Business Tech

Nvidia has become a Silicon Valley hot spot for rumors. One is tied to an analyst downgrade Monday, the other to the rumored Apple MacBook refresh.

An analyst rekindled speculation Monday that the world's largest graphics chip supplier would sell off its chipset business, while rumors persist that the company would play a larger role in an expected refresh of the Apple MacBook.

Nvidia graphic on its notebook home page

(Credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia shares fell Monday after a Pacific Crest analyst issued a negative report on the company's prospects. In the report, the analyst said "our checks confirm" that Nvidia will exit the chipset business next year.

Nvidia chipsets--sometimes referred to as MCPs--serve as supporting silicon for the company's graphics processors. In the past, Nvidia has denied that it will exit the chipset business.

The analyst also speculated that Nvidia will pre-announce negative results for the third quarter (ended October). Nvidia has been dogged by negative press and analyst reports after it disclosed issues with its processors and chipsets back in July.

If that wasn't enough, Pacific Crest said Nvidia may see share loss in the notebook market next year as a result of a future refresh of "Montevina" graphics silicon from Intel.

But not all is lost. On the upside, rumors persist that Nvidia will play a large role in an expected MacBook refresh this month. The latest rumor holds that Nvidia is showing off prototypes internally of upcoming MacBooks with new Nvidia silicon.

Some are even pointing to a graphic on the Nvidia notebook home page of a slim notebook design as a possible MacBook design--though a more plausible explanation is that it's simply generic artwork.

Apple uses Nvidia graphics chips in its high-end MacBook Pros, but the MacBook and MacBook Air use Intel integrated graphics silicon. One of the latter two could be recipients of new Nvidia graphics chips.

Nvidia would not comment on the rumors.

Ask Sean Maloney about Intel's biggest challenges and biggest opportunities for growth and he'll mention the same thing: WiMax, the company's chosen broadband technology.

Maloney, an executive vice president of Intel and the chipmaker's chief sales and marketing officer, has seen waves of technology come and go since joining the company back in 1982. Recently, he got the additional responsibility of coordinating company strategy, which he said has "a good deal to do with the rapid pace of our global development."

Sean Maloney

(Credit: Intel)

I had the chance to talk with him last week. Maloney initially touched on how the consumer notebook market is tracking the cell phone market. Just as cell phones are now driven heavily by consumer demand, so will notebooks be primarily driven by consumer demand in the years to come, according to Maloney.

Maloney also discussed how the shift in global notebook sales is transforming Intel into a consumer product company, and how Intel will respond to competitors in China and elsewhere.

Q: What are the biggest challenges for Intel going forward?
Maloney: If you look at the notebook market it's growing very rapidly. The notebook has gone through the same pattern as the cell phone went through in '97, '98. The notebook is becoming heavily driven by the consumer market. The computer industry has largely been dominated by business computing since the 1940s. Consumer is now dominating computing.

The percentage of our business that's in the U.S. has shrunk radically in the last 10 years and shrunk radically in Europe. The emerging markets are now the dominant markets.

We're about 10 years behind the cell phone in that pattern. Where the cell phone is now, it is very much matured in terms of growth in most markets. Even in countries like Angola and Mozambique, there is heavy penetration. The computer industry and the notebook industry is a decade behind that.

Q: In the consumer segment, netbooks (typically ultra-small notebooks priced below $600) are catching on in a big way, what do you see as the reason for that?
Maloney: Previously, someone in an emerging market, just went to a cybercafe. Now they can afford to get online themselves. In the mature markets, (it's people) who can't afford a notebook, like 8-year-olds to 12-year-olds. Or someone who wants to take something out in the evening but doesn't want to drag along a 16-inch notebook. The underlying driver is Web access. People spend much, much more time on the Web every day than they do on their cell phones. And yet you don't have that portability, so that pushes (consumers) in that direction.

Q: How does Intel respond to a chip like the Chinese Godson processor that has government backing?
Maloney: There's a long history of this in Japan, of state-sponsored computer research. And Europe, the same thing. It's not surprising (in this case) because many people see the microprocessor as the essential building block of IT. That's not surprising that governments want to put money in there.

It's potentially a threat. But we're fairly relaxed about it. We don't expect to be the only supplier. On the other hand, we've announced very large manufacturing facilities inside of China. We are a big player in the Chinese market ourselves.

Q: Intel has repeatedly touted WiMax as critical to Intel's mobile future, if not its future overall. So, how important is WiMax to Intel?
Maloney: It's very important to the computer industry, period. Because, if you look at the projections for the industry in the next 10 years, they are heavily predicated upon mobile computing and broadband in emerging markets. And even in the U.S., you still have sizable percentages of the population who still don't have broadband. In countries that are going to generate growth in the industry in the next decade, you don't have copper, you don't have fiber. So, you've got to have a way to get low-cost broadband. That was the design goal of the program. It was to be a low-cost, high-speed broadband network.

If broadband doesn't happen...industry growth will eventually slow down. If it does happen, growth will continue and new services will come along. It's an old story. Back in the '80s, we spent a decade trying to get Ethernet established. (As a result) we got client-server computing. We did the same thing with Wi-Fi, 1999 through 2002. There's been a long history of the computer industry needing standardized, high-speed communications. It's been a big piece of the computer industry's history.

Q: Intel said that WiMax has to deliver from 5 to 10 times the performance over existing products in the market to be successful, but mobile WiMax doesn't necessarily do this.
Maloney: The performance--I disagree about this. And you'll get to find out about that very soon because the network is going to start to roll out very soon. And you're going to see extremely good performance. And I'm certainly confident we're going to hit the design goals on performance. So, the argument on that one is going to get resolved real soon.

On the time it's taken...Actually, 16e (802.16e)--the global standard for mobile WiMax--was finalized at the end of 2005. We're now in 2008. So, it's a relatively quick period of time for this revision. 16d, which is the previous standard, is an older, slower technology, which didn't have as broad support. 16e has very broad international support. Subsequent to the standard being finalized, it's actually moved along pretty quickly.

We have over 200 networks in trial or being deployed. And we're very comfortable with the progress.

(Regarding) LTE (Long-Term Evolution, a competitor to WiMax). LTE is pretty similar technology (to WiMax) in many, many ways. It's some way off. We'll see what happens with that. As far as EV-DO is concerned, it's not a technology that's available in Europe or Africa or pretty much anywhere in South America and very little in Asia. Wideband CDMA is generally available but much slower.

All these technologies are useful. If I can't get a signal, I love EV-DO, I use EV-DO, I use all these things. But we're comfortable that WiMax is going to augment these things by being a lot quicker. We still feel comfortable it was the right program and we're making progress on it.

Q: Intel has been successful at integrating key technologies, such as Wi-Fi and graphics into its chipsets. What's the next big step in integration?
Maloney: More shorter term, the industry's concerned about multicore and integrating more of the conventional I/O and graphics capabilities. I think people are going to tend to keep the radio (Wi-Fi or other wireless communications technologies, including WiMax) discrete (as separate silicon) for a little while longer. But I think it's more of a business decision not a technology decision.

On the (current) 3G services, the attach rate on notebooks is very low. Actually, low single digits. The computer industry has a history of only integrating things when you get up to 50 percent or 60 percent or 70 percent of people wanting the feature. We are there with Wi-Fi now. (Editors' note: As to why Wi-Fi is still discrete, Maloney repeated that it's a business decision, not a technology decision.)

I don't see one technology replacing another. You're going to want to use whatever technology is available. Certainly, we're confident that there's going to be a big build-out of WiMax over the next three years. But people are going to carry on using the 3G infrastructure where it is. Or 2G infrastructure. Nobody rips these communications (infrastructures) and throws them out. They carry on being used.

The traffic growth is very, very high. We're still looking at 50 percent per year traffic growth. Those are really big numbers and we're going to need a lot of bandwidth and a lot of technology to supply that."

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday announced the availability of silicon targeted at the "performance" gaming community.

The new 790GX chipset is slotted below the existing, higher-end 790FX, which is targeted at the ultra-enthusiast game segment.

The 790GX allows gamers to safely run Phenom-processor-based systems at speeds of more than 3.0GHz using a technology AMD calls "Advanced Clock Calibration." A processor rated at 2.5GHz, for example, can be "overclocked" to run at 3.2GHz to get better performance in games.

AMD Advanced Clock Calibration boosts processor clock speed

(Credit: AMD)

"Significant tuning enhancements via Advanced Clock Calibration...introduced with the AMD 790GX make it the best platform for unlocking maximum AMD Phenom processor performance," AMD said in a statement.

AMD has enhanced the part of the chipset called the southbridge to achieve this extra performance.

"Performance cache" memory technology, which places a discrete memory chip on the motherboard, boosts video performance, the company said.

The 790GX chipset integrates an ATI Radeon HD 3300 graphics processor but can also scale up to high-end ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics cards, AMD said.

Major system makers such as Asus, Foxconn, and Gigabyte Technology are supporting the 790GX. "We share AMD's commitment to raise the performance bar," Asus said in a statement.

A high-end motherboard built around the 790GX combined with a quad-core X4 9850 2.5-GHz Phenom processor is priced at $355. By comparison, a motherboard based on Intel's P45 chipset with an Intel quad-core Q9300 (2.5GHz) is about $90 more, AMD claims.

The MacBook might be getting changes inside and out in the next several weeks.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple might have decided its partnership with Intel doesn't mean it has to use all of Intel's products.

AppleInsider reports that Apple could be using a chipset from a different company--or even an internally developed one--in the next iteration of the MacBook, expected to arrive in the next six or eight weeks. Like other notebook vendors, Apple had been using Intel's mobile Centrino chipsets in its MacBook line ever since 2006 but it's going to pass on the Montevina version of those chipsets this time around, according to the report.

Intel has done an excellent job reinventing the company around mobile processors, starting with the original Pentium M design back in 2004 and carrying forward to today's Core 2 Duo. But it has done a much less stellar job with the integrated graphics chipsets that connect those processors to the rest of the system, such as the memory chips and hard drives.

Most notebooks use integrated graphics chipsets over discrete graphics chips to cut down on power consumption, but the graphics performance of Intel's chipsets leave a lot to be desired. Microsoft was less-than-thrilled about the performance of the chipsets that were scheduled to arrive with Windows Vista, and Intel has had problems getting other chipsets to live up to their promise.

If it's an internally designed chipset that Apple has in place for the new systems, history would be repeating itself at the company, which used to design much of the internal hardware that went along with IBM's PowerPC chips back in the day. Apple recently acquired a passel of chip designers from P.A. Semi, but Steve Jobs has said those folks are working on future chips for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

AppleInsider thinks Apple might have contracted with Advanced Micro Devices or Via for the new chipsets, but offers no details on what might actually be inside the new systems. Given Nvidia's huge mobile chipset problem this summer, it is probably not in the running if Apple's looking at other suppliers.

In other pending MacBook news, Computerworld reports that the new systems will arrive in September with glass touchpads, which seems a bit curious. Glass might allow for all kinds of trackpad-oriented multitouch goodness, but it seems like a warranty nightmare to me.

The new notebooks are expected to borrow design cues from the MacBook Air and bring the aluminum casing on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to the MacBook.

SAN FRANCISCO--Though a little behind schedule, it's finally here.

Despite a minor snafu that held up the launch by three weeks, Intel officially introduced its new Centrino 2 platform at a press event here Monday night.

The delay was reportedly a problem with the FCC certification for the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard used in the platform, in addition there were reports of problems with the integrated graphics feature.

More than 240 new laptops will be launched Tuesday using Intel's Centrino 2 platform.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)

But on launch day, Intel's Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of the mobile platforms group, said the fix was a "simple procedure" and that Intel is "good to go."

As part of the introduction of Centrino 2 platform, later Monday night PC makers like Lenovo, Acer, Gateway, Fujitsu, and others will roll out their latest laptops with the updated technology.

The Centrino 2 platform comes in two flavors, one for consumers, and one with Intel's vPro technology for business customers.

This time around, Centrino 2's high-definition media capability is what Intel is trying to push. The whole platform is set up to enhance Blu-ray playback, and the company says it will help a laptop's battery last two hours, which for many films means you can see the entire HD movie without having to recharge.

There are five new processors available within the Centrino 2 family. At the event, Intel made a big show of its Core2 Extreme Mobile Processor X9100, which it says is the "highest performing mobile processor." Intel has removed overclock protection, and generally tuned it to impress gamers. To demonstrate, an Intel employee played the PC version of Assassin's Creed on a notebook with the Extreme Mobile Processor.

The new chipset is also developed with an eye toward gamers. Intel is introducing an option in which the same notebook can switch between using discrete graphics (which are battery intensive and loved by gamers) and integrated graphics (which reduces the power drain on the PC).

In all, Intel tried to demonstrate what it thinks is the most important issue for mobile PC users: balancing power efficiency and faster processing. The "secret sauce," said Intel's Eden, is a feature they are calling HUGI, which stands for "Hurry Up and Get Idle."

The company says it will enable the new 2.8GHz processor to consume 60 percent less electricity than its 2.33GHz processor on a single task, and it will get that task done 30 second faster.

Also in Centrino 2, 802.11n Wi-Fi will be standard. Intel says to expect five times faster wireless connections, and twice the range, but to get ready for WiMax coming this fall. Though not available immediately, future versions of Centrino 2 will come with built-in WiMax capability.

Rambus is suing Nvidia, accusing the company of violating 17 Rambus-held patents on memory controllers. The suit was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Los Altos, Calif.-based company says that chipsets, graphics processers, and media communication processors across six different Nvidia product lines are illegally infringing. The patents held concern memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM.

Rambus is asking the court for an injunction (which would stop Nvidia from selling the products at issue), as well as monetary damages.

In a prepared statement, Rambus' head legal counsel, Tom Lavelle, said that Rambus has been attempting to get Nvidia to purchase a license for the patents, and the suit was the last resort. However, he said, Rambus hopes to settle the issue out of court.

CNET News is waiting to hear back from Nvidia for comment.