Blogs

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.

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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.

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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.

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Larrabee past, present, future

2009-12-06T19:50:31Z

“Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we hoped to be at this point in the project,” said Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffe. “As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone discrete graphics product.” (December 4, 2009.)

After three years of bombast, Intel shocked the world by canceling Larrabee. Instead of launching the chip in the consumer market, Intel will make it available as a software development platform for both internal and external developers. Those developers can use it to develop software that can run in high-performance computers.

The following is an excerpt from an article in this week’s edition of Jon Peddie Research’s TechWatch bi-weekly report.

How it began

Larrabee was started in 2006 partially due to a conversation at the COFES conference between an industry consultant and some Intel guys. By 2007, the industry was pretty much aware of Larrabee, although details were scarce and only came dribbling out from various Intel events around the world. In August of 2007 it was known that the product would be x86, capable of performing graphics functions like a GPU, but not a “GPU” in the sense that we know them, and was expected to show up some time in 2010, probably 2H’10.

Speculation about the device, in particular how many cores it would have, entertained the industry, and maybe employed a few pundits, and several stories appeared to add to the confusion. Our favorite depiction of the device was the blind men feeling the elephant - everyone (outside Intel) claimed to know exactly what it was - and no one knew what it was beyond the tiny bits they were told.

What we did know was that it would be a many-core product (“Many” means something over 16 this year), would have a ring-communications system, hardware texture processors (a concession to the advantages of an ASIC), and a really big coherent cache. But most importantly it would be a bunch of familiar x86 processors, and those processors would have world-class floating point capabilities with 512 bit vector units and quad threading.

Who asked for Larrabee anyway?

Troubled by the GPU’s gain in the share of the silicon budget in PCs, which came at the expense of the CPU, Intel sought to counter the GPU with its own GPU-like offering.

There has never been anything like it and as such there were barriers to break and frontiers to cross, but it was all Intel’s thing. It was a project. Not a product. Not a commitment, not a contract, it was and is, an in-house project. Intel didn’t owe anybody anything. Sure they bragged about how great it was going to be, and maybe made some ill advised claims about performance or schedules, but so what? It was for all intents purposes an Intel project - a test bed, some might say a paper tiger, but the demonstration of silicon would make that a hard position to support.

So last week most of the program managers had tossed their red flags on the floor and said it’s over. We can’t do what we want to do in the time frame we want to do it. And, the unspoken subtext was, we’re not going to allow another i740 to ever come out of Intel ever again.

Now the bean counters took over. What was/is the business opportunity for Larrabee? What is the ROI? Why are we doing this? What happens if we don’t? A note about companies - this kind of brutal, kill your darlings examination is the real strength of a company.

Larrabee as it had been positioned to date would die. It would not meet Intel’s criteria for price-performance-power in the window it was projected - it still needed work - like Edward Scissorhands -it wasn’t finished yet. However, the company has stated that it still plans to launch a many-core discrete graphics product, but won’t be saying anything about that future product until sometime next year.

And so it was stopped. Not killed - stopped.

Act II

Intel invested a lot in Larrabee in dollars, time, reputation, dreams and ambitions, and exploration. None of that is lost. It doesn’t vanish. Rather, that work provides the building blocks for the next phase. Intel has not changed its investment commitment on Larrabee. No one has been fired, transferred or time shared. In fact there are still open reqs.

Intel has built and learned a lot. More maybe than they originally anticipated. Larrabee is an interesting architecture. It has a serious potential and opportunity as a significant co-processor in HPC, and we believe Intel will pursue that opportunity. They call it, “throughput computing.” We call “throughput computing” a YAIT ; yet another Intel term.

So the threat of Larrabee to the GPU suppliers shifts from the graphics arena to the HPC arena - more comfortable territory for Intel.

Next?

This is not the end of Larrabee as a graphics processor - this is a pause. If you build GPUs enjoy your summer vacation, the lessons will begin again.

Or will they?

Maybe the question should be - why should they?

Remember how we got started - one of the issues was the gain in silicon budget in PCs by the GPU at the expense of the CPU. There are multiple parameters on that including:

Revenue share of the OEM’s silicon budget
Unit share on CPU-GPU shipments
Mind share of investors and consumers
Subsequent share price on all of the above.

The discrete GPU unit shipments have a low growth rate. ATI and Nvidia hope to offset that with GPU compute sales; however, those markets will be slower to grow than have been the gaming and mainstream graphics markets of the past ten years.

Why would any company invest millions of dollars to be the third supplier in a flat to low growth market? One answer is the ASP and margins are very good. It’s better for the bottom line, and hence the PE to sell a few really high valued parts than a zillion low margin parts.

Why bother with discrete?

GPU functionality is going in with the CPU. It’s a natural progression of integration - putting more functionality in the same package. Next year we will see the first implementations. They will be mainstream in terms of their performance and won’t be serious competition in terms of performance to the discrete GPUs, but they will further erode the low end of the discrete realm. Just as IGPs stole the value segment from discrete, embedded graphics in the CPU will take away the value and mainstream segments, and even encroach on the lower segments of the performance range.

Relative growth of discrete desktop GPUs to integrated graphics

This means the unit market share of discrete GPUs will decline further. That being the case, what is the argument for investing in that market?

These are the questions Intel will have to wrestle with over the next six to twelve months.

Don’t be too quick to come up with the answer for them—83 million discrete parts a year with a good ASP and margin is a very attractive $10 billion business.

Management of the server cash cow business.

Last year after the Intel-Dreamworks announcement, when Dreamworks pledged allegiance to Intel’s processors and expressed their eagerness to put Larrabee to work we asked a senior Intel executive about the risk of losing their $100,000 server business to a couple of $500 Larrabee chips. He said, in a low voice, head slightly bowed, and clearing his throat, “yes, ..we’re, ah, trying to manage that…”

Problem solved. Larrabee is no longer a threat to the server business, it simply augments it. No doubt the Xeon folks will be happy to hear that.

Conclusion

Intel has made a hard decision and we think a correct one. Larrabee silicon was pretty much proven, and the demonstration at SC09 of measured performance hitting 1 TFLOPS (albeit with a little clock tweaking) on a SGEMM Performance test (4K by 4K Matrix Multiply) was impressive. Interestingly it was a computer measurement, not a graphics measurement. Maybe the die had been cast then (no pun intended) with regard to Larrabee’s future.

Intel’s next move will be to make Larrabee available as an HPC SKU software development platform for both internal and external developers. Those developers can use it to create software that can run in high-performance computers.

We think this makes a lot of sense, and leaves the door open for Intel to take a second run at the graphics processor market. The nexus of compute and visualization, something we discussed at Siggraph, is clearly upon us, and it’s too big and too important for Intel not to participate in all aspects of it.

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Nvidia and Starting the Next Age of Super Computing

2009-10-07T15:42:07Z

“I believe that we need something big and new every four years or so.” – Jen Hsun Huang

Nvidia has been planning to be in the super computer business for the past three years.

The company has had stellar growth since the internet melt down in 2001, and it has come to dominate almost every market it has entered, but Nvidia is now facing limited growth opportunities in its classical markets and new competition. Its main rival for graphics chips ATI has renewed itself with a winning and very challenging price/performance product design and positioning. Nvidia’s integrated chip business is declining (as it is for all integrated chip suppliers), and it will soon have heavy weight Intel competing in its mainstream desktop high-margin discrete GPU business. If ever the company was in a squeeze play, Nvidia is now.

However, one of Jen Hsun Huang’s key strengths is his long range vision. He shares that with investors, analysts, and press whenever the occasion allows and I’ve been surprised that some people continue to underestimate Huang’s advance planning. I was there 16 years ago when he had the vision for the gaming market, and I must confess I thought he was reaching a bit far but he systematically built for his vision and history has proved him right; and a lot of people have made money because of it.

When I examine the actions of the company over the past few years I see a clear line of logical investments and industry initiatives that leads directly to Fermi – Nvidia’s new super-computer processor. Others who see Fermi as a late to market, over-stuffed, and maybe underpowered graphics chip are in my opinion missing the point and may be missing the opportunity.
Yes, Fermi is late for the graphics market and Jen Hsun told an audience of press and analysts last week that he’s be much happier if he had a chip to go head to head with ATI but in the meantime he says Nvidia has been building a support system for Fermi’s launch. “There is pent up demand,” he said. “There are servers and computers being built to accommodate Fermi.” There aren’t very many companies, if any that can teach Nvidia how to build a graphics chip. No company in the world has the IP, personnel, hard won experience, or passion for graphics that Nvidia does. I say this as one who knows what’s going on inside all the graphics companies, as well as the work being done in universities and by developers. I’ve watched Nvidia closely for the past 16 years – they have the right stuff.

So if Nvidia hasn’t screwed up on graphics other than being late with Fermi, then what have they done?

When the industry went to unified shaders * with DirectX 10 in late 2006 Nvidia brought out the GeForce 8 series, and ATI had the Radeon HD 2000. Even little S3 had the Chrome 500, and Intel claimed the GMA x3000 could handle a little programmable shading. In fact, ATI actually had programmable shading back in 2004 inside the Xbox 360 and helped Microsoft write the spec for DirectX 10. So although Nvidia would like to take credit for inventing unified shaders, ATI was actually there ahead of them; however, ATI didn’t reveal (to me at the time at least) any notion of using it for anything more than an efficient graphics processor. (There’s more history to this involving 3Dlabs in 2003, but this is not an appropriate venue.)

If Ian Buck (developer of Brook at Stanford, now at Nvidia on CUDA) is credited with seeing the potential of GPU-computing then Nvidia is credited with getting it when Buck spoke - and lest we forget – Nvidia has very strong ties to Stanford and other universities.

I think that’s when the light went on in Jen Hsun’s head and his generals quickly caught on if they hadn’t already figured it out. And that’s when the following event began to unfold – consider this time line - and note – none of it has anything to with graphics.

Date	Event	Impact
May 2003	Introduces first programmable shader GPU	The beginning of exposing the parallel processing capabilities of the GPU.
July 2003	Ian Buck introduces first GPU compute lecture	The constructs for generalized GPU programming are exposed
March 2005	GPU Gems book released by Nvidia	First book on how to program a GPU for parallel processing
January 2006	Acquires Stexar	X86 architects and engineers formally with Intel brings Nvidia CPU know how.
April 2007	GeForce 8000 (G80) released	First GPU with unified shaders – the basis of GPU compute
October 2006	CUDA launched	Sets up programming environment for Nvidia GPUs, develops new C compliers, lays out middleware platform for computing environment
November 2006	Stanford lecture	Ian Buck on how CUDA can solve compute intensive problems, and where GPU computing will be going in the future is discussed – wakes up industry and universities.
September 2007	Parallel programming classes	First course taught at University Illinois. Creates a generation of CUDA programmers who will go into industry with that bias.
October 2007	University Illinois submits spec to DOE for super computer project	Defines all the parameters needed for a new class of supercomputers, and they show up in Fermi
February 2008	Nvidia acquires Ageia	Get’s physics software library for CUDA – direct competition to Intel’s Havok acquisition
February 2009	FORTRAN added to CUDA	The language of scientific computing – now all old code can be threaded and re-complied.
September 2009	Nexus introduced for Visual Studio	The first off-the-shelf implementation of development tools giving developers access to the CPUs and GPUs in a system.

I believe Fermi is the finalization of a long term plan by Nvidia to participate in a new very large market and offset a loss of growth from its traditional markets. And ironically (and strangely not played on by Nvidia) the company’s new Fermi product was introduced on Enrico Fermi’s birthday, September 29, 2009.

* GPUs have hundreds of 32-bit processors in them. These processors were developed to run small specialized programs that were used to make computer graphics images better. Initially, they performed pixel shading only. However, the term stuck and is used for other graphics pipeline stages now, and has come to mean “processor.”

In the early 2000s there were two types of processors in a graphics chip – the front end processor that became known as the vertex shader - it dealt with setting up the geometry of the model or scene. And there was a back-end processor known as a pixel shader. These two independent and similar processors were never in balance; one would be idle while the other was busy.

It was decided to have just one type of processor and apply as many of them as needed to the work at hand – vertex and/or pixel, and so that became the “unified shader.”

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Different strokes: AMD and Nvidia’s approaches are diverging in more ways than one

2009-10-06T19:55:37Z

It’s often hard in this business to draw clear lines separating two vendors’ technologies or products, as often they tend to converge on common solutions, the result of tackling the same problem with the same vision and set of priorities. And while it wouldn’t be right to say the latest generations of GPU technology from Nvidia and AMD are apples and oranges — they aren’t — the two companies are both very consciously differentiating themselves, both with respect to the goals that are shaping their technology decisions and in how they’re packaging up that technology to deploy products.

GPU-compute representing different paths and priorities for the two graphics vendors

Ever since the GPU-compute movement began building grassroots momentum in university labs earlier this decade, we’ve tried to both extol its virtues and temper enthusiasm at the same time. The emergence of GPU-compute has absolutely represented an avenue for then-ATI and Nvidia to expand beyond graphics, first into niche, high-demand, stream-oriented floating-point applications and subsequently into broader-based applications with some genuine mainstream consumer appeal. And looking further beyond, the potential is now there to change the face of computing forever, with AMD and Intel both planning their own takes on the heterogenous platforms of the future, a culmination of which will have had its roots in GPU-compute.

But any new avenue for growth presents risk as well, not just in the sense that that hot new market never quite blossoms as hoped, but more so that in pursuing the path to tomorrow’s riches, one neglects the core markets responsible for paying today’s bills. Translation to the graphics industry: make sure your company’s poised to cash in on whatever new opportunities GPU-compute might uncover, but don’t ever forget that it’s 3D gaming that’s filling the coffers. Not an easy line to walk.

To date, the decisions AMD and Nvidia have made in shaping generation after generation of GPU have shown the two vendors understood the challenge. While both have been vocal advocates of GPU-compute technology, Nvidia has been particularly proactive in fostering its development, understanding what the stumbling blocks have been and working to eliminate them. The company’s hired GPU-compute pioneers (e.g. Ian Buck, Mark Harris) and tasked software engineers with developing a programming model, environment and tools to facilitate application development for GPUs in a manner consistent with CPU coding.

All those things cost money, but they don’t necessarily detract from gaming. And when it came to choosing what would be designed into GPUs like the G70 and even the G80 (the first to more formally address GPU-compute needs), Nvidia wasn’t building any big-ticket items that didn’t directly contribute to first-person shooter frame rates. Throw desperate and self-sufficient GPU-compute developers a bone, but not at the expense of gamers. That’s been the modus operandi of the past few generations, and it’s been a very sensible one.

Double-precision arithmetic’s a great example. Critical to address promising GPU-compute applications like financial modeling, 64-bit floating point offers negligible value for gaming, and to be honest, 3D graphics in general. And a high-performance implementation in silicon means substantial incremental cost over single precision. Now, Nvidia at one time hinted its G92 part would have FP64 in hardware. But then it backed off, most likely because the company figured it just wasn’t worth risking any potential delays in schedule to get it in. And when double-precision did finally show up in the GT200, it came at a significant reduction in performance, so as not to chew up too much die area.

AMD still talks and acts gaming-first, GPU-compute second. With its Evergreen generation and the RV870 GPU, the company’s taking that familiar position. Sure, it’s giving GPU-compute the necessary attention, both in its marketing and its architecture, which bends but doesn’t break for anything but 3D rendering. But when push comes to shove, it’s unequivocally shoving the gaming merits of its technology in the faces of anyone who’ll listen.

Nvidia’s walked a similar walk in the past, but this time seems to be taking a very different — consciously different — tone with Fermi. More willing to stick its neck out to aggressively pursue high-demand non-graphics applications, Nvidia has pushed GPU-compute to the forefront of its marketing campaign. And in doing so, it’s kicked gaming down a notch, if not by intent, then by default.

Compare the tone of the Fermi unveiling with that of the previous GT200 generation. When the GT200 was launched, yes disclosures incorporated a specific thread explaining and pitching the merits of the architecture for GPU-compute. And even the nomenclature used to describe the architecture was two-pronged; there was one set of terminology to describe how the architecture rendered 3D and another to characterize its behavior for more generalized computing applications. And when it came to demonstrating hardware or quantifying performance, cutting-edge 3D games were the obvious choice.

What a difference this time around. Not only was the Fermi unveiling not timed in conjunction with, say, the Game Developer Conference, but done in the company’s keynote for its inaugural GPU Compute Developer conference, an event specifically geared to promote GPU technology to solve problems beyond rendering. Rather than hear about vertices, pixels or texels, we instead had our attention turned to double-precision FLOPs, ECC and C++. Heck, Fermi’s support for DirectX 11 was almost an afterthought we missed completely, particularly telling considering how much we’d think Nvidia would want to take the air out of AMD’s DX 11 superiority. And as a showcase, Nvidia didn’t pick the hottest 3D game du jour; it trotted out Oak Ridge National Laboratories touting a new PetaFLOP supercomputer in the offing planned around Fermi.

And it’s not just in marketing that the marked difference in Nvidia’s posture manifests itself. Where the G80 and GT200 made clear compromises in GPU-compute support, with Fermi the company appears to be much more willing to take on cost and risk to optimize for applications that aren’t simply painting 3D scenes. The laundry list of features included for GPU-compute is long, and we’re not talking just small-ticket items either. Where the GT200’s double-precision support was more of the just-make-it-work-whatever-the-speed variety, Fermi’s runs at just half the speed of single-precision. Where rival AMD chose modest EDC (error detection code) support to flag transmission errors introduced on the GDDR accesses, Nvidia went full bore with across-the-board ECC (single-bit correction) supporting all internal and external memory. Again, there’s stuff in there that’s for the most part meaningless to 3D rendering and games, but it adds cost and complexity. Then throw in a multitude of enhancements, including ISA and address space changes, to support C++, OpenCL and DirectCompute.

It’s hard to quantify, but the incremental risk and cost for GPU-compute in Fermi seemed to cross a line in the sand (silicon?); these are no longer just bones Nvidia’s tossing out to keep GPU-compute advocates just happy enough to keep them in line. There’s some real meat there. And beyond point feature support, it’s the big-picture feel of the technology that hits us; the entire architecture appears shaped with a GPU-compute mindset more than 3D. Before, it felt like we were seeing a 3D rendering architecture that could handle some non-graphics tasks well, but now we’re looking at a general-purpose architecture that still supports 3D. It’s not so subtle a difference.

There are perfectly good explanations for the shift in Nvidia’s posture, particularly in contrast to AMD. As an x86 company with a foot firmly in the CPU business (OK, “firmly” is quite arguable today, but you know what we mean), AMD doesn’t have to stick its neck out on the debate over whether or not the GPU will take big chunks of the CPU’s computing markets. But Nvidia, despite its recent foray into ARM-based Tegra SoCs, isn’t an established CPU vendor and has no x86 IP (at least none we know of and none the company will fess up to). So if it doesn’t want to risk losing significance as an industry player five or ten years from now, it knows it can’t sit on the sidelines to wait and see how this evolving architectural heterogeneity plays out. It’s got to be in the mix, doing whatever it can to ensure a future more line with its strengths than its weaknesses. And the time to do so is now, considering both Intel and AMD begin integrating GPUs into CPUs next year (Intel first with Westmere’s MCM solution).

We’re not saying Nvidia’s turned its back on gaming; the company isn’t dumb. But seems as if it realized it was at the point that in order to secure a prominent seat at the computing table of tomorrow, it had to make a clear-cut choice; no longer can it afford to sit on the fence. Play it more conservative, and stay satisfied milking the discrete GPU market for as long as it can, even if it means the company might have to live with being a second-tier supplier down the road. Or go all-in, throw down as much money, know-how and persistence you can muster behind your vision of where computing should be headed. And then make it happen and damn the consequences. Well, it’s never been Jen-Hsun’s style to be wishy-washy, so all-in it is.

AMD may have backed off on mega-chips, but Nvidia hasn’t

With its last two generations of GPU, including the just-unwrapped RV870 “Cypress” (the first of the Evergreen family), AMD has consciously departed from both companies’ past pattern of GPU design by focusing on a more modest size (thereby cost-effective) die, then using multi-chip designs to scale up to higher performance and price tiers. It’s what AMD calls its “Sweet Spot” strategy.

But while Nvidia could have taken the opportunity to re-think its own historical strategy of building the biggest, baddest chip it could (the GT200 being a great example), it didn’t. It’s gone about designing its next generation Fermi with one goal in mind: ultimate performance, whatever the cost. Yes, more generalized high-performance processing is certainly on its mind, but as we’ve pointed out, the company knows fully well that GeForce and Quadro are paying the bills. It can’t scrimp on GeForce; specifically, it can’t scrimp on GeForce performance.

Nvidia’s GeForce remains the brand of choice for hard-core gamers and computer enthusiasts. Despite the recent inroads AMD has made in price/performance — particularly with the Radeon HD 4800 series — Nvidia has by and large held the performance crown, when it comes to both single and dual GPU models. In its most recent results (as of this writing) from its graphics hardware survey, Steam once again reported Nvidia with a wide lead over AMD. Almost two-thirds of all surveyed indicated they used an Nvidia card, while less than a quarter of users stood by AMD. Nvidia recognizes that winning benchmark titles, not price/performance rankings, is the big reason it’s achieved that status. So there was likely little internal debate as to what Fermi had to accomplish when it’s turn to don the GeForce brand came.

Having been beaten to launch by AMD’s Evergreen family, Nvidia has at least temporarily lost the performance crown it covets (http://www.jonpeddie.com/reviews/comments/testing-the-ati-radeon-hd-5870/). Depending on when Fermi appears on shelves and on the gaming performance it delivers when it arrives — AMD’s going to enjoy touting its performance leadership for at least a good three months or so (and throughout the important holiday 2009 buying season). Nvidia’s going to be anxious to take back the crown, and it likely will, but it’ll have had to sacrifice chip cost (and possibly schedule as well as margins) to do it.

Fermi isn’t going to be small or cheap. How big? Well, Nvidia hasn’t said, but we can take a stab a few ways. For example, where the GT200 implemented 1.4 billion transistors, Fermi pushes the number to an excess of 3 billion. Extrapolating the GT200’s size by transistor growth, and taking into account the process shrink, would bring us to 475 mm2. Or we could extrapolate instead by the number of CUDA cores and again apply the shrink, which would get us again to around 500 mm2. Or finally, 3 billion is about 50% more than the transistor count AMD has advertised for the RV870. Given that AMD’s RV870 sits at 334 mm2 (in a 40 nm process, likely the same that Nvidia is using), we can extrapolate the RV870’s size out to again about 500 mm2. By all counts then, we’re talking about 500 mm2, which would be 50% larger than the RV870, and at a minimum 50% more expensive. In reality, however, and depending on defect density, the premium will likely be substantially higher than that.

No, we don’t have two vendors with the same strategy in mind. AMD’s aiming for aggressive price/performance, while Nvidia is making sure it won’t lose in raw performance. AMD continues to position gaming as its focus, addressing other opportunities that don’t stray too far off the path. Nvidia’s throwing more caution to the wind, betting on a future where the GPU won’t just be important, it will be indispensable, and high-performance 3D will end up being just one of its many compelling applications.

No guts, no glory. More so than any previous generation, Nvidia’s future rests with the success of Fermi. It’s the gauntlet being thrown at the feet of both AMD and Intel, preempting all the hybrid computing solutions the CPU vendors promise, including Westmere, Larrabee and Fusion. If Nvidia wants to bet the farm, Fermi’s a fine way to go about it.

It just better get here soon.

{extended}

Marking 101 - Increasing Your Product, Service Street Cred

2009-09-17T16:24:05Z

When our kids were growing up, they asked us what we did…really?? The answer changes … constantly. Over the past 20 + years in the PC/CE/communications marketplace, we’ve had to learn and relearn our job 40-50 times. Every time the industry changes, every time the communications avenues shift; life/opportunities change.

Since the Internet (recently celebrated its 40th anniversary) and Web came into their own; editorial and promotional outlets/targets have shifted…dramatically. We all read the same studies, the same reports—WOM (word of mouth) is the most effective marketing/sales tool available.

Yet PR people – at the cattle prodding of management – constantly target the same reviewers again and again. You know – PC Mag, PC Wld, MacWld, Max PC, Laptop, WSJnl, NYTimes, WashPost, Dvice, BizWk, Fin Times, Videomaker, Pop Photo, (your favorite title/site/blog here)… There are thousands of these reviewers in the Americas and around the globe, and they must be breeding because every week a new publication, new review site, new “tech” blog is introduced. Like good little communications people, we check them out and give them a try. BAM!!! Add another “great review” outlet to the target list.

Don’t get us wrong…they’re important.

They were great when we worked to introduce the Atari Lynx (now there was a portable game system!) and the Portfolio (a really cool palmtop computer!). But recently, we received a review from Tom, a regular guy we’ve gotten to know over the past year, who likes to check out the latest and greatest in technology and talk/write about it. He discusses it on his morning TV show. He writes about it in his Facebook space. And lately, he’s added a new dimension to his coverage (at our urging). He publishes his review impressions on the open forum customer review sites.

When we read his write up, it got us thinking how valuable and how credible his discussion, his analysis really were.

Regular People

Professional journalistic reviewers always slip on their techie reviewing cloak when they test/try a product. They test, retest, analyze and then write their reviews very carefully, very analytically.

But our “regular guy” user/reviewer in Atlanta writes articles that are fun to read. They’re exciting, enthusiastic, and technically pretty darned accurate. His work is credible. It is real!

He is like a lot of user group folks—there are over 500 Mac and PC user groups across the country. There are similar photo/video, home entertainment, mobile device user groups in online and physical communities around the globe. These are people who come together and pay dues for camaraderie and to learn more about using the constantly changing technology. We’ve worked with hundreds of them over time to do product reviews with varying degrees of success.

Still, management asks why waste our time and the product with these amateurs? Focus on the “real” reviewers…the people who count. Wait a minute…these are real reviewers, real users, real customers, real people who talk to real people! Isn’t that what you want?

And the comebacks are:

They don’t know how to use the product? The ordinary user may/may not be technically inclined, but then neither are most of the people who buy the product at the store or online.
They don’t follow the user/reviewer’s guide when they’re testing? Yep, that’s what customers do!
Your media reviewers reach thousands and millions. These folks only reach three or a dozen? Yes and those three/dozen tell three/dozen and …

And the more traditional uses of social networking? … Aw c’mon, do you think an ad, a sales presentation or company person chatting on any of the thousands of social sites will move consumers to plunk down their credit card or hard earned money? Why should they? People today are only a few key clicks away from learning first-hand what results and comments other real people have made about the company, the product, the organization’s service. These people tap into the real user reviews/comments/reports and make their decision.

Hey…we finally understand this WOM thing—this buzz stuff—really works.

{extended}

Siggraph!

2009-08-11T00:17:05Z

For a recession, in an off-the-beaten-track southern city, in the dead of summer, Siggraph had a robust turnout, My guess was that about 18k pixel-loving souls made the trek, but the actual count was a little over 11k. I saw a lot of old friends, some from Japan, some from Redmond, some from Holland, France, and Finland – so the show was enough of a magnet for some people to make that kind of time and money investment in these challenging economic times.

The emerging technologies had its usual array of wacky wonderful weird things; one of the most impressive was a huge feathery like thing that responded to presence but not touch, it was almost impossible to photograph and equally difficult to leave as glittery light filament ferns waved alluringly, and swished seductively.

Kathleen Maher wanders into light field

Siggraph 2009 was the show of renderers – There were at least ten rendering companies exhibiting which is as high a percentage as I can remember except for the mid nineties. High speed real time ray tracing was shown by three companies plus several others who showed fast rendering with ray tracing or very high-quality ray tracing that wasn’t quite as fast. The message was clear, we are entering a new era of rendering effects and realism (if realism is what you want).

On the hardware side Nvidia showed a new giant frame buffer that allow a screen of 2k x 2k to be rendered directly - used in visualization.

AMD showed DirectX 11 and OpenCL and claimed to be the first with both.

Intel was talking privately about Larrabee and rumors floated about a development system being available with real Larrabee silicon.

I spent a good portion of the show in meetings so there may have been more stuff and I missed it. Pixar had a 2/3 size house from UP. People just couldn’t get enough photos of themselves standing in front of it.

In the stereo session we were treated to a demo of the new Crytek 3 engine for Crysis with built in stereo and it looked pretty good, no, it looked great. There was also a new racing game, “Need for Speed,” from EA was amazing looking and in action.

Ah, and then there was the food, OMG…

{extended}

Chaos in stereovision land

2009-05-28T22:45:57Z

This is moment of great opportunity

I’ve been attending and speaking at stereovision conferences for the past year or so. As a matter of fact, I just spent three days in Paris at the Dimension3 Conference and Expo where there was a lot of great information shared by people actually trying to make stereovision work.

As it turns out I have a lot to say about the subject having worked in and with stereo for several decades. As I and others have reported there are conflicting proposed standards in the cinema, for the TV, the PC, and handheld devices. All four platforms have and/or will have stereovision capabilities (erroneously being marketed as “3D”, a throwback to silly movies of the fifties.)

I won’t go into the litany of standards or their pros and cons; you can find that in the pages of our TechWatch reports. Rather I’d like to opine about what it all means, this abundance of proposed technologies for tricking your eyes, brain, and pocketbook into believing your seeing an image in space with depth qualities.

Of the dozen or so competing technologies for capture and display, and potentially, distribution (although that seems to be being left to existing infrastructures), no single one really provides a universal solution for a single platform let alone the four we have now. The lack of multiplatform compatibility isn’t the problem, because we don’t really have that now for flat images, movies are different than TV, which is different than handheld devices and PCs – we can (and do) live with that.

Without an accepted or sanctioned stereovision “standard” for any platform the various suppliers of proposed solutions, including standards bodies, will jockey for dominance hoping to become a de facto standard if not an agency blessed standard. De facto standards have worked well and often can get an industry moving faster than a standards body being ruled by committee. Microsoft and Intel are examples of the success of de facto standards in the PC industry, Technicolor, is an example in cinema, and ARM is in handhelds. All the others are pilot fish clinging to these sharks.

With no giant company to impose a de facto standard as we have in the PC industry, the cinema industry is being buffeted by three to six companies. Almost all of them have “wins” to point to that they say prove the value and significance of their solution – all of them are of course wrong, and the winner, when and if there is one, will be the one that satisfies the most requirements – which is seldom the most elegant or sophisticated solution – e.g., 24 fps sprockets in the cinema, ATSC TV in the US.

And as frustrating as that is for some, not the least of which are the hapless consumers, it is the moment in time when great opportunity exists. Think back to AC DC and voltage level wars in the early days of electricity distribution, or the battles over spectrum allocation in the developing days of TV, or for that matter internet organization and packet design.

And yet out of all those, and many other wars came either real (i.e., agency backed) or de facto standards that we have learned to life with. In some cases the standards have even worked out to be the desireable solutions. When those standards were finally established a few companies made fortunes, while others are forgotten. It’s the law of survival and what makes capitalism work.

Place your bets

So the time is now to place your bets. Who do you think will be the winner? Think back if you had been around and had bet on Westinghouse (instead of Edison Electric) at the turn of the century, or RCA just before WWII (instead of Columbia Broadcasting or Dumont), or Intel in 1970 (instead of Fairchild).

It may take some time for a winner to emerge, and just as it has happened in other media deployments, it may be regional winners, one for Europe, one for north America, one for Asia. The consumer, if given a choice, a visible comparative choice will of course be decider. If movies using technology A for stereovision are less comfortable or enjoyable than technology B, the box office will reflect that, all things (like quality of content) being equal. And maybe the cinema will simply adopt all as it does now with audio (notice at the end of the credits roll Dolby, DTS, SDDS, and THX are all listed.)

It may not be a unilateral surrender like we saw in the BD HD DVD wars, in some cases large capital equipment investments are being made by the studios and the exhibitors, and as long a they can get content for their solution they may live on. But in the case of the cinema there are such massive fortunes riding on this it’s unlikely two or solutions can coexist let alone survive – there will be casualties. The same is true for TV, which will most likely be the last platform to get a standard. The handheld platform could be first because autosereoscoptic represents a logical solution and provides a 3D display without hardware overhead. And next will be the PC although right now the two major competing solutions from Nvidia and IZ3D seem to be able to coexist.

The mistake I always make is to vote on the side of technology, and this probably isn’t going to be a technology driven solution. Place your bets, fortunes are going to be made in the next five years.

{extended}

A Theory of Wiivolution

2009-05-28T22:45:27Z

The Wii SD; Factors for Success.

There’s no question that the Nintendo Wii SD (the current standard definition Wii) has been a huge success. With sales of over 50 million units, it has almost single-handedly changed the video game industry by drawing people to gaming that probably would not have made the shift with the other offerings on the market.

The more obvious factors that Nintendo had going for it were a very large and devoted fan base and the revolutionary controller. Nintendo’s ultra-fan base, consisting of some 20 million gamers, are people with such rabid brand enthusiasm that they are comparable to the Apple Computer and Harley Davidson nutsos, and would just as soon get a Mario or Zelda tattoo than pick up the controller of a competing console company. The controller while representing a paradigm shift in game play, was viewed with a wii bit of skepticism by many including myself, and was a huge risk for Nintendo.

Having seen the machine in action, named Revolution at the time, it obviously a quality product. However, the deciding factor for my prediction for Wii’s success had less to do with the actual console than it did with the technology of television sets of the time. The competition; Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, for all intents and purposes, were designed for HDTV, and so I refer to them as the HD consoles.

There are about 1.1 billion television households worldwide. At the time of the Wii’s release around 18 million (1.64%) of those households were equipped with HDTV’s. So for over one billion TV households, the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 were simply not an option worth investing in. Ok perhaps a small chunk of the HD console sales did go to SDTV households who either bought in anticipation of a television upgrade or were willing to wing it, but certainly not the vast majority.

I believed that at least 75 million households were ready for a new console gaming experience in 2006 but that people were not going to adopt HDTV’s as fast as the television manufacturers, cable companies, trade organizations, and their respective “analysts” would have us believe. So, combined with the obvious qualities of the Wii, this television phenomenon has been, and will continue to be, a major component in Nintendo’s strategy and success.

The Wii HD; Factors for Release

There has been much speculation lately for when the next generation of consoles will hit the market. Major video game company CEOs, pundits, and even the console manufacturers have made statements that would lead people to believe this generation has very long legs. Combined with influence from the economic downturn, I would have to agree and would not expect Microsoft to release a new console until at least 4Q 2012. Depending on the state of technology and pricing, Sony may wait years longer.

But what about good old Nintendo? I believe Nintendo executives will analyze the potential market for Wii HD with a slightly different metric than the competition. The difference is that, based on HDTV owners having a higher probability of being a video game console purchaser. And also that in the coming years, HDTV will represent the default technology for TV replacement, unlike currently and in the past where HDTV represented an “upgrade” from the standard and a major technological shift.

I am currently forcasting that the HDTV penetration level that Nintendo will base their decision on is 100 million households worldwide. That estimate could be conservative so let’s peg the release window from 4Q 2010 to 4Q 2011. This is based on an assumption that unemployment will stabilize and recede from it’s current level. If not, the forecast may have to be adjusted.

So there you have it. Ted Pollak’s Theory of Wiivolution. Nintendo counted how many TVs were not HD for the Wii SD and will count how many TVs are HD for it’s successor. The push button launch date, however, is more up to us than Nintendo executives. So go out and buy an HDTV if you want Nintendo to release the Wii HD sooner rather than later. And for goodness sake, when you shell out the cash for this expenseive piece of hardware, use the wrist strap for the Wiimote lest you create an expensive pane of modern art.

Epilogue: This HDTV factor, while working in favor of the Wii, is also a thorn in the side of Xbox 360 and PS3. We suspect this will change as penetration deepens, but some recent news helps highlight the current situation. According to NPD, in the month of April the PS2 outsold the PS3 by 35%. Granted the PS2 is down to $100 bucks and has a huge library of software, we think the HDTV factor influences this just as much. Simply amazing, the PS2 is almost a decade old and is outselling (albetit temporaily) the PS3. If someone over at Sony were to develop a motion controller for the PS2 and price the machines at $200, Nintendo may have to shift their strategy.

{extended}

My life on free; why Gutenberg and a bunch of monks are rolling in their graves

2009-05-24T21:03:31Z

Let me tell what I did for a few hours today.

I opened up a short story I wrote seven years ago. I used Open Office Writer, a free and very powerful, fully compatible, word-processor to do do my edits. Then I went to Wordpress and registered for a blog page. Then I installed in my free Firefox web browser (I have three actually, Firefox, Opera, and Safari) a tool for converting from “word” files to HTML for blog entries, called ScribeFire. I took my word-processor file, which I had saved in Word 2007 format and and dropped it in Scribefire. Told Scribefire where my blog was and click, done, my blog was posted and it was time to open a nice Cabernet.

Not counting word-processing (i.e., “creative”) time the total operation (installing, registering, cutting and pasting, etc., took less than two hours. Cost - $0.00 unless you count my lost opportunity time, except that I would have done this even if I had to pay for the software.

Is this Web 2.0? Is free the new business model?

I don’t know how these sites can afford to do what they are doing. OK, the software development or licensing is not that expensive, but it needs maintenance and bug fixes. And then there are the servers, and sure, hardware costs are dropping, but still there’s electricity to be paid for and probably cooling (and that’s definitely not dropping.) And some schlub has to keep those blades and cheapo servers running, OS up to date, routers and switchers maintained, etc. That’s ops cost and money to pay for it has to come from somewhere.

But they do it, and have done it. Google will give you a fine office suite for free and store all your docs. Why? just so you’ll have to look at their customer’s ads when you log in to get your free stuff? Have you ever refinanced your house, got a college degree, bought insurance, a new car, or sex enhancement products because you saw an ad while logging in to get your free stuff? So it’s a mystery to me how this stuff is paid for. But you know what my grandmother used to tell me? The best way to ruin a miracle is to try and explain it. The corollary to that may be this: any new technology looks like magic to the ignorant.

Everything I’ve done tonight while writing this has been free except the hardware I’ve done it on. And let’s look at that. An HP mininote netbook - $400 retail. So let’s start at the beginning - I invest $400 (which includes a Microsoft OS) and write this, and post it to my blog. That makes me a publisher, and with my free email program I can blast my posting to the world and get more distribution than the largest book chain, newspaper, or magazine - larger than even the TV networks - and I only used about 30 watts of power and it’s at night when kw hr are cheap. And it’s all free. At least to me.

How in the world are companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, and Corel going to survive? Why would anyone buy their stuff? OK, HP bought Microsoft’s OS or I wouldn’t be writing this. But… open Office, Linux, hmmm.

{extended}

The Biggest Untapped Opportunity in Home Entertainment

2009-05-17T23:23:56Z

The biggest untapped opportunity in home entertainment is interactive television. I know I am not the first to say this but there seems to be a belief that iTV has a tech barrier around it, and that we are not “there yet” technologically.

I believe there IS a currently achievable form of iTV and think the first logical step, which would be widely accepted, economically viable, and a true a paradigm shift in home entertainment, is an alternative data presentation screen, or overlay, for sports programming.

This type of enhancement for television sports viewing could actually start right now, with no revolutionary technology. The immediately realizable version of this would be simply another channel that is devoted to synchronous presentation of sports data simulcast with a live sporting event. The television user could either use the split screen capability of their television or use the “channel flash” button which allows jumping back and forth between channels. The split screen capability has less penetration, having only been a feature of high end televisions in the past, but is becoming more prevalent. Another challenge is that many cable boxes nullify the dual tuners in televisions that do have this capability. However the “channel flash” button has been a standard for over a decade and would be the easiest and most widely accessible “interactive trigger”.

The audio from the primary video channel of the event would be simulcast on the data channel and the data channel could even go to commercial breaks simultaneously as well. (Although I personally can’t wait until we can get around this).

I primarily follow the video game industry and the reason I am so interested in interactive television, even though the user is not playing a game, is because the game developers and modding community are designing interfaces and alternative viewing screens which I believe will eventually become the model for iTV data presentation.

An F1 Racing Data Presentation Screen from a video game. (Source: rFactor Central / BeBa)

An even deeper form of iTV, which may be technologically achievable right now, is for the user to have the ability to actively manipulate a data presentation screen such as the one presented in the figure above. This would require a gaming console or dedicated device connected to the internet. A gaming console which could receive a feed of data over the internet from a sporting event could theoretically create an alternative data “channel” which is independent of the television programming itself or a data “overlay” which could be adjusted in size, position, color, transparency, etc. The user could define a delay in the real time update so that spoilers are not a problem and the presentation is more finely synchronized with the event. Of course the non-real time features are perhaps the largest benefit would have no issues with synchronization, such as obtaining data about a race car or the history of a driver.

Interactive television is represents another tangent for video game technology and it brings together two very active audience segments—gamers and sports fans. There is already quite a bit of overlay here and it will be interesting to see how this intersection spawns new applications.

{extended}

Rating of AIBs and motherboards and the new consumer

2009-04-20T19:40:07Z

We have all seen the excellent work various web site and analysts (including us) have done over the years in comparing the latest graphics AIBs, and more recently the new graphics enabled motherboards. Some have been more thorough than others, but all contain performance measurements from 3Dmark/Vantage and/or FPS in game play. And for the high-end game enthusiast where performance is everything, that’s enough. But is it enough for the rest of us?

Now that the world is starting to come out of the financial shock of 2008 we (analyst types) can see that there will be a new consumer for the next two years or so. The tightening of credit, the exposure of many to financial disaster, and our global awareness of the problems experienced by people worldwide has changed our collective behavior and attitude even among those less effected by the financial downturn.

There will be less frivolous, impulsive, and irrational buying, and when purchases are made, they will be more value based. People will want to get the most bang for the money. We have also become ‘green’ aware (finally) and so the new consumer will be sensitive to those parameters as well. Consumers might not make green considerations their first criteria for purchase, but a few will and many others will factor in “greenness”.

Budget, and benchmarks per buck will be the most common first evaluation, and I think that will even reach into the lunatic fringe (count me in that group) and the enthusiast – yes, we’ll want the highest benchmark score, but the delta benchmark can’t exceed the delta cost.

In a recent evaluation by Tom’s Hardware (April 8, 2009) on an Intel and an Nvidia motherboard: “G45 And GeForce 9400: Integrated Chipsets For Core 2 : Intel Or Nvidia?,” Tom’s Hardware Guide (THG) did a great and fair job of evaluating the relative performance of the two motherboard’s integrated graphics (IGPs) chips, and showed the Nvidia mobo to be a clear winner with an overall 3DMark Vantage score (CPU and GPU) of 4358 using a 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad Q9950 vs 1690 for the Intel mobo with the same CPU.

The two mobos are pretty much equal with the biggest difference being Intel having 10 shaders running at 800MHz, and Nvidia’s IGP having 16 shaders running at 1.2 GHz. In non-performance items Intel has more USB and PCI support than the Nvidia board.

An article by Anandtech’s (October 15th, 2008), “The IGP Chronicles Part 3: Nvidia’s GeForce 9300,” lists the idle power consumption of the two IGPs as 68.4 W for the Intel mobo and 69.6 W for the Nvidia mobo, and under load (Anandtech chose Company of Heroes as the test) the two mobos, with cool & quiet enabled, drew 96.1W and 88.2 W respectably.

And with a little web search I was able to find an Intel Desktop Board DG45ID for $110, and a DFI LAN GF9400-T2RS Nvidia board for $130.

So listing those three factors (benchmark, price, and power) you get dramatically different results on a single parameter basis.

A better Mark

As a consumer I want the most performance (3DMark) per dollar (BpD), with the lowest wattage. I’m calling that the PDW mark (performance-dollar-watts).

When calculated and plotted the PDW mark produces the results shown in Figure 4.

So in the case of this comparison of two mobos, we see that a simple comparison of benchmark scores shows Nvidia’s mobo to be 2.58 times faster than Intel’s mobo, but when you go to an n-dimensional analysis the Nvidia Mobo is still 2.38 times better than the Intel mobo. In this case, the scores do not significantly shift the position of the two products but there will be cases in which the less expensive board may prevail when performance, dollars, and watts are taken into consideration.

It must be pointed out that this analysis wasn’t done to prove one company’s product is superior to another but rather to arrive at a better metric for evaluating products for the mainstream consumers.

And it doesn’t mean one should omit the base analysis in forming a buying decision. You can for instance imagine a product that has horrible benchmark score but is ridiculously cheap and doesn’t use any power. That product would win, but it would most likely be terribly disappointing.

A point in time

Benchmarks are temporal. No sooner are they posted then they are wrong, especially a multi variant benchmark like PDW. Drivers get improved and change the raw performance benchmark, and prices drop over time. Wattages stays pretty consistent under load, but manufactures have been known to detune their parts a bit to get a better power usage measurement.

Summary

We have a new generation of consumers who have to get the most value and performance possible on a limited budget. The new consumer needs more than a single parameter measurement of a product. Using performance, price, and power in combination gives a better view of what to expect for our investments.

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With Nehalem, OEMs Xeon — not Core — for entry level, single-socket workstations

2009-04-08T17:50:09Z

Intel appears to be consciously shifting brand strategy ... and pricing accordingly

When it comes to workstation volume, Intel’s Core brand has consistently garnered the lion’s share of unit shipments, with its sibling Xeon brand commanding a relative minority. That long-time status quo is now set to change, however, as Intel’s introduced not only a new Xeon platform, but it appears a new strategy for the brand as well. In launching the first processors of the Nehalem generation to bear the Xeon name, Intel’s looking to extend the brand’s reach down into the entry-level, single-socket segment of the workstation market, pushing beyond the mid-range, dual-socket turf to which it’s been limited in the past.

Why hasn’t Xeon historically found its way into single socket (1S) workstation platforms? Well, the proposition of doing so hasn’t been particularly compelling to the OEM, at least from the context of features and cost. Xeon today is built from the same design foundation as Core, and so has delivered comparable performance and offered the same baseline set of features, with the most notable exception being multi-socket support. And multi-processor support for a single-socket configuration is, by definition, a non-feature. Consider the price premium Xeon has commanded in the past, and it’s no wonder why Xeon hasn’t had any significant presence in the market for entry, 1S workstations.

(Source: Jon Peddie Research)
Figure 1 The Xeon brand has represented the minority of Intel’s platforms selling into the workstation market ... but its share will now certainly grow

But not so with this platform release from Intel. On the contrary, with this launch every major OEM, including HP, Dell, Lenovo and Fujitsu-Siemens, has chosen to build their new single-socket entry model around a Xeon-branded Nehalem, rather than Core. Why the change in tactics? Well, my only answer is this is a case of conscious brand re-positioning, carrying over from a dynamic that’s been present in the server space, but not in the workstation market, until now.

Xeon is the premium brand, and ultimately, we know OEMs would — all else equal, or close to equal — prefer to market it over the Core brand, regardless of whether there’s any technical advantage for 1S configurations or not. Trouble is, with Xeon’s price premium, it hasn’t made sense to push the brand in the dollar-sensitive entry level. It couldn’t have made sense, or we would have seen Xeon there long ago.

But it’s there now, and that begs the question as to why. Well, one reason is that starting with Nehalem, Intel’s incorporating a workstation-valued feature in Xeon that’s not present in the Core i7 brand (and that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re talking different die, just another feature that’s exposed in one brand and not the other). With Nehalem, Intel’s first processor to integrate a memory controller, ECC (Error-Correcting Code) memory is no longer a chipset feature, but a processor feature. Intel’s letting Xeon have it, but not Core i7, and ECC has been one of the few hardware features that a customer shopping for an entry-class workstation might pay a little extra to get.

But more than ECC, this shift in strategy is about marketing and perception. The Xeon brand conjures up notions of “professional”, “mission-critical” and “enterprise”, where the Core brand suggests a far more pedestrian connotation. The past fragmentation of the workstation market — Core at the high-volume low end and Xeon at the mid-range and above — and the introduction of Nehalem have presented Intel and its OEM partners with an opportunity to now clean up its brand positioning.

Clean it up more like the server side, that is. Because while Xeon hasn’t made a mark in the market for single-socket workstations, it has done so in the closely related market for single-socket PC servers. Intel has given the impression it’s been selling Xeons into the 1S server space not necessarily due to any particular strategy of its own, but rather because its customer base had been asking for it.

Now, I don’t doubt the server OEMs have orchestrated some pull for Xeon in 1S configurations, looking for more differentiation and brand appeal. But I have to imagine Intel’s been proactive as well, rather than simply acting the part of cooperative vendor. Either way, Intel’s created separate SKUs for Xeons that serve 1S segments, along with a distinct 3000 series numbering to set them apart from the 5000 series dual-socket models.

But for Intel to work Xeon into 1S configurations for workstations the way it’s done for servers, it’s going to take more than just ECC. If it were to simply throw in ECC but leave the pricing structure alone, OEMs wouldn’t be jumping on it, certainly not all in unison as they’ve done with the Nehalem launch. No, Intel’s had to have gotten much more aggressive in pricing, perhaps not at parity with the Core i7 Nehalems, but surely a lot closer to parity than it’s ever been before.

Of course, cutting prices and shaving margins aren’t steps to be taken lightly. But ultimately, when customers see a starker differentiation between PCs and entry workstations, it’s not just the OEM that stands to gain, but Intel as well. And the company knows it, perhaps because it’s already seen the dynamic pay off on the server side, or perhaps because it stood witness as its rival made the approach work in workstations. Remember that while Intel hadn’t been pushing Xeon for 1S workstations, AMD had been, with HP and Sun (at one time) marketing 1S models based on Opteron, not Athlon. Now granted, AMD’s shipments into workstations pale in comparison to Intel, but the latter can at least look to the former’s success as some type of existence proof for pushing the premium brand into 1S sockets.

In the end, this very conscious re-positioning of Xeon will certainly grow the brand’s profile in the workstation market, resulting in better revenue and healthier margins per machine, even if Intel has to charge less for the 3000 series chips, in order to make it all happen. Core and its predecessor Pentium have dominated workstation shipments for years, and while Core-based workstations aren’t going away, it looks like Xeon’s going to rule the roost going forward.

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Ion arrives

2009-04-07T18:28:45Z

We have just learned that the illegitimate, and subsequently abandoned child of Creüsa, daughter of Erechtheus and wife of Xuthus, Ion, has been seen in Taiwan hiding in a slick looking blue box that… What? Oh. Never mind, wrong Ion.

Let’s start over.

The dark chocolate found in stores all over Greece is being melted into a new blue box from…

OK, I got this time – don’t interrupt me again.

Acer is going to build a really slick little blue box with a positively or negatively charged atom in it, and a regular Atom, which Acer will call AspireRevo. The positively or negatively charged atom, more commonly known as an Ion, is from Nvidia’s particle accelerator in Santa Clara. Nvidia shoots those Ions to Taiwan where Acer has a special collector. Acer then repackages them in a radiation proof cobalt blue box about the size of a Wii, and offers the assembled nuclear power plant for something south of $300 depending on where you buy it, which can be Asia, Europe, and eventually the North America. (We’re always last to get the good stuff – I’m sure that’s George Bush’s fault.)

This is a cool thing, both in looks and in what it means for Nvidia. Those of you who just got out of solitary confinement and not following the news will be interested to learn that since Nvidia introduced their Ion platform last December they have been like Sisyphus pushing the particle up Intel’s hill, only to be knocked back down. But with the patience of Strenua and the determination of Ares, Nvidia kept trying to convince ODMs and OEMs they could make a better low-cost PC with an Ion platform than anything else in the universe.

Acer was the first to come forward and show what could be done. And, Nvidia has told me they have 40 – four-zero more design wins in the chute (with Atom, Celeron, and Core2Duo processors) and will be popping them out for the rest of the year – Greek chocolate bars optional.

You can expect to see a lot of “Notebooks (note – not, “NET books”), some more non-mobile PCs, some new devices called “all-in-ones,” and some embedded things like monitors with a PC in them (think iMac like.)

I was recently asked to opine on the PC market going forward, and concluded my diatribe by pointing out that we have a new consumer, one who will be more interested in value for money and less frivolous things, and will buy on a need not a want basis. A $300 computer that can be hung on the back of your monitor is definitely going to fit that requirement.

However, a $300 PC isn’t going to have a very high ASP or margin for Intel, Nvidia, the ODM, or the OEM. If Nvidia takes $20 to the bank for every one they sell, they’re going to have move tens of millions a quarter to make this a significant business. The odds are in their favor that volume can be reached due to market expansion from price elasticity and the new consumer attitude. Price elasticity may expand the market by 3 to 5%, the rest is cannibalization.

And here you can read the shocking story of that bastard Ion. http://www.goddess-athena.org/Encyclopedia/Athena/Creusa.htm

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