GPU

Netbooks boost graphics chip shipments

Buoyed by Netbook sales, shipments of Intel graphics chips surged and Advanced Micro Devices gained on Nvidia in the third quarter.

Third-quarter shipments of graphics processors jumped 21.2 percent over the second quarter, according to market researcher Jon Peddie Research. Graphics chips drive the images produced on PC users' screens.

A total of 119.45 million units were shipped in the third quarter, exceeding the record 111 million units that shipped in the third quarter of 2008, according to Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. "So the market has caught up with, and exceeded, last year's … Read more

AMD third-quarter loss less than expected

Advanced Micro Devices posted a third-quarter loss of $128 million, lower than Wall Street projections, while also reporting revenue that beat expectations.

The loss, at 18 cents a share, compares with a loss of $134 million, or 22 cents a share, for the same period last year. Analysts had expected a loss of 42 cents a share.

Revenue was $1.4 billion, an 18 percent increase over the second quarter of this year, while falling 22 percent compared to the third quarter of 2008. Forecasts had called for only $1.3 billion in revenue.

"There was strength in notebooks … Read more

Nvidia in the throes of remaking itself

Updated at 4:40 p.m. PDT: adding to discussion of next-generation Nvidia Ion chip.

As graphics kingpin Nvidia tries to reshape itself into a broad-based computing company, it is taking big gambles with potentially big payoffs, while it fends off challenges from rivals Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

The world's largest supplier of standalone graphics chips for PCs needs to grow. Established markets have matured and Nvidia must seek out other ways to make money.

"In almost every market they have entered they have become dominant," said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, which tracks the graphics chip market. "Almost 90 percent market share in the workstation business and 55 to 65 percent in the graphics business. But if you're that successful you can't really grow the market anymore, and if you want to keep growing your company, then you have to get into new markets."

Enter supercomputing and Nvidia's brand-new Fermi architecture. "That's a huge market and big margins," said Peddie. Fermi was announced last week at an Nvidia conference to great fanfare when prestigious Oak Ridge National Laboratory said it plans to use Fermi in a future supercomputer.

It would be an understatement to say that the Fermi chip potentially packs a computing wallop. The chip integrates an astounding 3 billion transistors, about three times the number of transistors in Nvidia's most powerful graphics chip now on the market, and it has been designed with features that make it more suitable for high-performance computers, the first time that Nvidia has architected a chip this way.

Fermi GPUs, each containing 512 processing cores, would enable "substantial scientific breakthroughs" that would be impossible without the new technology, Jeff Nichols, Oak Ridge's associate lab director for computing and computational sciences, said last week.

Nvidia hopes to parlay this computing power into the mainstream. (For a comparison of Fermi with AMD's newest graphics chip see: ATI and Nvidia face off--obliquely.)

"Fermi will offer Nvidia the opportunity to grow our consumer business by having the fastest raw graphics power," said Drew Henry, general manager of Nvidia's bread-and-butter GeForce graphics business. "But it's also going to expand our business by allowing people to process better video and photo applications and to use the GPU for many, many more mainstream applications." (GPU stands for graphics processing unit.)

… Read more

Nvidia 'Fermi' chip for Mac, Windows too

Nvidia's new Fermi chip is being billed as a supercomputing chip but Nvidia doesn't want you to forget that it is also aimed at Apple's Snow Leopard and Windows 7.

The Fermi chip was announced with much fanfare on Wednesday as key silicon in a future supercomputer from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. But, wait, Fermi is also going to be great at accelerating stuff in Snow Leopard and Windows 7--not to mention a great gaming chip, according to Bill Dally, chief scientist at Nvidia who spoke during a conference call with analysts on Thursday.

The Fermi graphics … Read more

Supercomputer to use new Nvidia 'Fermi' chip

Updated at 6:40 p.m. PDT: adding additional information about Fermi chip .

Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced plans today for a new supercomputer that will use Nvidia's next-generation GPU architecture, codenamed "Fermi."

The Oak Ridge and Fermi announcements were made at Nvidia's GPU Technology developer's conference, which kicked off Wednesday in San Jose, Calif. The Fermi chip integrates three billion transistors, about three times the number of transistors in Nvidia's most powerful graphics chip now on the market. In the future, the chip will also find its way into Nvidia's GeForce product … Read more

Intel shows off Larrabee graphics chip for first time

SAN FRANCISCO--Heads up, Nvidia. Intel demonstrated its Larrabee graphics chip for the first time Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum.

Larrabee will be Intel's first discrete, or standalone, graphics processor in about 10 years and is expected to compete with graphics chips from Nvidia and AMD's ATI unit. The demo used an early "stepping," or version, of Larrabee, which is expected to come out commercially sometime next year.

Larrabee will be targeted initially at the gaming market. The demonstration was based on the game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars from Splash Damage (See video.)

"This is … Read more

Intel Forum preview: Moore's Law expressed as fewer chips

Intel is expressing Moore's Law anew as packing key technologies into fewer chips. New "Clarksfield," "Arrandale" and "Jasper Forest" processors, among others, will showcase this theme later this month at the Intel Developer Forum.

Intel Vice President Steve Smith discussed the highlights of the annual marquee Intel event that will kick off September 22 in San Francisco in a phone interview on Friday.

"Contrary to speculation that Moore's Law is slowing down or potentially dying, we're here to demonstrate that it's alive and well," Smith said. "Integration gives you a smaller, better, faster, more mobile compute platform," he said. Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years.

This theme will be manifested in a number of new processors including the first mobile processor based on Intel's new Nehalem microarchitecture codenamed Clarksfield and even more highly integrated processors to follow dubbed Arrandale and Clarkdale as Intel moves to its next-generation 32-nanometer manufacturing process.

True to its rich heritage of codenames, IDF can, at times, slide into little more than a series of codename-riddled Power Point slides, with some names sounding frustratingly familiar such as Clarksfield and Clarkdale. But codenames, for better or worse, are part and parcel of IDF.

Intel codename decoder:

Clarksfield: 45-nanometer Nehalem mobile processor integrating I/O Clarkdale: 32-nanometer Nehalem desktop chip integrating graphics with CPU Arrandale: 32-nanometer Nehalem mobile chip integrating graphics with CPU Moorestown: 32-nanometer system-on-chip Atom for smartphones Sodaville: 32-nanometer system-on-chip Atom for consumer Pine Trail: new Atom for Netbooks integrating graphics with CPU Jasper Forest: 45-nanometer, first Nehalem embedded chip for uses such as storage hardware Larrabee: Intel discrete graphics chip that will compete with Nvidia, AMD Westmere: 32-nanometer manufacturing process technology

Smith said that Intel's move to the next-generation "Westmere" 32-nanometer manufacturing process will drive even more integration next year. "We have completed development and certification of the 32-nanometer process, which means our factory is fully qualified to run the wafers. And we are actually running Westmere CPU wafers through the factory in support of our Q4 revenue production. Absolutely on track for that Q4 revenue production," he said, referring to commercial production of 32-nanometer processors.

In the more immediate future, Intel will roll out a new mobile processor based on its current 45-nanometer technology. "We just announced Lynnfield (the Core i5 and i7 chips for desktops), Clarksfield is the equivalent product for notebooks," Smith said. "Quad-core, 45-nanometer. Based on Nehalem technology but optimized with power management and integration of the PCI express I/O. Moving from a three-chip solution in the original Nehalem products to two chips--and that is our path going forward." I/O, or input-output, is silicon that enables a processor to talk, and shuttle data, to other parts of the system and peripheral components.

Speaking more specifically about Clarksfield integration, Smith said that "the key elements are integration of memory controller, integration of PCI Express 'gen' 2, power management." Intel will also be talking a lot about a feature called Turbo mode. "Turbo mode is extremely important. If you're not using all the cores, the cores that are not used are powered down. The cores that you are using can run at a faster clock rate with Turbo mode," Smith said.

Smith spoke about the next-generation Atom processor for Netbooks and Nettops, "Pine Trail," too. This chip will also… Read more

Future AMD chip boasts 'human eye' reality

On Thursday, AMD demonstrated graphics chip technology that the company says approaches the arc and clarity seen by the human eye.

Eyefinity is a multi-display technology that will be part of future Radeon graphics chips designed to use up to six connected high-definition displays that can achieve "up to 12 times 1080p high-definition resolution, which approaches eye-definition optical clarity," the company said in a statement.

The goal is to create virtual environments so detailed that they seem optically real to the human eye. In a single PC, this yields a resolution of 268 megapixels, roughly equivalent to the … Read more

Nvidia graphics tech set for future Intel chips

Nvidia said Monday that Intel and a bevy of circuit board makers have licensed Nvidia graphics technology for future Intel chips.

The leading graphics chip supplier for game PCs has licensed its Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology to Intel and makers of PC motherboards, including Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI for future Intel chips. SLI is a technology for linking two or more graphics boards and used typically in high-end gaming boxes.

The licensing deal will allow Intel and others to offer SLI technology in "P55" motherboards that are used with Intel Core i7 and i5 processors. The latter … Read more