Wretched Excess: Sony’s 6K x 3K Crystal LED display at IBC 2019 is a contender for new large-format movie theaters. It’s beautiful, and almost hard to imagine in a movie theater. Can a screen be too bright? (Source: JPR) Audiences in North America might have to do a little traveling to see Gemini Man in 3D at 120 fps, … Read more
The International Broadcast Conference (IBC) in Amsterdam is about what to see and how to see it and much of what we ran into was cinema: new cinema, big cinema, and great big screens for the small screen, i.e., TV. He’s big in China: Will Smith is Gemini Man, a character who is forced to confront his younger, faster, cloned … Read more
AMD came to IBC, full of confidence after a successful Siggraph, increasing interest from Hollywood for Threadripper, and automatic cred from Apple with the upcoming Apple Mac Pro. At the show, AMD showed off its range of products including a sleek little MacBook Pro, nothing special, hooked up to a Black Magic external box giving the MacBook Pro enough GPU … Read more
PAX West 2019 Seattle Convention Center. (Source: JPR) Penny Arcade (PAX) started in 2004 in Bellevue, Washington, born of a desire by webcomic authors Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik to hold a show exclusively for gaming. The three-day Labor Day weekend conference featured presentations, rock & roll performances, a tournament, and collectible pin trading. There was also a curated … Read more
Autodesk reported increased earnings and brought its income up out of the red and into the black at $40.2 million. With revenues up 30% to $797, the company pushed its ARR up to $3.07 billion. Total billings increased by 48% to $892 million. The company’s recurring revenue is at 97% of the total. And yet, the stock went down immediately … Read more
As gains slowdown from process improvements and die size, power gains require improvements to all aspects of the system. The best way to push semiconductor gains forward says Lisa Su, is to improve all components. (Source AMD) Lisa Su came to Hot Chips this year and provided an overview of AMD’s strategy for development to keep up with the … Read more
Nvidia reported revenue from all platforms up for the quarter. The company’s GPU business revenue was $2.1 billion, up 4% from last quarter, but down 21% from last year. “We achieved sequential growth across our platforms,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. “Realtime ray tracing is the most important graphics innovation in a decade. Adoption has reached a … Read more
Uh, oh there’s no one here! Walking into Siggraph that first day, full of excitement and expectation, we were horrified to find the halls quiet, the tiny exhibition area dark, and the nearby area for R&D exhibits relatively quiet. What the hell, is Siggraph dying? School bell’s ringing and the crowds stream into the halls of Siggraph. These aren’t faces … Read more
Siggraph for us this year was all about open source. Not that it’s new. Lord no, all those danged acronyms have been floating around for ages. Who keeps track of ‘em all? The leading open source software applications used in content creation are developed by patron companies including, DreamWorks, ILM, Pixar, SPI (Sony Pictures Imageworks) and Weta Digital. These companies … Read more
A year ago at Siggraph, the creative community from TV, movie, marketing, game, and VFX studios came together to form the Academy Software Foundation, ASWF, as a resource for open software development in the creative fields. The Foundation was spearheaded by Executive Creative Director and Head of ILM Rob Bredow, who has shepherded several important open software and technology initiatives. … Read more
The summertime is not generally a great time for financial reports, except for, maybe, companies selling flipflops and ice cubes, but Dassault has brought in their second quarter for the fiscal year according to plan. However, like its competitors, the company is cautious for the coming quarter. As is typical for Dassault, the company is in the middle of audacious … Read more
The doors spin round. AMD has announced former Synaptics CEO, and former AMD SVP/GM of the products group, Rick Bergman will return to lead the Computing and Graphics (CG) business segment for AMD. The CG group includes PC, gaming, and semi-custom businesses for AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, Radeon GPUs, and game console products and platforms. It’s familiar territory for Bergman who … Read more
