The industry, or perhaps I should say the industries, are hurling themselves toward the newfound wonder of stereovision, which is being called 3D (not even 3D vision). 3D in the movies, 3D in games, and 3D on TV. It’s even being proposed for handheld devices. 3D for entertainment, 3D for signage, 3D for science and engineering, 3D for defense, 3D … Read more
It’s a quality issue… We now have four offerings for the consumer space of multi-core chips, which are euphemistically called processors. That is just a taste of how confusing this is all going to be, especially when the market spin is added. For example, AMD’s four core chip called Barcelona is called A processor, as is Intel’s i7 Nehalem. But … Read more
Having been dazzled by four days of dancing delightful pixels in LA at Siggraph, I then took a shower and went to San Francisco to continue the consumption of pixels and information at IDF. Another shower and then off to Palo Alto for pixels and cores, lots of both (burp). Skipping the shower, I rushed to join the rest of … Read more
You’ve all heard me say, “The more you can see, the more you can do.” It’s Peddie’s Second Law. I have four screens on my desk; I think you’ve all seen the pictures. There’s one to left of my laptop, one to right, and above it. The screens are 20-inch 1680 x 1050. I use a track ball to mouse … Read more
TIBURON, CA – August 29, 2008 — Graphics industry observers and participants may have been a bit more anxious than usual to learn how the second quarter of 2008 fared. With economic conditions worrisome, and with new product releases from both Nvidia and AMD occurring near the quarter’s close, would the quarter hint at future strength or encroaching weakness? After … Read more
The fountains flowed a toxic green that puts all those terrible green beer St. Patrick’s hangovers in perspective. You were never that sick. But the point was made. San Jose, at least for these three days in August belongs to Nvidia. What we find interesting is what Nvidia has chosen to concentrate on. There has been plenty of candy for … Read more
The mechanical loom developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard between 1801 and 1805, which used holes punched in pasteboard, was the beginning of the digital age. Were it not for that machine, we’d still be calculating using gears and analog representations. One can only imagine (and what a fun mind experiment it is) the kinds of automated writing machines we might … Read more
Last week I posed a postulate that Intel could justify the investment in Larrabee (Larry’s Bee) on the basis of obtaining some level of parity with the incumbents, mainly ATI and Nvidia. And in my rush to post and then catch an airplane, I included the total discrete graphics semiconductor market, not just the desktop discrete market – sigh. OK, … Read more
Anyone not stuck in outer space or maximum security knows Intel is going to introduce a new chip code named Larrabee. At Siggraph they are going to reveal, after almost two years of teases and leaks, the architecture of the device. It is not a GPU as many have mistakenly described it, but it can do most graphics functions, Intel … Read more
Here’s an interesting chart Jon found which tracks the use of the term “Doom clone” versus “First Person Shooter” (FPS) It’s fascinating how the term FPS stuck, I mean Mist is an FPE (first person explorer), rFactor is a FPR (first person racer), FSX is a FPF (first person flyer) – why does the shooter get the acronym? As a … Read more
Smallest drop in Q2 shipments in eight years – where’s the market slowdown?
