Jen-Hsun Huang doesn't pull any punches. And Intel is a favorite punching bag these days.
I had a chance to sit down with the Nvidia CEO as he described his company's philosophy and what sounds like the first volleys of a long battle with Intel.
Nvidia CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang
(Credit: Nvidia)A quick backdrop: Nvidia is the largest graphics chip company in the world, with quarterly revenue in the $1 billion range. Although Intel and Nvidia seem to exist in symbiotic bliss inside many PCs, this doesn't reflect the two companies' business models, which are in many respects far apart.
Intel is a chip manufacturer. Nvidia is not; it's a fabless company. Intel supplies the central-processing unit (CPU), a general-purpose processor. Nvidia supplies the graphics-processing unit (GPU), a special-purpose chip.
Huang is relentless in driving GPU performance--and fearless when challenging Intel. This is admirable, if anything. Even the world's largest PC makers treat Intel with great deference--publicly--because the chipmaker is so instrumental in supplying and defining the core electronics in their PCs (And partly due to the fact that they use Intel advertising dollars).
But Huang will tear into Intel when he thinks it's warranted. And Intel may have reason to be worried about the content of Huang's candor. Despite Intel's colossal size and and clout, Nvidia--not Intel--supplies the defining chip for the most savvy computer users: game enthusiasts. They depend on Nvidia graphics chips to deliver the spectacular visuals of games like Crysis.
And few people will deny that computing is becoming more visual. The GPU is essentially a parallel-computing engine that is extremely efficient at running visual (and scientific) software--that is, many of the popular graphics, video, and photo applications now running on PCs.
Nvidia is set to challenge Intel in the mobile Internet device space. It is getting set to make a big platform play in tiny, fit-in-your-pocket devices with its APX 2500. This "system on a chip" will house everything that comes on a PC circuit board today. Intel is targeting the same market with its Moorestown processor, due in late 2009 or 2010.
One important note: because Huang had made so many references to Intel over the last few months, particularly at the financial-analyst day in April, the interview revolved around this topic. In some cases, I asked pointed questions about Intel and posed hypothetical--i.e. devil's advocate--scenarios. In other cases, Huang volunteered statements about Intel.
Huang has spoken forthrightly in the last few months about Intel. The obvious question is why.
"People thought that I had lost some of my patience with Intel recently. The fact of the matter is that they're out spouting things that are just not true. And I was just correcting that," he said.
"Intel is a big, powerful company," I noted to Huang. "And there aren't many people like you in the industry, who are so blunt about Intel."
His reaction: "Because they are Intel. Because they are a monopoly. Because they are a market-dominant player. They ought to be held to a higher standard. They shouldn't be able to say that other peoples' businesses are going to die."
Huang, here, is referring to a statement by an Intel executive who recently said current graphics technology (sometimes referred to generally as rasterization) will be replaced by another kind of graphics technology (sometimes referred to as ray tracing), on which Intel is working.
Intel has also been dropping more hints about its upcoming high-end graphics chip, called Larrabee, with relatively few specifics. I asked Huang if he thought there was a reason so few details had been given.
"Larabee is a PowerPoint slide," Huang said. "I haven't met a product on my PowerPoint slide that I don't like. You know, they're floating Larrabee out there just to put a shadow over us, cast a cloud over us. They've already slipped it two years from the time they talked about. They would love to slip it another four years and leave a cloud over me."
"Just to play devil's advocate," I said, "Intel sees the success of the GPU. So it has to crank up its skunk works and develop a fast GPU too (Larrabee). Then Intel, being Intel, has to fill its factories and sell these things. Again, I'm playing devil's advocate here."
Huang's immediate reaction: "You and I have a deal. If you're going to write controversial stuff about what I say, can you write what you just said? Here's what I believe: I believe that the entire world believes that what Intel does is build a factory, stuff that people don't want to buy, and then shoves it down its customer's throats. Just like you said."
Huang also spoke about how the PC industry is shifting away from the CPU-centric vision.
"We would love it if people would buy more GPUs, but the fact of the matter is, we don't have Intel's budget to tell you to buy something you don't need. We're going to let the market decide for itself," he said.
"Selecting the right GPU for the right CPU--and having these two processors collaborate. We call it the optimized PC design," he continued. "Notice, we didn't call it 'increase your GPU' design. Notice we didn't go 'buy more quad cores.' It's not a market benefit message. The optimized PC asks what your work flow is. Take the work flow, and benchmark it on the machine. And decide for yourself."
Huang had a few points to make about changes in PC marketing.
"The whole idea that the PC industry is good, better, best, faster microprocessors, more memory--that psychology of the PC industry is so yesterday," he said. "Not a single person believes it. Sony doesn't believe it. Dell doesn't believe it. HP doesn't believe it. God knows Apple doesn't believe it. Nobody believes it anymore."
Huang elaborated, saying that at the other end of the computing spectrum is the minimalist PC, which Nvidia's APX 2500 system-on-a-chip addresses.
"There's a movement toward 'I want the most minimal of PCs': the ThinkPad (X300)," Huang said. "In the future, if it's not thin like a sheet of paper, it's just too much. There should be no electronics. There should be just one tiny chip. And this computer ought to cost nothing. The display should be the most expensive thing. It's not about the CPU. It's not about the GPU. It's about the computer on the chip."
But Intel, and its capacity to integrate more and more of the PC's function into its chipsets, is never far from his mind. Huang gave a number of examples of companies--as smaller and smaller chip geometries have allowed more and more transistors to be packed into a single chip--that disappeared because they were integrated out of existence. (Think sound chip and multimedia chip companies as just a few examples.)
"Make me...list one single example where Moore's Law is not your enemy today," he said. "At this very moment, the only one we know of is the GPU."
Every year, Huang said, "we're making chips that are twice as big as the (year) before that. And every single year, we deliver an experience that is twice as good as the year before. And every single year, people say, 'It's not good enough. I want more. I want more.'"
Throughout it all, Moore's Law is still Huang's friend, he said.
"Notice in the case of CPUs, people are saying, 'I don't need that many gigahertz,' or 'I don't need that many cores,'" Huang noted. "(CPU makers) are going down that path. And that's why it's possible now to build an Atom CPU. At that point, the technology becomes good enough."
Huang said he is not trying to wish Intel away. He is willing to co-exist. But he doesn't believe that Intel is able to do this. This probably is his biggest beef.
"There are going to be two important processors in the system," he said. "A microprocessor that is used for all kinds of complicated, unpredictable sequential code. And a parallel processor, called a GPU, that is really dedicated toward doing very parallel, very heavy-lifting mathematical operations."
Huang refocused his attention on Intel.
"Intel cannot share the world with someone else. They want the world to have one processor. They don't want the world to have two processors, even if it's good for them. (The Nvidia chip) just happens to be so famous, and just happens to be so popular, and happens to be so delightful that it just really makes them upset. That's an anti-innovation feeling. That's a monopolistic feeling, right? You can't share the world with somebody else."
His attitude borders on paranoid. But in Silicon Valley, the credo "only the paranoid survive," put forth by former Intel CEO Andrew Grove, is followed by many.
"People have been predicting the demise of our company for 10 years now," Huang said. "Intel has been in the graphics business for 10 years. They've been predicting our death for 10 years. They'll be predicting our death 10 years from now."
Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang's jeremiad against Intel heralds future melees with the chip giant over computer graphics technology. Behind the sound and fury lurks Moore's Law.
Most observers agree that the graphics processing unit (GPU) is gaining on the central processing unit (CPU) as the single most important piece of silicon inside the PC. "When you start looking at a PC today, the (central) processor means less and less," according to Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat. The GPU is simply becoming a better way for PC makers to differentiate in a landscape dominated by Intel CPUs, he said.
The question is, who is going to be the largest provider of that differentiation and what form will it take? The pressure on Nvidia--expressed by Huang on Thursday at an analyst meeting--is understandable, as the company seeks to fend off both Intel and AMD, who are increasingly focused on graphics, said McGregor. "Nvidia faces serious challenges. One of their big customers (AMD) went out and acquired a competitor (ATI) and then (you have) Intel saying we're going into your territory." That has put Nvidia on edge. Intel, not surprisingly, is the biggest threat.
"Intel is going to be as competitive as they can possibly be," said Dean McCarron, founder and principal of Mercury Research. "There is a pretty different vision between what Nvidia has and what Intel has about the future of the market. You seem to see a lot of pressure on some kind of integrated solution (from Intel). That is not compatible with a standalone graphics market, where Nvidia is the largest player."
Nvidia is teaming up with Via to build a low-cost PC platform to compete with Intel.
(Credit: Nvidia)Huang sees his company doing battle not only with Intel but with a guiding principle put forward by one of the company's founders, Gordon Moore--that the number of transistors on a microprocessor would double every two years--as Intel continues to integrate more graphics silicon into its chipsets. "We can get integrated into anything. Integrated into a (chipset's) south bridge. If you're not good enough, then Moore's law is your enemy. Moore's law will stick you in some random chip. We get integrated into a speck of dust," Huang said at the meeting. Here he was saying that if Nvidia doesn't stay well ahead of Intel--where it is now--the CPU giant will simply integrate the graphics technology into its own silicon and Nvidia will become irrelevant.
Huang is confident his company can maintain its lead. "GPU technology is far, far ahead of integrated graphics," he said. "We can innovate our way forward. The world already has computing companies that make processors for everybody. I'm supposed to add the secret ingredient that differentiates it for the few. Now the few that I'm talking about happens to be hundreds of millions of people. I'm OK with that."
Intel sees a future where it is a bigger graphics player at the high end of the market. At the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai earlier this month, Senior Intel VP Patrick Gelsinger spelled out Intel's vision: ray tracing-based rendering technologies that can be used in high-end gaming, an Nvidia stronghold. "An intro of these capabilities into mainstream gaming we believe is possible in the future," Gelsinger said. Another prong of Intel's strategy is to offer a graphics platform, code-named Larrabee, based on the long-standing x86 instruction set.
(More background from CNET on ray tracing here: "CPU: The future of GPU?" and a discussion of ray tracing vs. rasterization here.)
Referring to a question from the audience about Intel's Larrabee chip at the analyst meeting on Thursday, Huang responded: "The question from the gentleman is we haven't really talked about Larrabee and is he opening up a can of worms. Well, we're going to open up a can of whoop-ass in a little bit," Huang said, referring to future technology that Nvidia is working on.
Bravado aside, to effectively do battle with a circa-2009 Intel that excels in both central and graphics processing and AMD-ATI, Nvidia must seek new partners. It is turning to one of the only other--aside from Intel and AMD--x86 processor suppliers to build an alternative PC platform. Billed as "The World's Most Affordable Vista Premium PC," the sub-$45 processing platform will combine Via's Isaiah processor with an integrated Nvidia graphics chipset.
"Supporting Via's new CPU is not a big leap for them. And, it's a fantastic vote of confidence for Via because Nvidia wouldn't commit the engineering talent to it if Nvidia didn't believe the processor had a big opportunity," according to Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research.
Nvidia says about 73 million Intel integrated graphics chips go unused.
(Credit: Nvidia)Nvidia, as it prepares for a long, grueling fight with Intel, got some solace on Friday from a report issued by Doug Freedman of American Technology Research itemizing why Nvidia may be in a better position than casual observers believe. These include:
• Nvidia remains the No. 1 graphics supplier as up to 73 million Intel integrated Graphics Processors (IGPs) are unused in systems due to "double-attach" with a Nvidia solution. (Note: Market share calculations from researchers such as Mercury Research and Jon Peddie Research show Intel as the No. 1 graphics supplier--ed.)
• Intel projects strong performance gains in IGP roadmap (10x performance in 2010), but from a very low performance base. 66 percent of top selling games fail or have issues in current IGP solutions.
• Intel multicores do not handle tasks better than discrete GPUs, but they are complementary in a heterogeneous computing environment.
• Integration of IGP with CPU does not present a threat, but may increase double-attach (adding a graphics card to a system with an existing integrated graphics chip) opportunities for Nvidia as it continues to add differentiated features for the few high-end graphics, gamer customers.
Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang let rip with a diatribe against Intel at Nvidia's financial analyst day on Thursday. Huang cited frustration with recent Intel comments stating that discrete graphics cards will become "unnecessary."
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang
(Credit: Nvidia)Because Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, includes integrated-graphics silicon in most of its chipsets the company has become the world's largest supplier of graphics chips. Its upcoming Nehalem processors will move the graphics from the chipset onto the same piece of silicon as the main processor. A design that is expected to result in vastly better performance.
(Note: A contrarian take on the graphics market states that Nvidia remains the #1 graphics supplier because approximately 73 million Intel integrated graphics processors (IGP) are unused in systems due to "double-attach" with an Nvidia solution, according to Doug Freedman of American Technology Research. More here at ExtremeTech.)
This image of Intel as an unstoppable graphics juggernaut is what Huang takes issue with. What set him off initially was a comment from an Intel graphics and gaming technologist who said that consumers "probably won't need" discrete cards in the future. Nvidia's primary business is designing and supplying graphics chips for discrete graphics cards that go into PCs.
"We don't typically like to do this. It's just that we've been taking it and taking it and taking it. Every single frickin' day. Are you allowed to say that word? Every day all over the world. Enough is enough."
Huang was especially upset about Intel's claims of boosting integrated graphics performance in the future, saying Intel's claims paled against what Nvidia will achieve by that time.
"Claim after claim after claim. They're just false. They cross the line of fair play," he said. "Here's another one. Nvidia's gonna be dead. Because we're (Intel) sticking the graphics in the CPU and (Nvidia) will have no place to stick it," he said.
Huang also attacked Intel's marketing machine. "Just because they have this enormous marketing budget. Just because they have platforms everywhere in the world. It doesn't make it right. To take on smaller companies. It's just not right."
Huang also mounted an aggressive defense of gaming on the PC--one of the main reasons many consumers opt for Nvidia graphics chips. He began by claiming that Intel graphics can't run games. "We're not the only ones saying this. This is Tim Sweeney. One of the most important game developers in the entire world. 'Intel is incapable of running modern games. Intel's integrated graphics just don't work. I don't think they will ever work.' This wasn't said in 1994. This was said on March 10, 2008," Huang said.
"(It's) one of the most important apps. I play games. A lot more people play games today than before. It's a big industry. We happen to think games are important. Game developers are important. Game players are important. Online games, important. Retail games, important. First person shooters, important. Simulation games, important. I'm a perfectly grown adult. I'm not ashamed of them."
Intel also has plans to bring out a graphics engine code-named Larrabee that uses "many cores" to take on high-end engineering and scientific applications. And presumably games too.
When asked to comment, Intel spokesman Dan Snyder said, "Are you surprised? Nvidia's CEO has been very vocal about their feelings for several months now, so I don't think any of this comes as a surprise."
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