Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said he has no interest in buying out chip supplier Via Technologies, dispelling rumors--at least for now--that had been circulating back in March.
Nvidia, Via--not going to happen (for now)
"They don't need our money. I don't need theirs," Huang said, referring to Via. "They're doing fine. People want to create drama," he added.
Previous reports cited a number of scenarios including Nvidia's acquisition of the entire company. Via makes processors and chipsets for x86-based computers. Via reported revenue of about US$87.5 million in the first quarter of 2008.
The company competes with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices for processor sockets inside low-cost PCs. Recently, Hewlett-Packard selected Via's C7 procesor for the HP 2231 Mini-Note PC.
Rumors were fueled some more when Nvidia said it was teaming up with Via to build a low-cost PC platform to compete with Intel. The two companies touted the design last month as "the world's most affordable Vista Premium PC" that will combine Via's upcoming Isaiah processor with an integrated Nvidia graphics chipset.
But Huang clarified why he isn't interested in buying out any general-purpose processor makers. "Our shtick is that we just focus on one thing. We said we're a visual computing technology company and we're completely focused on this."
"Wherever their processor capabilities intersect with our visual computing focus, we will support them. We support ARM, we support Power PC in the game console
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UPDATE: Toshiba is expected to release a notebook PC this year that uses a chip based on the Cell processor, the same chip used in Sony's PlayStation.
Toshiba Qosmio G40
(Credit: Toshiba)The Toshiba Qosmio G40 notebook will sport a SpursEngine SE1000 chip based on the Cell Broadband Engine, which is also used in the Sony PlayStation 3.
The Cell Broadband Engine is a multi-core chip architecture jointly developed by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. It is derived from IBM's Power Architecture, which was once used in Apple notebooks and desktops. Today, IBM uses the Cell processor in a line of blade servers.
Samples of the SE1000 chip began shipping from Toshiba on April 8. Toshiba has said it expects sales of 6 million units within the first three years.
SpursEngine reference board
(Credit: Toshiba)The SpursEngine can do high-definition video encoding and decoding of MPEG-2 and H.264 streams, among other capabilities. The four processing elements inside the chip have a clock frequency of 1.5GHz, while boasting a relatively low power envelope of 10 to 20 watts.
Some other features of the SpursEngine: Its multimedia engine can deliver up to 48 GFlops (billion Floating point operations per second) or 12GFlops per processing element. Every element has 256KB of integrated memory. The circuit board (photo) supports a PCI-Express Base Specification Revision 1.1.
Toshiba also plans to release a TV with the Cell processor.
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Jen-Hsun Huang doesn't pull any punches. And Intel is a favorite punching bag these days.
I had a chance to sit down with the Nvidia CEO as he described his company's philosophy and what sounds like the first volleys of a long battle with Intel.
Nvidia CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang
(Credit: Nvidia)A quick backdrop: Nvidia is the largest graphics chip company in the world, with quarterly revenue in the $1 billion range. Although Intel and Nvidia seem to exist in symbiotic bliss inside many PCs, this doesn't reflect the two companies' business models, which are in many respects far apart.
Intel is a chip manufacturer. Nvidia is not; it's a fabless company. Intel supplies the central-processing unit (CPU), a general-purpose processor. Nvidia supplies the graphics-processing unit (GPU), a special-purpose chip.
Huang is relentless in driving GPU performance--and fearless when challenging Intel. This is admirable, if anything. Even the world's largest PC makers treat Intel with great deference--publicly--because the chipmaker is so instrumental in supplying and defining the core electronics in their PCs (And partly due to the fact that they use Intel advertising dollars).
But Huang will tear into Intel when he thinks it's warranted. And Intel may have reason to be worried about the content of Huang's candor. Despite Intel's colossal size and and clout, Nvidia--not Intel--supplies the defining chip for the most savvy computer users: game enthusiasts. They depend on Nvidia graphics chips to deliver the spectacular visuals ... Read more
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Dupont and Dainippon Screen Manufacturing will form a strategic alliance to develop mass production techniques for organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, according to an announcement made in Japan.
Sony OLED display
(Credit: CNET)The focus is on developing better processes and printing equipment for the fabrication of OLED displays.
OLEDs are attracting interest because the panels are paper thin but offer extremely high-quality images, superb color saturation, and fast response times. And they draw little power because they don't require a backlight.
At the same time, they face durability challenges. The organic matter used to illuminate the image can by ruined by the elements, so special sealing technology is necessary. Also, a new study by DisplaySearch found that the brightness on Sony's 11-inch XEL-1 TV began to degrade significantly after 1,000 hours.
That's not all. OLEDs face size constraints. Many of the widely-used, mass-market OLEDs used today are only between and three and four inches diagonally. Sony's XEL-1, one of the largest, is only 11 inches but is priced at close to $2,000.
Dupont and Dainippon hope to solve the size problem and bring down the cost in the process. Their goal is to develop printing equipment that that will enable the production of very large OLEDs that would rival the largest LCD TVs in size.
DuPont brings its small molecule-based OLED solution materials and process technology to the table, while Dainippon Screen has developed a nozzle printing technology.
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Watch out, Nvidia is stalking the iPhone. The maker of fast graphics processors will apply its chip know-how to juice up the mobile internet device market and the Windows Mobile interface.
Nvidia APX 2500-based Windows Mobile device has flick-and-roll interface
(Credit: Nvidia)As reported back in February, after a decade of pumping up PC performance, Nvidia is betting a big part of its future on boosting graphics performance in fit-in-your-pocket mobile internet devices (MIDs).
CNET Video of APX 2500 prototype here.
iPhone-style devices with Nvdia's APX 2500 system-on-a-chip--due late this year and next year--incorporate most of the functionality of a PC. (See block diagram.) And it is important to note that Nvidia is building all of the core electronics that will run a mobile internet device, not just the graphics component.
The APX 2500 is different from Intel's Atom processor platform--which is offered as a processor and a separate chipset--because the 2500 integrates everything onto one piece of silicon. This makes it more akin to Intel's upcoming Moorestown processor that's due next year or early 2010.
Nvidia's goal is to pack as much processing punch as possible into a few-hundred-milliwatt power envelope, said Michael Rayfield, general manager of the Mobile Business Unit. "I said start from zero. And then made my team beg and plead for every milliwatt," he said. Notebook PC processors typically operate in power envelopes between 10 and 35 watts.
But to the user, the biggest difference will be Microsoft's Mobile ... Read more
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An analyst at CRT Capital Group says Nvidia may be treading on dangerous ground with its recent blitz of Intel taunts.
While CRT Capital Group analyst Ashok Kumar readily concedes that Nvidia's graphics chip technology is far superior to Intel's, he also issued a warning to Nvidia in a note released Monday: "Nvidia vs. Intel: an Emerging Grudge Match."
"(Nvidia CEO) Jen-sun Huang seems to believe that Nvidia's graphics solutions are better than Intel's because Intel simply doesn't know how to do better," Kumar said. "But there is another element that Huang seems to overlook--Intel has not, so far, been interested in the high-end 3D-gaming market, other than as a vehicle to sell their own high-end CPUs."
Essentially, Kumar believes that Intel, to date, has shown a benign neglect of high-end 3D graphics technology because Intel and Nvidia (and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI Technologies) have had a successful, if uneasy, symbiotic relationship.
But that could change. "If...Huang's recent tirades have an effect on Intel, that effect may well be the exact opposite of what Huang wants--a huge, rich, motivated design powerhouse applying itself to the one and only marketplace in which Nvidia has shown an ability to compete."
In an ideal world, Intel and Nvidia would thank each other, Kumar said. "Intel really ought to thank Nvidia. Of course, that same thing is true in reverse, and there's no evidence of Huang ever thanking Intel, either (especially given that only some of ... Read more
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The MacBook Air, IdeaPad U110, and ThinkPad X300 are the three hottest ultraportables out there. They all sport unique styling outside. And Intel blue inside.
The IdeaPad U110, like other ultraportables, uses an Intel low-voltage processor
(Credit: Lenovo)Styling and design are now so crucial in notebooks that when a model arrives in pink the color change alone is news.
Ditto for the styling imperative for some of the sveltest, lightest, and most impressive of notebooks: the Air, X300, and just-released U110.
Scratch the surface (or lift up the keyboard in this case), however, and you'll find that their unique exteriors house similar Intel core electronics.
Does this have anything to do with nefarious strong-arm tactics on Intel's part? Or just that AMD and Nvidia don't have competitive offerings in this space? The evidence points pretty convincingly to the latter.
Graphics--an increasingly important differentiator in any computer--is the same across all three notebooks: Intel X3100 integrated graphics. No Nvidia option here. No AMD-ATI. Intel across the board. The reason for this is strictly practical. For heat and power consumption purposes, these ultrasmall designs cannot accommodate an extra graphics processor. (It should be noted also that Nvidia and AMD-ATI integrated graphics are typically not used in ultra-low-power designs.)
The processors are all Intel too with some differences. Again, a practical consideration since AMD doesn't offer ultra-low-power x86 processors with relatively high performance.
The newest 11-inch U110 IdeaPad has gone with the Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 processor.
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Intel's long-awaited DirectX-10 graphics update for its chipsets is available.
DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling multimedia tasks in Microsoft-based environments, especially those tasks related to games and video. DirectX-10 support was mentioned by Intel as far back as 2006 when its popular 965 chipset was introduced.
(Credit: Microsoft)The new Windows Vista driver enables DirectX10 functionality for Intel GM965 and G35 Express chipset based platforms. The GM965 uses the X3100 Intel graphics engine, while the G35 uses the X3500.
The update is available here.
"We have been able to add features to products using these chipsets via driver updates. DX10 is the latest capability we have been able to add," an Intel representative said.
Asus is now selling a motherboard that the computer maker is billing as the "world's first to provide an Intel platform with an onboard integrated VGA solution that features built-in support for Windows Vista DirectX 10."
Intel has also announced a G35-based DG35EC Classic motherboard. The DG35EC board is based on GMA X3500 integrated graphics and includes HD video playback for movie clips and media streams without the need for an add-in video card and is the first to have integrated Microsoft DirectX10 capability with OpenGL 2.0 support, according to this report.
But don't expect top-flight gaming performance with integrated graphics--even with the new DirectX-10 driver. Typically, the frame rates in games using integrated graphics pale against the frame rates allowed by discrete graphics chips from ... Read more
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The first dual G4 PowerPC systems from Apple were all heat sinks and fans. In this tradition, a rarefied Intel Skulltrail-based powerhouse from Thirdwave uses two top-line quad-core QX9775 processors and a bevy of Nvidia GPUs--and plenty of fans.
The real estate in Thirdwave's $12,000 Skulltrail system is taken up mostly by fans and power supplies
(Credit: Thirdwave Corp.)The system (photo) in fact looks more like a stand-alone power supply box than a computer. Of course heat dissipation is paramount in enthusiast screamers.
The original Apple dual G4 systems (circa 2001) were a testimony to heat dissipation--and Rube Goldberg. So much heat that the system could quite literally raise the temperature in a small room. (Note: I can testify to this.) And so many fans--as many as nine in the original dual G4 system but less in later G5 versions--that Apple had to quickly release a system redesign to reduce noise (and heat) levels.
Intel's Skulltrail technology is much more advanced of course but fans still occupy a large chunk of real estate.
Skulltrail is a very high-end enthusiast platform based on Intel's 5400 "Seaburg" workstation chipset. The design distinguishes itself with dual CPU sockets that power eight processing cores (two QX9775 chips). Skulltrail also supports the Scalable Link Interface (SLI). The system can be maxed out with two dual-GPU graphics cards from Nvidia (such as the GeForce 9800 GX2) or up to four AMD graphics cards using ATI CrossFireX technology.
System pricing is ... Read more
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the largest contract chip manufacturer in the world, will crank up its MEMS foundry business. Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology is used in Apple's iPhone and the Nintendo Wii.
Nintendo Wii uses MEMS technology for motion detection
(Credit: Nintendo)MEMS typically have a microprocessor and other components such as microsensors. For example, MEMS technology is used in the iPhone and Wii to allow these devices to detect motion and changes in orientation.
In the iPhone, a device called an accelerometer detects when the user rotates the iPhone from portrait to landscape modes, then automatically adjusts the display, so the entire width of a web page or a photo can be seen in its proper aspect ratio.
Hewlett-Packard also uses MEMS technology for its inkjet print-head that combines integrated electronics with microfluidic channels to control ink droplets when printing.
TSMC will provide manufacturing services such as surface micromachining and manufacturing processes for CMOS-MEMS integration and packaging, according to Nikkei's Tech-On. (CMOS stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor, a common class of integrated circuits used in microprocessors.)
MEMS technology, which in the past was limited mainly to in-house manufacturing or automotive products, is now being applied to a raft of consumer devices and mobile phones, the Tech-On report said.
The MEMS industry was estimated to be worth US$5.95 billion in 2007 and it is expected to exceed US$10.771 billion in 2011, the report said.
TSMC will detail the company's MEMS business plan ... Read more
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