Comments on: Nvidia CEO says 'Tegra,' Apple future of computing

At company's analyst day, Jen-Hsun Huang says future will make the graphics processor the equal of processors made by Intel, citing Apple as an early indicator.

[MyRightEye]

But I thought Apple sucks?

[holywarrior007]

Not as much as Microsoft!

[sythara]

Microsoft doesen't make computers.

[Bob Kakis]

You're right Sythara. Microsoft does not make computers. Microsoft makes crap!

[BogusBasin]

Ever notice their new anti-Mac commercials? Yeah. They are giving away laptops to show how much more Macs cost. MS doesn't even make laptops. They compete with Apple on operating systems. But you don't see any MS commercials comparing the retail cost of Windows vs. Mac OS. Why is that? Because Windows cost so much more.

Flame on Wintards!

[c4s2k3]

"Flame on Wintards!"

You should be more sensitive. That kind of language is simply not politically correct enough for modern society.

Why not "Productivity-challenged" instead.

;-)

[slickuser]

Huang said that "CPU-GPU co-processing" is the future of computing.

The article, for some reason, GPU is future of computing. Trick to attract fanboys?

[ddesy]

This reminds me of when you could buy a math co-processor that enhanced the performance of some software. Eventually the co-processors became built-in features. Perhaps history will repeat itself.

[sythara]

Isn't Intel pushing just that?

[gerrrg]

Just curious, but, "Doing the right job with the right tool is more efficient" seems contrary to, "a graphics chip run some computing jobs in addition to its ordinary job displaying graphic".

Anyone?

[Mr. Dee]

This nVidia guy has some serious beef with Intel. I don't believe you can tell who is the future of what in this industry. Who knows, AMD ATI, could come with something that puts everybody to shame, ARM could end up being the choice of every PC vendor two years from now.

[sythara]

"ARM could end up being the choice of every PC vendor two years from now"

Very unlikely

[holywarrior007]

I wonder what is the status of Nvidia and Intel's legal battle over Nehalem architecture. Has it been settled or they are locking horns in the court?

[AppleSuxLeo]

Must be true if that guy said so !
Bwahahahaha !!

[kgsbca]

as an nvidia shareholder, I'm still waiting for nvidia to get out that can of whupass that the CEO promised Intel last year. I hope it's more than the EC billion $ fine, that's not going to stop Intel from using their $$ to stop companies like nvidia.

[artistjoh]

Most interesting from several points of view, especially the stress placed on Apple by someone at the top of Nvidea. While Apple often doesn't invent things directly it tends to be at the forefront of adoption of new technologies which often become the industry standard (GUI, mouse, optical drives, modern laptop form factor, etc)

In the current hoopla about showy Apple features like multi-touch, LED backlit screens, integrated but longer lasting batteries etc, 2 technologies seem to very important but will get ignored by most consumers because they are less obvious - OpenCL and Grand Central (which enables developers to optimize the use of multi core processors) which is one of the most significant parts of the new Snow Leopard version of OS X.

The fact that I can get excited by these things will make many of my friends wish that there is a cure for being a geek - they look on it as a disease. Sadly, I don't care about that and continue to be excited by the evolution of processors and computing technology. The future looks wonderful.

[ahickey]

At this point processors are fast enough for most 'normal' taks like web, email, word processing and spreadsheets. The kind of stuff the vast majority of people use their computers for.
The bit where the processor performance is tested is with audio/video encoding and this is exactly where GPUs are more capable that standard processors.

Give me apowerful enough CPU and a GPU that is being used for more than displaying pretty graphics and I would have most of my needs sorted.

[eightwings]

Nvidia should tread carefully. The recent reports that Sun Microsystems has cancelled Rock, its costly multicore processor project, should be a warning to Nvidia, AMD, Intel, IBM and others that the processor industry is right in the middle of a highly volative period in its history. The industy has suffered a painful blow. What the market wants is a universal solution to the parallel programming crisis that will make programming easy and result in complex, rock-solid and super fast applications. This calls for a homogeneous, deterministic parallel processor. Neither the CPU, the GPU, nor the GPGPU (hybrid or heterogeneous) processor qualifies. Rest assured that the Rock is not the last of the big chip failures. Don?t be surprised if Intel?s Larrabee and AMD?s Fusion projects come crashing down like so many Hindenburgs. Nvidia's Tegra will not fare much better.

When the pain becomes unbearable (it?s all about money), it will suddenly dawn on everybody in the business that it?s finally time to force the baby boomers (the Turing Machine worshippers) into retirement in order to boldly break away from the flawed and failed computing models of the last century.

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis:
http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-solve-parallel-programming.html

[theorifice]

The only things the average consumer needs processing power are Video Decoding and Adobe Flash content. With hardware decoding being a standard option for any PC with discrete graphics, the only motivator to increase processing power is the unportable, closed source Adobe Flash player. As hi-definition streaming video becomes even more prevalent, PC designers are going to need to push Adobe for better integration with existing graphics acceleration technologies rather than having to attack Flash content with brute processing power.

For example, a low powered Atom processor can easily play hi definition content when paired with the low powered ION chipset, but struggles to play any sort of high-definition streaming video, which is most often lower quality/bitrate.

And then there is the Linux situation which is largely the same. Nvidia has already taken the lead by a huge margin in the Linux world due to driver support and the recent addition of the VDPAU framework for hardware video decoding. Unfortunately due to Adobe's binary only flash player, this system is completely unusable for high-definition full screen flash video.

Adobe needs to open up and begin to embrace the hardware landscape of today and not be stuck in the mindset of the P4 era.

[druble]

"citing Apple as an early trendsetter"

What a joke. Please, why do people keep crediting Apple for things they deserve no credit for. Apple is not an early trendsetter. PC manufactures have been doing this for years. In fact other manufactures are so far ahead of Apple in this area that Notebooks can have Upgradeable GPU's in them. How is Apple an early trendsetter when they are so behind. Just because Apple does something, it does not mean they are the first ones. I'm so tired of reading junk like that. Please don't report on opinions and report on fact, because it hypes up all the Fanboys and makes them think there machines are special when they are not. The fact that Apple uses a notebook with an onboard GPU is not because Apple choose to do so, it is because the REAL people who manufacture the Same hardware used in Windows/Linux machines make the hardware, and it is just available to Apple, not because it?s what Apple asked for.... A little intelligence please, stop feeding the Cult of the Apple Zombies that brainlessly follow the gospel of misinformation as if it were all fact. Apple dose not make computer hardware. They make cases and put hardware all the Real PC manufactures make into their cases, that is it. Oh, and they make the OS. Apple is borrowing PC hardware not making hardware and setting trends, they are riding on the Tail end of where PC?s are, and always have been since the 80?s, nothing has changed...