bit-tech News: Nvidia Analyst's Day: Biting Back at Intel

[news 28]

Hi all,

 

We have just published our analysis of what was said during Nvidia's

Financial Analyst's Day in an article titled *Nvidia Analyst's Day:

Biting Back at Intel* - if you could post a link on your site that would

be very much appreciated.

 

*Link:*

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/04/14/nvidia_analyst_day_-_biting_back_at_intel/1

 

 

*Picture:*

http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2008/04/nvidia_analyst_day_-_biting_back_at_intel/fp_img.jpg

 

 

*Quote:

*/"Gelsinger believes that the industry needs a programmable, ubiquitous

and unified architecture... like Larrabee. This is of course convenient,

but he seems to forget that we've had very programmable and unified

architectures ever since the launch of the GeForce 8800 GTX in November

2006.

 

DirectX 10 was an inflection point for graphics cards, because it is the

first time that shader units have become fully generalised processing

'cores'. Although it's worth remembering that they're not quite as

flexible as a CPU core in their current design.

 

"/ /Here's somebody who's new to our industry and he's basically telling

us that 3D graphics as we know it is dead," said Huang. "//This is the

most inspirational quote I can imagine giving to our employees. Nothing

fires us up more than that. I'm sure that's what he intended -- getting

the most intensively competitive company in technology fired up. We're

pretty fired up anyway, as we're pretty passionate about what we do. The

fact that the statement is just plain wrong means it's pointless to

argue about it."

 

It could be said that even Andrew Chien, Intel's Director of Research,

agrees to an extent with Huang's assessment of Gelsinger's sensational

statement, although to say that he agrees completely would be a bit of a

stretch. Chien believes that ray tracing will not make an immediate

transition into graphics engines -- instead, it'll gradually be

introduced for certain effects. "/ /We expect [ray tracing] to first

penetrate areas where the additional flexibility is of benefit to

developers. If the image quality benefits are there, but performance

isn't acceptable, developers aren't going to use it," he said during an

interview at IDF Shanghai."

/*

 

*Cheers guys!

 

Tim Smalley

www.bit-tech.net