GPU

Nvidia on Monday confirmed that Samsung will bring out a Netbook based on the graphics chipmaker's Ion chipset, another design that breaks the Netbook mold.

"Ion really transforms these small laptops, like the upcoming Samsung and Lenovo Ideapad S12, into fully capable notebooks," Rene Haas, general manager of notebook products at Nvidia said Monday in a statement.

Ion brings mainstream PC graphics to Netbooks, including 1080p high-definition video support and better gaming, according to Nvidia.

The disclosure of the Samsung Netbook follows the Lenovo IdeaPad S12--due in August--the first Netbook announced from a major PC maker … Read more

The premium pricing of Apple's Mac Mini desktop is due to its laptop lineage, according to a teardown analysis by iSuppli.

Though probably not a surprise to Mac Mini connoisseurs, the diminutive desktop bears higher component costs due to its use of parts designed for mobile PCs, iSuppli said in a report released Friday. In short, inside the Mini is a virtual laptop.

The entry-level version of the new-generation Mac Mini carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $376.20, which increases to $387.14 when manufacturing costs are added, iSuppli said. The low-end model in the Mac Mini lineup is priced at $599, "reflecting the relatively thin BOM/manufacturing margins" of Apple's PCs in relation to its lower-cost consumer items, specifically the iPod line, according to iSuppli.

"Unlike most desktop computers from other brands, the Mac Mini and, indeed, Apple's entire Mac line make extensive use of components designed for notebook computers," said Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst for iSuppli. "Apple knows how to make computers better, smaller, and more attractive," he said. "Such an achievement, however, comes at a premium."

This sentiment is echoed in a CNET Reviews write-up of the Mac Mini. "While we're still impressed with the Mac Mini's ability to pack so much into a tight package, Apple can't get away from its PC competitors that offer more features for less money," CNET Reviews said.

That said, mobile components abound.… Read more

The rumors appear to be true: Microsoft's Zune HD media player will use Nvidia's Tegra, a processor that will play a pivotal role in the chip supplier's future.

PC Perspective reported Tuesday that the Zune chip had been confirmed by Nvidia "staff" at Computex, earlier this month.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said at the company's analyst day on Tuesday that the Tegra processor is expected to account for half of Nvidia's business in a few years. If this prediction comes true, Nvidia will bear little resemblance to the company it is today: … Read more

Updated at 4:30 p.m. PDT adding Tegra, Intel, and Ion discussions.

On Tuesday, Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said at the company's analyst day that the graphics processor will be an equal partner with Intel processors, citing Apple as an early trendsetter.

On other fronts, Huang said that the ARM-based Tegra processor is expected to account for half of Nvidia's business in a few years. He also repeated claims about Intel crimping the success of its Ion processor in Netbooks.

Huang said that "CPU-GPU co-processing" is the future of computing. (CPU stands for central … Read more

Following the European Union's decision to fine Intel for "illegal" business practices, Nvidia is crying foul too, according to a report.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said Intel's chip pricing is unfair but added that the graphics chipmaker will not seek antitrust action against Intel, according to a Reuter's report.

This is a beef that Nvidia has had with Intel ever since Nvidia's Ion graphics chipset debuted last year. The competitive backdrop is Intel's longstanding vision of a CPU-centric universe versus Nvidia's creed that graphics processing matters more and more in a multimedia-intensive … Read more

Micron Technology is entering the graphics memory business, going up against heavyweights Samsung and Hynix.

Micron, which recently vaulted to the No. 3 spot in global sales of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), is now aiming at the market for DRAM chips used with graphics processors from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit.

The market for DRAM used with graphics processors is about 4 percent of the bits shipped into the DRAM market, according to Micron. DRAM is typically used as the main memory in PCs. This type of DRAM is also referred to as Synchronous DRAM, or SDRAM.… Read more

Intel said Tuesday that it is investing $12 million in a visual-computing research center in Europe. This comes as Intel prepares to bring out its first graphics chip in more than a decade by early next year.

Opening Tuesday, the Intel Visual Computing Institute is located at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. The company says the center "will explore advanced graphics and visual computing technologies."

The investment, to be made over five years, represents Intel's largest European university collaboration, the company said.

"Intel's visual computing vision is to realize computer applications that look … Read more

Nvidia is looking to its Tegra chip for growth and Windows 7 for new opportunities.

Speaking during the company's earnings conference call Thursday, Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said one the company's biggest opportunities is graphics-specific applications on Windows 7. (Nvidia earnings summary here.)

Huang waxed enthusiastic about a technology he called "DirectX Compute"--which taps into the hundreds of processors inside many of today's graphics processors. "Finally it's possible to do video editing...that's not excruciating," he said. "This is going to be one of the major usage models … Read more

Updated on April 27 at 8:20 a.m. PDT with additional information about DirectX 11 and correcting for Intel comments at bottom.

Graphics chips will be tapped to accelerate more tasks in upcoming versions of Apple's and Microsoft's operating systems, according to Nvidia.

In an interview Friday with Sumit Gupta, product manager for Nvidia's Tesla products, Gupta described how new programming environments will tap into the latent compute horsepower of graphics processors to accelerate software in Apple's upcoming OS X Snow Leopard and Microsoft's Windows 7 operating systems.

Graphics chips aren't just for games anymore. The trend toward general-purpose graphics processing is defined by an acronym that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue: GPGPU. But the essence of General Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units is pretty simple: use the scores--or even hundreds in higher-end chips--of processing cores inside GPUs to speed tasks that, in some cases, would be done much less efficiently by the central processing unit (CPU).

This is where OpenCL (Open Computing Language) comes in. OpenCL is a programming environment for "heterogeneous" computing. That is, computers using a mix of multicore CPUs and GPUs. Microsoft's analogous programming environment is DirectX.

Apple says this about OpenCL on its Web site. "Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL...makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit."

Today, on a PC or a Mac, the CPUs made by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are adept at handling general operating system tasks. For instance, handling the sequence of things that must happen after the user clicks on an icon to start an application on their desktop. … Read more