Currently, NVIDIA is really missing out on the netbook market, which is dominated by all-Intel platform designs. NVIDIA has finally woken up to this reality, and the outspoken cofounder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang, has launched an all-out campaign to promote his company’s Ion platform – and he isn’t shy of flinging some poo to Intel and netbooks in general.
NVIDIA’s Ion platform combines the well-known Intel Atom 1.6Ghz processor to the GeForce 9400M GPU, providing a powerful graphics core in netbooks (in fact, the same GPU powers Apple’s new MacBook). While release dates are as of yet unknown, the platform is supposed to arrive in the coming months.
In any case, NVIDIA is in a precarious position. Basically every netbook sold today is an all-Intel machine, from the graphics core down to the processor. Considering the use-case of most of these netbooks – quick, on-the-go computing – most users probably won’t need a really powerful GPU. The screen is mostly the limiting factor here. This obviously hurts NVIDIA, because they see a fast-growing market they’re not part of.
So what do you do when you missed a major market explosion because you were caught sleeping on the job? Well, you do what all other big companies do in the same situation: you start talking said market down (see Apple and AMD). Huang does so by the book, and leaves no stone unturned. However, in doing so, his complaints borderline on clinging-to-straws. About netbooks, he says:
The Atom platform is creating an installed base that doesn’t run modern applications. It doesn’t run anything well from Electronic Arts, it doesn’t run anything well from Adobe, it doesn’t run anything well from Microsoft. I just mentioned the top software companies in the world. So in a way, the Atom platform is creating an installed base of PCs that’s going to eventually hurt the PC software industry.I think we all have to be very thoughtful about the proliferation of PCs that are inferior to what people think a PC should be, yet still is a PC.”
Despite the fact that his claims are debatable, at best, one also has to wonder if, assuming his complaints really are true, they actually have any relevance to people buying netbooks. Is the prime reason you buy a netbook to play the latest and greatest Electronic Arts game? Do you buy it to do serious Photoshop editing?
To me, it simply seems as if NVIDIA is a little scared it won’t ever make serious inroads into the netbook market, especially now that Intel’s second generation Atom processor will have the GPU on-die. Ati obviously doesn’t have this problem, being part of AMD and all.
Curiously, Huang has a lot of nice things to say about Via’s Nano platform. “Nano is a fabulous processor. You could argue that it’s architecturally one generation beyond Atom,” he states, “The amount of software and hardware outside of the CPU is so much, unless you have tier-one capabilities, you can’t build a tier-one-capable machine. That’s really VIA’s weakness. They don’t have the resources to build the GPU in the system to be competitive.”
While the Atom chip isn’t much, it was accompanied by millions of votes for smaller less expensive computers. The age of the 10 inch form factor is upon us, and the computer is officially a commodity, a true consumer item, and regrettably, for the first time–disposable.
So, where does that leave Nvidia, well, that’s up to them. As far as the small computer market, they have a lot of work to do because the integrated thing they are talking about, will be a 45nm GPU, and if I worked up the peninsula at nVidia, I wouldn’t sleep so soundly.
Incidentally, tell nVidia, Rhinoceros 3D CAD runs on my netbook, not as fast as if nVidia had made a GPU for it, but it does run. Tell Adobe, when I want the software updates off–I mean off! Meaning that doing things such as having a bloated insubordinate updater that does what it wants to–isn’t going to give them a good face in the world of netbooks. Tell EA, I’m not buying a game from you, until I hear articles about how you respect your employees better, and honor your contracted commitments.
[It’s just a gut feeling, but I believe that the Atom will be refined, and multiplied into a massive multi-core setup. Meanwhile, Nvidia is pulling punches with Intel, not trying to replace the CPU with the GPU on the desktop. As a consumer, I want to see both of these fights.]
Edited 2009-01-29 12:41 UTC
The Atom is already multi-core, netbooks use the single core version. The desktop Atom implementations use the dual core version.
Apparently atom doesn’t scale. What hurts x86 massively multi core is the comparatively “vast” amount of silicon required just for the x86 decoder. That’s why intel went back to hyper threading. They can get more (inefficient) execution units while not having to replicate yet another x86 decoder.
The arm guys should get off their butts since the arm instruction set is far superior for low power small die truly multi core operation.
Likely nvidia’s only way to get back in the game short term is to find a way toteam up with freescale and put together something with a cortex a8. The other arm core nvidia is supporting can’t play in the netbook arena.
Please look at your back first, because Cortex-A9 platform is multicore
There’s no A9 silicon yet, it only advertises scaling to 4 cores. You can get a dual core atom today. I’m not satisfied with anything less than 16 cores. That’s just me personally.
well nvidia already have the tegra SoC, which I believe has an arm 11 core.
The tegra isn’t anywhere in the same league as a Cortex part. It’s not super scalar, and half the performance of cortex at the same clock. And it doesn’t have an included SIMD unit to boot.
For general processing cortex is in the same league as atom, tegra isn’t. I do much more than just watch videos on my netbook.
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=42411
Edited 2009-01-29 17:51 UTC
There is nothing inherently inefficient with hyper-threading. It allows you to have relatively simple pipelines, and avoid pipeline bubbles by having multiple execution streams. Sounds like a great idea to me, and allows you to ramp up execution units and still use them relatively efficiently.
I’d rather have a HT core with 4 execution units than 2 non-HT core with 2 execution units each.
While avoiding duplication of decoder units is good argument for HT in x86, HT also works very well for RISC instruction sets as well, as it is the pipeline bubbles that HT effectively removes.
SPARC T1 & T2 is a good demonstration of HT with simple pipelines.
I’m surprised cad applications work on a normal gpu (as opposed to doing it in software).
I was under the impression that professional graphics and engineering apps had this collusion going on where they would ensure that the apps only worked in accelerated mode with workstation gfx cards.
There is no architectural difference between my geforce and the equivalent quadro card, yet autocad only supports the quadro card (in accelerated mode, but software works fine for me as I only use 2d).
I could not agree more!
Edited 2009-01-29 15:11 UTC
What? Disposable? For the first time?
I don’t know about you, but almost everyone I’ve ever met who has owned a computer knows nothing about it. They end up getting infected beyond belief with every virus, trojan, dialer, worm, spyware, etc. you can think of and more. Then they wonder why they keep getting pop-ups, and quickly end up sending the machine to the dump… only to get a new machine and start all over again. It’s been this way since… well, since almost as long as I’ve been using computers myself (Win95 era).
I’ve “fixed” or sped up several machines from Windows 95 all the way up to XP by simply cleaning some crap (uninstalling programs, removing startup entries, defragging) or reinstalling Windows. Machines whose owners thought were surely done for and in dire need of replacement. I always give them advice on how to *not* have this problem again, but it always goes out the other ear. That reminds me, my sister’s WinXP system is ****ed up and pending a format/reinstall real soon… again.
The Nvidia^A's CEO statement is ridiculous. Obviously no one that buy a netbook do it to play FarCry. No one buy a netbook to be their primary computer. Besides that, the world is in a move from desktop applications to web applications. Even the companies cited by him are making inroads to the cloud. Netbooks are the best alternative for this task at the moment.
Well, the ‘Read More’ section said it all – straw clutching. The problem is that nvidia is on the inevitable slide to going out of business unless they do something. CPU vendors like AMD and Intel have control over their graphics platforms like never before and nvidia is left out in the cold. This shows a particular lack of understanding:
I doubt whether Nokia or Apple can run those applications on their devices either, and I doubt whether they care. It’s just a different set of use cases and a different target market.
He curiously says this:
Hmmm, so AMD’s Neo will crush Atom, but if it has our GPUs in it it’s fantastic?
Then we get:
Translation: “Bugger. We’re being totally outflanked. Intel are already mooning at us from afar. AMD have usually been our friend, but we’re not sure about them and ATI. We can’t make our own CPUs and chipsets either! Let’s run around and find a platform that needs some kind of graphics processing, but can’t do it itself, and we’ll try and jump on that.”
It’s reasonably desperate stuff all-in-all and it doesn’t fill you with confidence that he knows what nvidia are going to do.
Love to see an anonymous poster in an obscure website give condescendig advice a guy who built a multibillion tech company.
Since nvidia has atom chipsets, and the tegra has everything and the kitchen sink (including an arm process) on a small package-on-package form factor… I would think twice about saying things like “nvidia has been outflanked”
The fact that he created a company that creates GPU’s does not mean he knows anything about netbooks or other markets. It’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t or at least is pretending not to.
It still doesn’t make him right. He built a graphics hardware company but he now finds himself in unfamiliar territory and is reverting to type because he is somewhere new that threatens his company.
Clearly, to say that Atom is going to hurt the software and then in the same interview praise the Atom platform if it is coupled with one of his company’s GPUs is insane.
It really doesn’t matter. Intel and AMD have control over their platforms and can have as many bites of the cherry as they like. nvidia can’t. The best they can hope to be at the end of all this is a chipset maker for AMD or Intel.
Edited 2009-01-29 23:41 UTC
It would be absolutely great if it would hurt the software industry, although I doubt it. Why would it be great? Because it would force software developers to develop fast, efficient programs. The availability of much CPU power and lots of RAM has a remarkable effect on lazy programmers: they forget how to create smart code. Maybe I don’t want to need a Ferrari to drive to my neighbour.
(Nod, agree)
Totally agree with you here. It may also force better, more uer friendly interface design and concepts due to the lack of screen realestate.
apoclypse speculated…
That would be a great thing if it happened! Or at the very least have applications and desktop environment programmers write their code in such a manner that they are capable of scaling much like many webpages are capable of doing. To me that’s one of the biggest issues when it comes to using a netbook device.
On my ASUS EeePC 901 I am able to mitigate the situation slightly by installing the Compact theme for Gnome, the nosquint and Tiny Menu extensions for Firefox, and doing some fiddling with the fonts–but having application developers take screen sizes into account when doing layout would be a real improvement!
–bornagainpenguin
I was going to say the exact same thing, and it appears that this is already happening, as you see that MS is touting that Windows 7 can be run on Netbooks because it has better performance than Vista. Maybe we can get Adobe to rework the abomination that is called Acrobat Reader to be about as fast and light as Foxit Reader. And maybe we can finally kiss Java on the desktop goodbye, once and for all until/unless they can make it not suck so much.
(And I don’t even want to know how iTunes runs on these things. Imagine if Apple made it as fast as Media Monkey!)
While this might indeed be a bad thing for software developers (who will actually have to learn how to develop fast and efficient apps), it’s ultimately good for the end user
Maybe we can do the same thing for game consoles – release a $20 8-bit machine, then game developers will have to learn to make something original like in the days of old, instead of pumping out the same shit that we all played last year with a better coat of paint.
Edited 2009-01-29 17:02 UTC
WorknMan pondered…
Or even as fast as Rhythmbox or Banshee! Imagine that…
–bornagainpenguin
Totally agree with you.
I’ve always wondered why it takes me the same time to type out an office document today as it did 10 years ago, despite my typing speed being 10 times faster and my CPU speed being 1000 times faster.
Hmm…
You went from 4 words per minute to 40 words per minute?
Previous to my last upgrade, my machines where all built with ATI All In Wonder boards. With the last upgrade, nVidia had the 8800 GPU and better cross platform device support so I went nVidia for the first time ever.
I hope AMD has the better GPU and support when it comes time for my next upgrade. With AMD providing full driver interface documentation, I’m optimistic. I’d prefer to give my money to a company that competes based on products not; “WAAAA.. We missed the boat.. everybody on it turn around and come back!”
I think suggesting that people buy netbook class machines to play blockbuster video game titles demonstraites an emberassing lack of understanding on nVidia’s part.
Oh, and Mr. MBA CEO; listing predatory monopolistic software companies and high end gaming houses reflects only the “good ‘ol boy’s club” not the greater (in both senses of the word) software industry. I hope your shareholders are happy with your demonstration else it’s going to be the curb when they see dividends slide and vote you off the island.
lol… the atom isnt really THAT weak
so in other words, nvidia is whining that the “top software companies” make software that is SO shitty, that it wont even run on some computers coming out today. boohoo.
Whereas folks like Ubuntu and Arch make software that runs beautifully on the Atom :o)
In a way, this is one of the angles that make computers “fun” again. People will go for a lookout of lightweight software, and this will benefit Linux that has lots of lightweight alternatives to run. Heavyweight flash/js websites will be hurt because they give visibly inferior user experience. Simple and elegant UI design will be valued again. Background crap will be frowned upon by normal people, not just techies.
Anything that helps Flash go away is better for the end users. If Adobe can’t manage to produce cross platform Flash readers in 64bit, they can go away along with all the Flash over-saturated websites produced by lazy web developers and/or marketing oversight.
This man is so wrong in thinking netbooks are some sort of cheap standard PC. For sure, netbooks aren’t bought because people can’t afford an extra $100. If you don’t believe this, look at other low-priced offers like Wal-Mart PCs.
Netbook buyers won’t value support for the big players in the software industry either. Likely the opposite is true, people get fully supported Linux with all it’s free applications, and value that.
The good thing is, his guys obviously work on very power-efficient chips anyways. This will be good for all of us.
I really hope this is true. Previously, it was rumored Nvidia was using support for Nano as bargaining chip with Intel. The deal was Nvidia would drop support for Via’s Nano, and Intel would decouple Atom CPUs from the chipset.
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15835
Atom hurts the semiconductor industry more then the software industry. Intel has been selling lots of Atoms, but the margins are so thin they aren’t helping Intel’s profits.
Software is fairly elastic, and it will be adapted to the platform people want to run it on. Not to mention Atom is a fairly capable processor, and it’s not as much of a slouch as he would have people believe.
No kidding – the whole “netbooks are underpowered” line just serves as a reminder of how relative computer performance really is. The slowest Atom-based netbook would have looked like a high-end workstation compared to the vast majority of desktop systems that were available 10 years ago.
Are there a consumer computer able to do that miracle?
Everyone knows those companies not only produces overbloated crap software and overuse of their franchises/products, but buggy as hell too.
Edited 2009-01-29 15:56 UTC
I still don’t understand why nVidia and Via have not merged. It seems like such a logical merger to me. Via makes decent processors and have an x86 license, but there chipsets are so-so and their graphics laughable. nVidia has great graphics and chipsets, but no x86 processors. This seems like a perfect match to me. Does anyone know why this merger is not happening?
They depend only on Intel, as AMD now has their own GPUs and chipsets. Intel is going to replace them by Larrabee, so they must be a lot afraid of it.
Instead avoiding those stupid things to being said, they keep them spread shit. Nvidia can become a total loser in the GPU world if Intel gets really strong in this front and AMD does another surprising strategic movements that improves their market situation in a global way.
Nvidia should make their bosses shut up and use their brains to think something really useful, like investing or buying some revolutionary technology that saves them from dying. Think about buying VIA and merging it with their engineering team to produce x86 CPUs or whatever.
I only hope Nvidia finds their own way, start competing instead trying to change the market themselves and enter into the FOSS world like AMD and Intel and their VIA friends are doing.
So, let me see if I get it correctly.
intel had massive profit drops, and AMD is bleeding money left and right. Nvidia has managed to avoid both situations. So your advice to them is to: buy a company like VIA who is about to go the way of the dodo?
Seriously?
Mr NVIDIA. Goodbye Mr NVIDIA.
I hate Intel but I love OpenSolaris/Atom combination (especially the dual core with Intel Graphics). I love AMD (ATI) /Linux/BSD triangle and I really hope Nano/Tungsten-Unichrome takes off with some marketing because the stack is there and it is called L.I.N.U.X. We are expecting MIPS64/Silicon Motion open platforms by Lemote and ARM/PowerVR semi-open platforms by Genesi. We are also expecting a QNX distro, Haiku and a better uKernel-Syllable. By the way DragonFly runs on svn-VirtualBox, this is news!!!
IMHO, AMD should concentrate on staying on business through 2009. Because right now it is not clear if that will be the case. From their current lineup, they have only had 1 single home run product the HD 4XXX series. And they had to sell them at such razor thin margins, they are making little money on them. They have had massive losses, and their debt is such that they have to execute “perfectly” competing against Intel in the CPU/chipset area AND NVIDIA on the GPU arena. Not a place I would like to be IMHO. Intel has not only a better fab technologies, but they have 2 microarchitectures that AMD simply can’t beat. NVIDIA has an infernal development cycle that few ASIC houses can match.
And, oh… yeah, Genesi! They will be take over the computing world any day now! Selling underpowered PPC underpowered boxes which are 3 generations too late.
The way some of the posters here are divorced from the reality of the field is astounding really.
Seriously, every time I hear someone or read an article where someone calls the atom ‘underpowered’ or ‘doesn’t run software well’ I go “What the bloody blue hell planet do you live on?”
Want to make a Mac user cry? Their beloved G5 that was uber-hyped as being more effective per clock? An iBook comes in slower on Geekbench than the 945GCLF Atom board at the same clock speed…
Which means it’s a SLEDGEHAMMER against the simple tasks of web browsing, word processing, and even simple spreadsheet work. Yeah, you aren’t going to run Crysis at max settings on it, you aren’t supposed to.
Netbooks are filling the niche of people who want something small and simple with decent battery life for light duty tasks like browsing and typing up a simple document… and that seems to be the point the suits at Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia and AMD are missing.
Seriously, where the **** does he get that a Atom powered netbook “doesn’t work well”. I think the sales figures and that you are seeing people using them damned near everywhere shoots some big holes in that.
He also talks about working with windows mobile – got news for him. NOBODY wants a real processor running windows mobile in anything larger than a phone! The same goes for thin clients – look at the success difference between the EEE Box desktops and AMD’s abortive little geode based attempts. (which were cool, but ultimately useless). Windows mobile is a technological dead end because it is NOT fully compatable with any other OS excepting a handful of .net based appliactions. At that point you might as well run Linux with XFCE and at least HAVE a software base.
But that’s almost always the problem with thin clients anyways – they strip down too far… The netbooks and smaller factor desktops ‘get it’ as while stripped down, they at least still can run a normal desktop OS.
Edited 2009-01-29 17:44 UTC
deathshadow pundited…
You’d be surprised. Have you seen how much HP Jordanas and NEC Mobile Pros still go for these days?
deathshadow pointed out…
Absolutely agree with this! This is also the reason why these (WinCE) devices don’t tend to last long in the hands of someone with more than word processing in mind. Unless the manufacturer goes out of their way to bundle the device with applications most of the time the unfortunate user finds himself limited to the Microsoft ‘pocket’ apps. You wouldn’t believe how swiftly apps come and go in WinCE / WinMo!
This seems to be one of the places Apple has gotten it right so far; it will be interesting to see if it is still possible to use older apps on newer devices or if it will be possible to use newer apps on older devices as their app store continues to grow.
The sad thing for Microsoft is if they hadn’t abandoned this market they could have owned it completely earlier on in, but now just as they start to see the benefits of it they are being rendered insignificant in it due to the richer software base available elsewhere.
It has become a self-fulling prophecy, because Microsoft treated WinCE / WinMo like a toy it has been relegated to toylike status.
–bornagainpenguin
Edited 2009-01-29 18:51 UTC
First of all, the iBook never used a G5. It used the older, much slower, and less efficient mobile G4. Big difference. Apple never had a G5 laptop.
Secondly, cpu’s that are years out of date aren’t of much interest today. People’s expectations go up year by year. What matters is today’s competition, not that of four years ago.
When compared to the slowest of “normal” laptop chips, the Atom is pretty weak. But, it doesn’t matter, because it’s just dandy for what it’s intended for.
Give it another year, and it will be better. But, it will always lag well behind chips designed for higher performance and power consumption.
By the time it will do video editing at a speed that people today would accept as being usable, expectations will have moved to the point where people then won’t consider it to be usable.
And so it goes.
I’m not criticizing the chip, but some people here are struggling with their announcements about how well it runs some software. I’ve played with it, and it struggles with most anything other than what it comes with.
But, that’s fine, it’s not intended for those apps.
Amen to that. I’ve just been travelling a bit, staying in backpacker hostels – netbooks seem to have *really* caught on among that market, for obvious reasons. They’re relatively light, don’t take up much room in a pack, and you can check your email, edit your photos, and update your travel blog, all from a comfortable couch in the hostel. Really, why would you *not* buy one if that’s your lifestyle?
“We’re late to the market therefore it is not important and the existing products from our competitor suck.”
You mean that, shock horror, software industry might actually have to go back to making sure their code is tight and efficient – over the idea of throwing a million half baked features at a wall in a vain hope of some actually sticking? Yes, I know, how absolutely terrible! and perish the thought – the treadmill which they have banked their whole business on will gradually go from a frantic pace to a leisurely walk.
But going by his statement, apparently it is the software industries responsibility to keep the hardware industry afloat; nice to see yet another executive passing the buck. What next? we’re going to see this guy blame the Atom for low profits at Nvidia in the next quarterly release?
If by humanity you mean your back pocket, then sure, it helps humanity. For some strange reason I think that Bob who sits in a grass hut is more concerned with learning how to read, write, understand basic maths, and his government enforcing property rights through a honest judicial system than whether or not your ion platform makes the 10 ten requirements for the Masai tribes folk.
As for Intel – they want to sell the complete widget; something you should be trying to do – but being an epic failure so far. If you wanted to provide the whole widget – why don’t you put those ARM licences to some use besides them gathering dust in the corner.
Which I doubt; if they keep bundling Broadcom wireless chips as part of their platform – the hope of Linux (or any other alternative platform) being able to use that platform will pretty much be a dead end. The day when AMD finally kick Broadcom to the curb and use something made by a company who doesn’t express hatred towards opensource will be the day that AMD will become mine (and many others) platform of choice. Until then it is all Intel for me and vendors who wish to make Linux based netbook solutions.
Edited 2009-01-29 22:14 UTC
Atom is Produced to make the pc cost low.. its means the target is for OpenSource.. GNU… so all the people can choose other OS than Windows .. that means Linux