search entry is consistent with the company’s goals, objectives, direction.
There are a myriad of social media areas we will explore later; but basically, it includes everything the company does in reaching out, touching, working with people in the firm’s many/varied publics.

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Social Media – A Company’s Friend, Foe

2010-08-02T17:23:02Z

There’s so much information and misinformation surrounding the power and magic of social media, company management and marketing probably feel like a deer hypnotized by the headlines of a semi on the highway.

We all know that word-of-mouth “advertising” is the most powerful – good and bad – promotion for a company that exists. As a result, companies, departments, individuals are setting up social network pages, signing up for microblogs like Twitter, establishing management/marketing blogs on their Web site and establishing customer forums on the Web. The challenge is to understand the true value of social media for your business, activity.

Tackling the Unknown

Today’s customers don’t want to be advertised at; they want to research products/services in their own time, in their own way. They want impartial opinions from other consumers and product experts about the promises made by the company/product.

The shift of control to customers is an obvious concern of company executives who read about bad publicity that has spread like a wild fire for other companies, executives, and products thanks to mis-managed social networking. But, a recent study by worldwide networking company Cisco, suggests that being overly cautious is short-sighted. The control paradigm has shifted and there is no turning back.

Social media and social networking are here to stay, but the tools, outlets, opportunities and complexity are still in their infancy and will continue to evolve and influence the way “business as usual” is conducted.

To ignore the influence and power of social media as well as the internal guidelines, which must be established, can only lead to misuse by members of the organization and accidental disclosure of company/product information, misinformation/misrepresentation of the company/products/services, its policies, its image.

Forget the Experts

There are no hard and fast rules, recommendations and there really are no “experts” you can turn to to deliver “safe,” reliable, guaranteed social media approaches, activities. Anyone who makes that claim is blowing smoke.

The most we can do in this series of articles is help you understand how you can get started, what they – consumers – are doing, explore/recommend how you can get started, what are the customer’s options and reasonable responses and activities you can consider implementing to enhance, improve, profit from your consumer relationships.

Before you begin any social media activity, some level of internal governance – usually ad hoc – must be exercised including:

Which social media initiative – The Web offers a wide pallet of social media activities and you need to determine which one(s) you want to start first, when, how and who will be the “owner(s)” of the initiative(s). To get started review the different social media outlets just as your would a magazine or a web site to see if they are compatible with your aims.
Employee social media activities – everyone in the organization can (and probably does) have some social networking activity they are already pursuing – Facebook, LinkdIn, blog, Twitter. Controlling these activities is a practical impossibility, so you have to respect/trust the employees. You also have to give them basic ideas and guidelines on what can/can’t be done and to whom they can turn to for assistance/answers when questions come up.
Third-party management – Every management team relies on outside experts/assistance – public relations/communications, support/service, product design, manufacturing. All those people need clear guidelines on who can speak on behalf of the company, and about what subjects.
Enabling technologies – Most people don’t involve their IT experts when social media activities are initiated because the efforts are conducted outside the company’s IT infrastructure. However, ideally/ultimately you will want to incorporate some of the information, findings into your business applications and activities. Plan for the long-term because social media marketing will be with you forever.

Building a relationship with customers can turn loyal customers into strong extensions of the company, its marketing, its products. They can become key figures in recommending, promoting, defending you online and off.

Social media can be your worst enemy and your best friend. Doing it right isn’t just “nice,” it is important to your organization’s and your success.

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Quadrillions and Quadrillions of Cycles

2010-07-25T00:11:49Z

The number of processors, both x86 and GPU, available for rendering has been increasing exponentially. Rendering is one of the applications that can soak up all the cycles that are available to it, which is an example of Peddie’s first law – In computer graphics, too much is not enough.

We looked at the installed base of x86 and GPU processors, applied a factor for the average number of cores and developed the following chart.

Cores alone don’t tell the whole story, the real measure is how millions of operations per second can the processor execute. A general figure of merit is to multiple the processor’s clock by its word size. The GPUs running at one fourth the speed of a CPU, and with just a 32-bit processor compared to the 64-bit CPU still delver the most MIPS because of their overwhelming number of cores.

The chart indicate that there is at least 450 billion computer cycles available every second. Carrying that to its ridiculous extreme assuming the processors ran 24 hours a day, there are 38 quadrillion processor cycles available a day for rendering.

These computer cycles are almost free, they’re going to be available just by the sheer momentum of the industry and they represent new opportunities and developments. Think about how fast and cheap rendering is going to be. Think about all the background functions that will done automatically and invisibly. It’s Peddie’s Third Law: the technology works when it’s invisible.

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The New Visualization

2010-07-10T20:57:01Z

In order to design automobiles, airplanes, search for oil (or contain it), and examine artifacts like a 2000-year-old mummy, large scale visualization systems are needed.

Visualization system can mean different things to different people so a little definition is required to avoid confusion and controversy.

I make a distinction between large-scale and localized visualization systems. A localized system, by my definition, is a single monitor used by an investigator and may be shown to colleagues, on occasion. Visualization systems employing voxels for medical research is a typical example, as are individual product lifecycle management (PLM) visualization systems.

Visualization systems are also often confused with simulation systems. For example, in finite element analysis (FEA) a mathematical simulation is made, typically of a stressed component such as a beam, and then visualized for the stress points, which are typically displayed in pseudo colors to highlight the effect.

A large-scale visualization systems, employs two or more displays, or projectors, and can occupy an entire desktop, a wall, or an entire room (i.e. a cave.) When dealing with a visualization wall further definitions are required. Is the visualization wall, strictly computer graphics (CG) generated, a mix of CG and video, or just video. These types of visualization systems typically get defined as command and control (CCD—where the “D” stands for decision), signage, situational, and scientific or engineering visualization. Video walls are a completely different system.

The situational and scientific or engineering visualization systems are, to my way of thinking, the most interesting because they involve the highest degree of computer resolution and display capabilities. Very often, these visualization systems provide stereo graphic capability (S3D.)
In the past, circa 1990, large-scale visualization systems were built by Evans and Sutherland, SGI, and various military contractors like General Electric, Lockheed, and Mechdyne. These systems sold for $100,000 to a few million dollars. The costs were due to installation, and low-volume state-of-the-art equipment such as high-resolution bright projectors, large powerful workstations, and custom software.

Today, it’s possible to replicate those expensive systems for under $20,000 (not including physical installation and modifications.) And that brings me to the thesis of this discussion – the amazing visualization capabilities offered today on the PC from AMD and Nvidia.

There are various ways to display a large scale visualization system. The simplest and least expensive method is to use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) LCD or plasma displays. High-resolution and extremely bright projectors can also be used if a greater distance between the display and the viewer is required, such as is found in a situation room or theater. In between those two examples are semi-custom panoramic projector display systems like those offered by Scalable Display Technologies and Ostendo.

Large-scale visualization systems of the 90s and early 2000 employees, what were called image generators (in some circles they are still called that.) today’s “image generators,” are a graphics add-in board (AIB.).

Today, you can purchase for $479 an AMD Radeon 5870 EyeFinity 6 AIB that can drive six 2560 x 1600 displays, which could be as small as 17 inches, or as large as 60 inches each. Envision a wall composed of six 60 inch plasma HD screens. The cost of such a system would be $10,800 for the displays, $479 for the AIB, 2,000 for the PC, 600 for cables, and 10,000 for some visualization type software. Total system cost $23,879 that is truly amazing.

If you want to add another dimension to the visualization system then you have to put a little bit more money into the displays and the AIBs. Nvidia offers a S3D surround system that can drive three 120 Hz displays with up to 2560 x 1600 resolution. Large screen LCD and plasma TVs are being offered now with 120 Hz to 240 Hz refresh and could be wall mounted to provide a very large three panel stereographic visualization system. The estimated cost of the system would be just $16,000 - $2,700 for three 46-inch 1080p 120Hz displays, $1,000 for the Nvidia GTX 480 AIBs (however. It should be possible to do this with Nvidia’s new lower-cost GTX. 465 AIB), a PC for $2,000, $300 for cables, and software $10,000. Unbelievable.

These are the next generation, or maybe this generation, of powerful visualization systems. If projectors are preferred over monitors the cost will go up, the personalized panoramic displays typically sell for $10,000 each, and a Sony SXRD projector will set you back $5k. But even with more expensive display systems,

it’s still possible to build a system for a fraction of what it would have cost five years ago.As a result of these new economies and capabilities I predict we will see a resurgence in the visualization market, indicating a cost elasticity that few believed was there.

I’ve been testing the systems in our lab using COTS simulation programs otherwise known as FPS games. I’ve run FPS simulation programs on a six monitor API system, and S3D FPS simulation programs on an Nvidia S3D surround system. In both cases, I was extremely satisfied with the performance and the only complaint was the size of the bezels. Companies like NEC have developed 46-, and 55-inch bezel-less 1080p displays ($999 and $1,499 respectably) for signage applications, which could easily be employed in a visualization system. Currently, the NEC displays are only 60 Hz, but it shouldn’t be a big problem for them to move to 120 Hz panels.

So welcome to the new world of democratized visualization systems—now every researcher, designer, geophysicist, traffic engineer, or military commander can have an affordable, powerful, highly functional, and maybe even portable visualization system.

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Nintendo goes with DMP for S3D graphics engine

2010-06-21T04:59:26Z

Today, DMP announced in Japan that Nintendo has adopted DMP OpenGL ES 1.1 compliant PICA200 for the 3DS.

The new Nintendo 3DS is an amazing little device. The DS has already been a beloved machine attracting over 100 million users since 2004. Not many products (that I can think of, at least) can match that volume of enthusiasm or the customer base. And it’s self perpetuating because the installed base attracts developers which create new games which attracts new consumers – it is a perfect ecosystem.

Nintendo has experimented with S3D for years, starting with the Nintendo Virtual Boy monochrome system, and the company has tried out shutter glasses but lacked the computer horsepower and content to make it compelling. Nintendo has always been willing to try out new technologies, but the company seems aware of the dynamics that Kathleen Maher tries to spell out in her ongoing work on the Practicality Gap. To sum it up in a phrase, Nintendo seems keenly aware that certain pieces of the puzzle must be in place before other pieces will fit.

The company has been investigating various semiconductor and IP suppliers since 2006 having looked at their partner ATI (Wii), ARM (DS), Imagination Technologies, Nvidia, and others. The decision to use DMP’s PICA200 design was made over a year ago and testing and development have been going on for some time; it’s not as easy as it may seem to license a core and integrate it into an SoC and get the costs (die size), power consumption (has to run forever on small batteries), and performance (clocks and memory management) balance. So as you learn more about this device if you wonder why it took them so long, keep all that in mind.

Founded in 2002, DMP, a graphics IP core supplier in Japan, has adopted a business strategy of focusing on the digital consumer market.
DMP first told me about the PICA architecture in early 2005 which was their first IP core based on Ultray architecture. The president and CEO of DMP, Tatsuo Yamamoto, told me then the Ultray allows real-time photo realistic rendering with physically correct lighting and shadowing such as soft shadow casting and position dependent environmental mapping.
Ultray is unique in that it uses hardware parametric engines for certain graphics features rather than shaders. With this approach, clouds, smoke, gas and other fuzzy objects can be shaded and rendered at an interactive rate.

Scene from DOA on the 3DS; there are quite a few  effects
coming into play in this image. (Source: Nintendo)

At Siggraph 2005 (LA) DMP revealed in more detail some of their techniques for hair, skin, and gaseous shapes. Yamamoto said then that the Ultray could boast lower power consumption due to hardware pipelines, and smaller number of polygons to achieve high-quality graphics based on pixel-level shading (Phong, BRDF, etc.) vs. vertex-level and polygon subdivision.

So the bottom line is that amazing high-end graphics functions in a low-cost handheld device with stereovision is not only possible, it has arrived. The 3DS graphics has a lot of head room to be further exploited and we’re expecting to be really thrilled to see and play with what Nintendo and its partners have at launch.

You can read more about the PICA architecture here and subscribers can read more in various issues of JPR’s TechWatch. (Volume 5, Number 7, April 11, 2005, p10, Volume 5, Number 15, August 1, 2005, p12, Volume 6, Number 17, August 14, 2006, p19.)

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E3 Press event – press need not attend

2010-06-16T17:22:25Z

Against my better judgment I went to E3 two days early so I could attend the “press events” of the console companies. These events are often associated with some form (ahem) of entertainment. They are also oversubscribed, overcrowded, and usually uninformative. Why then are these megamillion dollar extravaganzas held? What’s the ROI for Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony? Good question.

It’s a matter of impressions

PR people live for and get measured by the number of impressions they deliver for the dollar. An impression is measured by taking the readership of a magazine, website, radio show, etc, and dividing the costs of reaching the writers or speakers of those vehicles by the dollars spent to get them to listen to the company’s message,

At the Microsoft’s press event for the renaming of Natel to Kinect, I estimated there were about 1,600 people there. Microsoft had what was billed as a Cirque du Soleil show, hired buses to get people to the USC stadium from the convention center, dressed us up in strange smocks, gave out cute stuffed animals and probably had over 200 hundred staff trying to manage it all, and I heard rented the stadium for three weeks to get things set up.

My guess is it cost Microsoft something north of $4 million to hold the event - I may be under shooting on that estimate. which is about 2x what 30 seconds of a major foot ball event TV ad would cost. So the numbers are not bad in terms of cost/impression and all of the attendees came to the event with the intention and desire to see the ad – oops, I mean press announcement.

Of the “press” who stood in line for upwards to an hour and then sat in the stadium for another hour waiting for things to get going, there were (by my estimate) maybe 100 actual press, maybe 10 analysts (including yours truly), about 200 VIPs (resellers, partners) - who had to stand through the event at the front, and the rest were bloggers in the stands more than 1,400 by my estimate.

But it was not a pleasant experience. Getting there, if you didn’t ride on the buses provided, was horrendous in LA traffic, parking was challenging, and expensive. Then a long wait in a line outside (thankfully it never rains in LA) was a boring waste of time.

Then there was the filing in to the seats like prisoners in a gulag; being herded around the inside of the building in a four- to six-wide column dressed in silly smocks and then being squeezed into a two-person wide doorway to the seats.

And then sitting for an hour through the long seating process and the stage people did who knows what. Time was wasted.

Real press, with real deadlines, can’t afford such events. The blogger/fan boys loved every minute of it. The VIPs milling about on the show floor seemed to be OK with it – remember darling it’s not how you feel but how you look…

It is however, something between insulting to annoying to call these things press events. There was no press aspect to it – no news (the web leaks preceded the event from days to hours). It’s unlikely that many of the 1,400 or so in attendance had anything new to offer in terms of reporting on the event or insight to add. So, as an advertiser, with a choice of 1,400 web sites on which to advertise, which one or two, or even ten would you choose? It doesn’t matter – there’s 1,390 you didn’t pick.

The other question is, are there really 14 million gamers out there reading stuff on these blog pages? Do these bloggers really have that many eyeballs? Yes there’s 50 million Call Of Duty players out there but I doubt they spend much time reading blogs.

I spoke to an inside PR lady at one of the console makers and asked her about all this – she was very enthused with the reach of the bloggers and felt she and her company had tapped into the mother lode. This is a sensible, smart (and I hope well paid) woman and I’m inclined to trust her judgment – this is her job. I’m trying to get the concept, the payoff, but so far it eludes me but it may be moot – these events get it all, they get the mainline press (usually) and the bloggers, and the net results the entire world lights up for a day or two about the company’s new stuff. Mission accomplished, oh, and sorry about the wait.

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The business plan: selling the entrepreneurial idea

2010-05-23T23:50:20Z

With an estimated $800+ billion in funding available for the entrepreneur annually (even in bad times), you may think that venture capital and R&D partnership firms would be falling over each other to fund the latest wave of scientific and technological proposals.

Wrong.

Venture capital companies such as R&D Funding Corp., Early Stages Co., Mayfield Fund, Asset Management, and others receive an average of 100 technology and service/support proposals each month, even when the economy is “less than desirable.” Unfortunately, instead of paving the way for funding, the proposals are often more detrimental than helpful. The sad truth is that the majority of the business plans presented are not just badly written, they’re very badly written. That makes the evaluation – finding the winners – even more difficult.

Pyramid Your Plan
The business plan should be presented to potential investors in the same manner that products and services are presented to potential customers – quickly and effectively. A simple way to accomplish this is with a pyramid-style presentation. It starts with a tight, action oriented summary and expanded sections toward the base.

After you get through the legalities and disclaimers, the most important part of your plan is the executive summary. This one to two-page summary clearly states what the company is going to do, what the market potential is, how the company plans to achieve market penetration, the time period involved, the product/service plans, the amount of money needed and how that money will be used.

The second most important section of the business plan is the business summary. This includes corporate objectives and strategy; a market summary with product/service objectives; unique (maybe even proprietary) technology involved; a plan of operation/action; a financial summary and investment requirements.

The executive and business summaries are the most important parts of your proposal. Few senior funding officials will read beyond these areas, so if you haven’t hooked them at this point…pack it up!

The Product

The next section is the product or service description…the real idea. This includes the products, systems or service’s features and capabilities, as well as future plans. Since many people feel that marketing is as important as the technology (if not more so), include an aggressive marketing and communications program. In short, marketing and market perception is where it’s at.

Market Analysis

The fourth section is the market analysis. Here you discuss the market or markets, the trends and the need your products/services will fill. Depending upon the potential market, there are numerous information sources for this section. Start with the Web. Then focus on the media outlets that target your specific market area. By knowing who and what to ask, you can usually find a significant amount of valuable information at no cost.

Over the last decade, a complex market research industry that covers every aspect of every market has emerged. Research reports can be purchased from companies such as IDC, Gartner Group, Forrester, Jon Peddie Research, Yankee Group, Ipsos and others.

The Competition

The fifth section of the business plan is the competitive analysis. This includes a discussion of the participants in the market as well as potential market players, the number of years (or sometimes months) they’ve been in business, their size, sales volume, product/service niche markets, their strengths/weaknesses and product/service plans.

Today, firms of every shape and product discipline have Web and social media sites with excellent information just waiting for you to access. And, with the depth/breadth of the Web, virtually all the data you want will be at your fingertips.

Don’t try to bluff your way through this section. If your company and products or services are of interest to the investors, you can be certain that they will have more than a passing knowledge of the industry and its participants. In addition, the funding industry is closely knit, and it only takes a few phone calls to check out details.

Background

After evaluating the competition, include a section on the management. It includes a discussion of the current management team, as well as any additional people you will need and when you expect to add them.

Keep in mind that funding people look at the total picture and evaluate every request in detail. At times, part of their contingency plan will include replacing certain members of the team with individuals of greater strength. It could even be you. These strings are not attached out of malice. They are putting out the hard cash and want to do everything possible to ensure that the company will succeed so that they can get a good ROI (return on investment). Some people have great ideas but can’t execute.

The Whole Plan

Finally, a complete business plan includes a section on financial projections where all of the pieces come together on a cold, hard ledger sheet.

For the first two years of operation, lay out the program’s cash flow in monthly detail. The third year should be outlined by quarters and the fourth and fifth years in six-month increments. No one believes that your crystal ball is so clear that you can see what is going to happen month by month in the third, fourth and fifth years, but you should at least show that you have planned that far ahead. By following this outline, you can develop a clear, logical business plan that attracts investment interest.

Great ideas need help to make them happen. A solid business plan will help you prepare for success.

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A New Model Cometh

2010-04-29T23:48:33Z

One of the biggest challenges for PC gaming is the revenue and refresh models.

When I refer to refresh model I am talking about creating sequels. Often there is so much pressure to crank out another version of the game that sequels can end up deflating the franchise and ultimately hurting the game. Generally MMOG’s avoid this phenomenon because they add content along the way. This refreshes the franchise without forcing the gamer to the cash register for a new base software package. This is a better model and the only time the gamer should be forced to the cash register for a new base software package is when there is a major game engine update.

Most of the MMOG’s fund this stream of experiences and content by charging subscription fees. However multiplayer first person shooters and other game types have never used this model before. Or are they? A very interesting phenomenon is occurring in the FPS market and it is being pioneered by Electronic Arts. Their new game Battlefield Bad Company 2 (BFBC2) is available for PC and console. What’s different is that the PC gamers get map updates for free while the console folks pay for it. Even more important is that EA is allowing PC gamers to manage their own dedicated servers. This is something that Activision did not allow with Modern Warfare 2 and as a result, caused a significant uprising with over 250,000 signatures on a petition to protest. Activision’s move is most remembered as a mistake.

However, to run a dedicated server in BFBC2 one must have it hosted from an “EA Approved” server provider, unlike historically when you could host it anywhere. Based on a recent inquiry to EA it appears there is a cross-ownership and/or revenue sharing agreement with the “EA Approved” server providers. These servers run about $65 a month and are generally funded by PC gaming clans who have their own dues structures.

So what is going on is that BFBC2 is actually a quasi subscription based FPS; the first of its kind in the world that I know of. I think EA is very smart to come around from this direction. If they would allow the PC gamers to create content and/or modify more settings to their own preferences, rules, and play styles, I believe that despite their (PC FPS gamers) resistance to subscription models, they would embrace this system en masse and it would be truly revolutionary.

{extended}

TV revolutions; the struggle continues

2010-04-28T19:45:34Z

Revolutions always take a long time. It’s the shooting and fighting part that goes fast. At NAB it looks like we’re just winding up the shooting and fighting part for S3D but that doesn’t mean we know who wins. Clearly, obviously, and totally for sure man, 3D is going to be a fact of life in the movie theaters and it’ll certainly be a novelty for home movies and sports. But, the thing is, TV watching is mutating so fast that we’re not so sure what people will be watching in 2015 and what they’ll be watching it on.

We participated in the 3D Gaming Conference in Los Angeles. Although focused on gaming, the conference is a Hollywood affair hosted by Variety. Jon Peddie Research was also a sponsor and Neil Schneider used the opportunity to hold a meeting of the 3D Gaming Summit. As you might expect of the PC company doing the most to push S3D gaming, Nvidia was also a major presence at the conference with Andrew Fear and Phil Eisler spending time on stage promoting S3D for games. Avatar producer Jon Landau said in an off-hand comment that 3D gaming was going to be much bigger than movies and the crowd went crazy. Ah, well rather they went schizophrenic. There were some in the audience who just couldn’t believe that S3D is the future of gaming. There were others who just could not believe there were doubters when the bush was burning right there in front of them.

But hey, I’ve been thinking about is this: Landau may well be right, 3D gaming is going to be bigger in the home than 3D television – it’s just that we haven’t agreed that S3D is the future of television. I still can’t wrap my head around Mom, Dad, Susie, and little Billy sitting in front of the TV in 3D glasses. It works just fine until they turn around to talk to each other. If they’re wearing shutter glasses, they’ll see a flicker, but even passive glasses are going to raise a titter – everyone just plain looks goofy. This has never been a problem for gamers.

3D needs to be immersive and that’s why it works so well at the movies. In the theater the darkness and the large screen work together to let you dive into the movie and to be absorbed by it, assuming of course there is no talking idiot behind you or you can shut them out. (By the way, have you noticed yet, that at a really well done 3D movie like Coraline, Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, there are fewer talking idiots? No doubt, they’ll adapt, but so far, people are engrossed.)

Gaming is similar. As has been written so, so many times. The PC’s relationship with the viewer is primarily one to one and the gamers most willing to spend money on their hobby in the form of advanced PCs, 3D displays, and glasses are playing immersive games. In fact, the hold up for 3D gaming is that true gamers feel the 3D experience is distracting. It’s not immersive enough. So far, your brain does a better job of putting you into the picture than 3D glasses do.

By the way, just as an aside, I’m thinking that lenticular 3D is likely to be the death of 3D TV. Honestly, have you seen it? It really does look like a slightly higher quality 3D card from a Kracker Jax box. It’s not at all immersive. Rather, it causes images to pop out. It seems that lenticular 3D is going to be a great technology for signs and displays. And, even as much as I admire the lenticular 3D mobile screens and picture frames, I can’t help but think they look more like fun gadgets than something that truly adds to the experience. There are smart people behind this work, so their crystal ball could well be better than mine. Maybe they’ve got stuff in the labs that is smoother 3D than what we’re seeing now.

The revolution continues. It’s far from clear what the role of 3D movies, special events like opera performances, S3D TV, lenticular screens, et al., are going to play in our entertainment lives.

While S3D was getting all the attention at NAB, there’s another revolution being fought and that’s IP TV. While everyone is going crazy about the possibility of people watching TV wearing 3D glasses, IP TV is creeping into our lives and people are sneaking out of the living room to watch video elsewhere (lord only knows what Dad and little Billly are watching – it might not be Bonanza). We saw Elemental at NAB, and Zenverge was taking private meetings and both companies are building hardware system components that will change the math for IP TV – more streams, less money. They both tell us they’re the tip of the iceberg. There’s plenty of competition out there. For IP TV, the shooting is over, but the winners have yet to be determined.

So, here’s why Jon Landau was right. S3D gaming is going to be bigger than 3D TV because more people in the living room are going to be playing games than watching TV. Really.

Okay, maybe.

{extended}

Playing with six monitors—is that a “full deck?”

2010-03-08T18:14:29Z

Here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs we’re testing a lot of stuff as usual. However, the one system that will get a lot of attention from us and our readers is the six-headed ATI-based EyeFinity.

The system consists of six 22-inch 1920 x 1080 displays - yes, that’s 5760 x 2160 resolution in a 3 x 2 array 61 x 24 inches, backed up by a 2GB GDDR5 graphics board, running on a 3.7GHz 4GB RAM, SSD, Nehalem system, with of course, great sound.

When the system is first brought to life it is six duplicate displays

The next step is to set up the system in extended mode using ATI’s Catalyst control panel. Catylyst has a grouping set of controls so you can have various configurations, I choose 3x2.

After the system is setup (and we’ll have more detail on all this after the 29^th when we’re allowed to go completely public) you pick the screen res in the app and away you go. We choose Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat because it’s a DirectX 11 game and can make use of all the features of the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition AIB.

We’re dealing with beta drivers and so things are a little unstable, but we’ll get the final release before the 29^th and then give you the whole story.

In the mean time we’re trying to get our brains to adjust the this new giant world. It’s amazing in H-A-W-X, the new super flying game from Ubisoft.

{extended}

Jon’s tortuous path to the iPhone

2010-02-11T18:37:35Z

I proudly consider myself a geek and an early adopter. When the slick N95 from Nokia first came out I knew I had to have one. The unit wasn’t yet available in the United States, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for me. My colleague and longtime friend’s daughter in England works for Vodafone and Vodafone was the carrier that was offering the N95.
I had long used two mobile phones, one for the US and one for rest of the world because the US had been so late to adopt the higher-speed digital systems like GSM and 3G. The N95 in addition to its other great features was a tri-band unit, and therefore with the appropriate SIM could work in the US, Europe, and several parts of Asia, although not Korea.
I was attracted to the N95 because of the OMAP2 processor in it with the Imagination Technologies 3D graphics engine and also because of the phone’s of advanced glass lens 5.1 megapixel camera with built in flash, a TV and FM radio, and a GPS radio. With the accessible SIM card I was able to now have just one phone for my travels. The N95 also had a mini SD slot, which I quickly filled with a 2 GB card. There were some built in games, and you could download the Nokia suite to synchronize your contacts list, calendar, and downloading of any photographs taken. The phone was just about perfect—until I tried to use it.

When I got the N95, it was not available in the United States. However, AT&T had indicated that they would one day. Therefore, I set up an AT&T account for my US operations. My next challenge was to crack the phone so that I could get it to recognize the AT&T SIM. This wasn’t too difficult, there was lots of help to be found on the web, and I now had a genuine world phone with a state-of-the-art camera, the ability to watch videos, play MP3 audio, and the ability to play 3D games.

The problems started early. My contacts list was too big for the puny built-in memory in the phone and I was unsuccessful in figuring out how to make the contact list reside on the plug-in 2 GB of memory. The net result was, every time I tried to find a contact. I was given a message, “Memory full shutdown some applications.” Of course it never told me what applications were running to shut down and so contact searching was always a frustration, and I could only overcome the error message by quickly typing a single key to get to the desired first letter of the name I was looking for. The other difficulty was, even though I had set it up to answer the phone by pressing any key, pressing the phone button caused it to go in to Hold, and it was very exasperating to try and get out of that condition when someone was calling me. And although the camera took amazingly good pictures it was very slow in response. This was no sports camera.

I suffered with these operational conditions for two years punctuating every activity on the phone with the expression, “this god damn phone.” Finally, my colleagues, and in particular Kathleen Maher had had enough of this and said, “You’ve got to get a new phone. I’m sick of listening to you.” (At least I didn’t throw this one against the wall as I did my Verizon LG Flip phone which is why I had to get the N95.)

Trials and Errors

So on January third on a cold and blustery day in Washington DC, I ventured out of the Marriott and walked a few blocks to the nearest AT&T store. There I looked at several phones with the intention of buying the HTC Pure. I realized my first criteria for a phone, other than simply making phone calls, was to take pictures. I’ve gotten quite used to only carrying a phone and not having to carry a phone and a camera—even though the N95 camera wasn’t very fast.

The HTC Pure was a bit of a compromise because of its camera (5Mpix but no flash), but it would be good enough and the HTC Pure had a large screen in what appeared to be a useful UI. However, at the AT&T store. I was introduced to the Sony Ericsson C905 by the clever sales guy who seemed to understand my needs better than I. Mind you, the sales guy was not overselling me, but rather trying to match my requirements up with an appropriate phone. Not only did the Sony Ericsson C905 have a nice sized screen. It also had a super 8-megapixle camera with a flash, and its camera operation was noticeably faster than the N95.

I proudly took my new acquisition back to the Marriott and began to set up. It took about six hours of frustration and failure to realize I was not going to be able to get the calendar and contact list to easily synchronize with this phone. Email? Forgetaboutit!

The next day, and with an airplane to catch, aided by my mobile phone tech support expert, Kathleen Maher, we went back to the AT&T store braving the 1° windy Washington weather, and complained. The sales guy explained that although I thought I had purchased it, the phone would not be capable of handling, “data,” unless I signed up for the, “data,” plan with AT&T. I explained to him that my existing phone, the faithful, if frustrating N95, could handle, “data,” without me having to sign up for the AT&T, “data,” plan. He said, that was because I had cracked the phone and AT&T would offer no support to me for that phone. He didn’t need to tell me; I had already learned that the hard way.

We took the new phone and headed to the airport assuming that a couple of smart people like us could easily figure out how to get this phone to handle my, “data,” just as we had done with the N95 - almost.

Back home after several attempts by several people here at JPR, we threw up our hands and admitted defeat. All through the exercise, Robert who does not own an iPhone, and Kathleen who is on her second iPhone, kept advising me—get an iPhone. I resisted this advice and dismissed the iPhone as a girly phone, lacking in anything passable for camera, having no (legal) access to the SIM, no expansion of memory, and no ability to replace the battery, should it run down and I wasn’t in a place to recharge. The iPhone simply wasn’t acceptable to an uber-geek like me.

However, with the stylish Sony-Ericson C905 I also was confronted with the miserable Symbian UI that I had been suffering with on the N95. If the US is behind the times with regard to radios and just barely creeping into the 3G era, the Symbian operating system was even further behind with its awkward, non-GUI aware operations. Finding things, having them react in a reasonable time, and then having them react in an expected and desirable way, proved to be just as frustrating as the N95, and it quickly became apparent that this was not a phone that would offer me any improvement in productivity, and certainly no convenience——although it did take damn nice pictures.

I finally bit the bullet and took the Sony Ericsson C905 to the local AT&T store to trade it in for something more useful and, accepted Kathleen Maher’s advice to buy a damn data plan. I was now looking at my monthly phone expense increasing for no apparent added a utility other than being able to get e-mail working immediately, and possibly have immediate access to my contact list; given the years of frustration that seemed a small price to pay.

After explaining to the AT&T salesman that the reason I didn’t have the box that the Sony Ericsson phone came in was because I just traveled across the United States and didn’t need anything extra to carry and staring down the store manage I got them to exchange it and paid the $35 restocking fee.

I now had the pleasure of looking at all the phones in the AT&T store to see what I could get to replace the Sony Ericsson. We truly did due diligence and looked at the Blackberry, various Nokias, various HTC’s, Samsung, and a few other brands I don’t remember and settled on the HTC Tilt 2 because of its large touch screen, and slide out full QWERTY a keyboard, and OK camera.

I now had a phone that had the same general form factor as an iPhone, albeit a bit thicker and heavier. It had a touch screen and a Microsoft operating system with reasonable looking icons and an expectation of a Windows like experience.

After a week of trying to use the phone I realized I was not getting up to speed as quickly as I would like to. I also had to go on a trip to England and Germany and decided that my N95 would be my non-US phone and that the HTC would be my US phone. I would of course experiment with the HTC phone in Europe to see if it had useful functionality in that environment.

I was able to read a little bit of e-mail with the HTC while in Europe, and even do some texting. But for more efficient operations, such as texting quickly and trivial little things like making a phone call, the N95 proved to be the workhorse. The HTC turned out to be a very large clock that I carried around. And I would refer to its big clock display whatever I was curious about the time.

The Microsoft operating system was so unbelievably slow and unresponsive for the first few days, I assumed I was doing something wrong. Nothing could be this miserable. The touch screen functionality with or without the stylus was a totally exasperating. I had to tap several times, or swipe several times to get anything to react. And when it reacted it did it so slowly it was unbelievable, despite the fact that there was a 2GHz Snapdragon processor in the slick looking little machine. All the hardware was unforgivably compromised by the terrible operating system.

The iPhone.
Back in the US the verbalization of my frustration proved to be too much for my colleagues, and they insisted that I get a new phone. And that if I had any brains left it would be an iPhone. I capitulated and asked Robert to go to the AT&T store exchange, the HTC for an iPhone, give them whatever amounts of money they wanted, and I promised to never bitch again.
OMG—why had I beat my head against the wall all these years? The iPhone was a delight from the moment. I took it out of the box. With no training, other than the limited familiarity I had gained from using other people’s iPhone’s I was quickly able to access my contact list, synchronize my calendar, make phone calls, and even take pictures
with its miserable little three megapixel camera. I conceded that I would go back to carrying a phone and a camera because of the sheer joy of the user experience with the iPhone.

Although the iPhone has all of the shortcomings previously mentioned, its user interface is so intuitive and so responsive that you quickly forget about those techie issues and simply use the phone, reading Email is not only possible but pleasurable, and a genuine productivity aid. The phone is also lightweight and responsive.

The only other phone that I have seen that looked like it might be useful, and I seriously considered getting, was the Motorola Droid. I played with friend’s Droid and found it to be responsive, have a nice screen, a so-so camera, and be lightweight. And if I’d had more time and wasn’t so utterly frustrated with my phone experience I probably would have invested little bit more time to go to the store to play with, and probably purchase a Motorola droid. However, one of the obstacles was my investment in AT&T phones, and AT&T’s policy with regard to trade in. If I want a Motorola Droid phone it will be my third phone, and there’s no way that AT&T would ever consider taking back the iPhone. If the N95 ever dies then the Motorola Droid would be my choice for a backup phone.

What have I learned from all this?

It’s the UI stupid! Regardless of the technical specifications, the user interface and speed of operation is clearly the most important criteria. I was willing to sacrifice several technical features, a difficult decision for a geek like me, for the convenience of having a phone that was easy to use. I don’t care about brand, style, or even weight. If the phone had what I considered advanced technical features that should be an investment protection then that would be the logical choice, or so it would seem. The reality of the situation is, none of that matters, and the only thing that’s important is how easy it is to use the phone. It’s been a hard, expensive, time-consuming learning experience, and having gone through it, I wonder how many millions of other people have suffered equally.

{extended}

First thoughts on CES and tablets

2010-01-10T23:30:09Z

CES has dawned bright and clear. The crowds have come and there is interest in buying – or at least that’s how it’s looking now. Plenty of news is coming out of CES, but in the PC world, tablets are consuming the attention of the buyers in the aisles as well as reporters, and we’re pretty fascinated as well.

For the past couple of years, Amazon and Sony have helped make a convincing case for the eBook as people are not only buying the devices, they’re downloading and reading more as well. In fact, according to a December report from the Association of American Book Publishers (AAP) eBook sales for the period of January-October 2009 reached $130.7 million compared to $46.6 million in 2008 – a 180.7% increase.The eBook uses an electrophoretic display and is designed to duplicate the experience of reading a book. The technology can offer customers extremely long battery life and most allow users to buy books from a variety of sources. The exception of course is the Amazon Kindle, which slightly changes their format for Amazon books so they cannot be read on other types of eBook. Amazon has, however created a nifty reader for the iPhone that can track your progress so that if you leave the Kindle at home, you can catch up on the iPhone. There are also ePub readers for iPhone including Stanza, claimed to be the most popular ePub reader and now owned by Amazon (conspiracy theories abound).

Clearly, the eBook is catching on. There was booth after booth of eBook after eBook all supporting the ePub standard (Sony joined the open crowd in August, but most eBooks are already there.

And then there’s the tablet or the slate or the great whatsit from Apple. The tablet can be many things but, in 2010 it seems to be a flat pad that’s light, inexpensive, and suitable for lolling around for a good read or a maybe a movie. The goal is that tablets be delivered for $200 or less.

Adobe has developed its Air technology for just such a device, and Microsoft has been working on Silverlight to do anything that Adobe does ... better. Adobe has been working with the publishing industry to create a platform for published material that can improve on the experience of reading newspapers and full color magazines or books. For instance, the New York Times could host full color, animated ads and the crossword puzzle can be filled in. The full color glossy ads that make Vanity Fair go can be reproduced in glorious color and animated or linked to more information.

Before CES it seemed the whole world was waiting for Steve. What would Apple introduce to save the publishing world? But during CES, Steve faded into the background as a variety of options for publishing sprang up. Doubtless, the fascination with Apple will ramp back up when everyone gets home and CES starts to fade from memory – about 2 seconds after the plane lands, but the gauntlet has been thrown by the PC world … or rather, lots of gauntlets have been thrown by the PC world and Apple might not get to define a segment as it has with the iPod and the iPhone.

In all this, however, there are several big ifs. Delivering a tablet capable with sprightly internet connections, streaming, video play, and at least some interactivity (if not full-on 3D gaming) for $200 doesn’t seem possible in the real near future.

But, and it’s a mighty big but, if tablets did get introduced at $200 or even $300 they are going to make life very, very tough for all those eBook vendors. They have no recourse but to dive for the bottom – competing on price. Over 2010, there’s going to be a lot of talk about tablets and by June or so, around the time of the Computex conference in Taiwan, there will be a variety of devices introduced and the prices will start creeping down. People will buy eBooks without a second thought, people might even have several eBooks, and the book stores will get new business.

There’s a lot to look forward to – maybe writers will start getting work again and artists will see new demand for their talents in creating new ads. Heck, trees might even breathe easier as the demand for printed materials declines.

{extended}

So long 2009, don’t let the door hit you in the behind

2009-12-15T21:23:30Z

To put together this list of notable events for 2009, I went back over old issues to see what we were talking about. What struck me besides the fact that a lot of really great stuff actually happened was that you can almost hear a continuous whine through the copy (mostly mine)—I’m tired, I don’t want to do this any more, when is it going to get better? In the future, would you please tell me to just shut up and get on with it? I’d appreciate it.

The thing is, it really wasn’t such a bad year in terms of the work that was done. As has been noted throughout the year, money has been tight but development has continued. Just have a look:

Carol Bartz joins Yahoo! and displays a facility with colorful language. So far, she’s raised the stock price and some blood pressures but the jury is still out.
Apple pulls out of several major trade shows including MacWorld, NAB, and IBC. The focus is on iPhone and does it their way.
Intel unleashes Atom and redefines the computer. Over the year, the Netbook will threaten conventional laptops until the market sorts itself out towards the end of the year.
Nvidia introduces 3D Vision and gamers put their 3D glasses back on.
ATI exists the mobile business, sells it off to Qualcomm and a bunch of worthy Finns discover the beauties of San Diego or they’ve started new enterprises including mobile software development teams at Lots, Draw Elements, and Ardites.
Microsoft lays off 5,000 people in the largest company wide layoff of its history. Most of the wreckage is in the game groups. Aces Studio shut down and Flight Sim crashes to a fiery grave.
Creative announces ZiiLabs, a new chip design house built form the 3DLabs and Creative design teams. They announced the ZMS-05 ARM-based SOC. Most recently the company announced a new 3.5G/4G smart phone platform in China.
Microsoft introduces Windows Mobile 6.5 and nothing happens.
Palm rolls out the Treo and gets a second chance.
Steve Perlman launches OnLive at GDC, nay sayers shake their heads as nay sayers are wont to do. By the end of the year, OnLive is working, and Investor Autodesk is running major apps using the technology.
Wide gamut color LED displays enter the market at the $2,000 range. HP leads the charge with Dream Color, Portrait Displays develops software to help users get “true” results.
Twitter, Facebook, and Social Networking go mainstream, big time. (And, by the way, JPR has just introduced a report on the subject by industry veteran Brad DeGraf.
Alioscopy introduces 3D monitors using lenticular technology that eliminates “stupid glasses.” The monitors, part of a French ecosystem that includes monitors, cameras, and software, arrive just as Philips leaves the field after deciding commercialization of lenticular technology will take too long. The French are concentrating on digital displays.
The enchanting Coraline arrives from director Henry Selick, and redefines 3D animation, stop motion, and obsessive behavior by filmmakers. The movie, knocked out of the theaters by Jonas Brothers 3D, will go down in history because its short run underlined the desperate need for more 3D theaters if 3D movies are to thrive.
Steve Jobs returns to Apple with a vengeance. New iPhones, iPods with video, new Macs, new iTV services, but the best is yet to come—the world spends 2009 speculating about new Apple tablet—the rebirth of Newton, according to some.
Unprecedented numbers of startups in web 3D arrive including Animeeple, Evolver, and Youwalk. Khronos announces new Web3D standard for accelerated 3D on the web.
Mental Images shows RealityServer on the job—realistic 3D renderings accessible online from any client.
Rendering takes center stage at Siggraph 2009 as Larrabee and Caustic threaten to change the economies of scale. New allegiances evolve for Lightworks, mental images, and Luxology. In December, Intel throws a confusion bomb and backs away from Larrabee.
ATI introduces EyeFinity, which enables up to six displays on one card thanks to the magic of high bandwidth DisplayPort and mini-DisplayPort connectors.
Nvidia and Cuda define the early stages of HPC. Autodesk puts Cuda to work to optimize Moldflow, declaring that the gains in performance justify developing for Nvidia’s graphics
platform.
New opportunities in embedded systems include eBooks. Adobe introduces eBook development tools and fosters an open market for non-Kindle eBooks. Marvell introduces the Armada platform for this market. Barnes and Nobel’s Nook arrives, followed by Spring Design’s Alex.

{extended}

Intel Will Never Buy Nvidia

2009-12-09T14:14:16Z

Someone just sent me an email and asked if I thought Intel might buy Nvidia now that Larrabee is dead. I would have just answered it and then disregarded it if I hadn’t gotten a phone call asking the same dumb question.

Intel won’t buy Nvidia for the following reasons:

Larrabee isn’t dead - there will be a Larrabee graphics chip, based on x86 architecture. There will be a whole family of Larrabee chips. Wishful thinking won’t make Intel or its ambitions go away. The company has, and continues to make, huge investments in the graphics technology and space.

Intel believes all esoteric architectures, of which they include the GPU ASIC, will fade away and only the X86 architecture will prove to be universal. It has endured for the past 40 years. As a recent proof, Intel points to the Cell processor.

The cultural differences, acrimony, and belligerences between Intel and Nvidia run so deep it would be impossible to blend the organizations without a few homicides.

It’s unlikely, regardless of how big Intel’s checkbook is, that the two companies could ever agree on the price.

The Nvidia BOD and shareholders of Nvidia would never approve a friendly acquisition by Intel, and Nvidia has a multi-voting technique that would delay any hostile attempt for over a year.

If Intel could buy Nvidia, one of the first things it would do would be to dump the ARM-based Tegra product just as they dumped the ARM-based XScale product, which they did because they think the x86 has a more promising and scalable future. Given the huge goodwill they’d have to pay to get Nvidia, selling off an asset at a breakeven point at best would hardly endear the company to Wall Street or its shareholders.

Intel doesn’t need Nvidia

But most important is the fact, and it is a fact, that Intel doesn’t think it needs Nvidia. The company has all the graphics IP it needs from Imagination Technologies, plus its own labs. It’s not that Intel couldn’t build a GPU, but rather that the company doesn’t see today’s GPU architecture as having long legs - they don’t think it will scale and it certainly can’t do MIMD. -To Intel, it is a dead end and why invest in that? I need to say this again because it really is a critical difference in the basic philosophies of the two companies. None of the events of the past week have had anything to do with hardware design. Yes GPUs are hard to design. So are CPUs. So is any billion transistor part. Intel simply doesn’t see a future for the conventional SIMD GPU architecture. Right or wrong, that’s where their analysis leads them, and you can huff and puff about it all you want, Intel is not going to change its mind on that matter.

It’s a naïve speculation

It’s naive to evaluate the computer industry as through it was a chess board and say if White takes bishop then Black has to take queen. It just doesn’t work that way, never has. Remember the rumors and speculation floating around when AMD bought ATI. Then the smart folks all knew for certain that Intel had to buy Nvidia. Most of the same reasons prevailed then as they now as to why that was absurd.

Then remember a year or so later when AMD’s fortunes looked bleak and the smart people knew for certain that Nvidia would buy AMD. Uninformed, unsophisticated, historically unfounded conclusions based on a bowling alley score card. The PC industry isn’t sport. If you want to forecast the industry you better understand its working parts, the history of its people, and the technologies within it.

Never say never

Another thing you learn if you’ve been in this industry a while is to never say never. So with that precaution I guess I can’t say Intel will never buy Nvidia, but if they do it won’t be the Nvidia we know today.

{extended}