Update at 6:45 .p.m. with additional information about QPI licensing.
Nvidia's last-minute conference announcement has turned into a bit of shocker.
Despite all the chest thumping at its gaming conference this week, the high drama of Nvision reached its denouement with a waving of the white flag. The world's largest graphics chip supplier announced support for high-end gaming graphics using Intel silicon. This has raised doubts about its clout in the gaming PC industry, based on the reaction at many hardware enthusiast Web sites and at least one PC maker.
Representative of the shock expressed after the announcement, a headline at AnandTech said: "Hell Freezes Over: Nvidia Announces Native SLI Support for the Intel X58 Chipset." Translation: Nvidia must use Intel supporting silicon to get its technology into future gaming systems--not its own.
One PC maker agrees with this sentiment. "When they were top dog they could have gotten away with this," a representative said, alluding to the Nvidia nForce 200 chip that, until the about-face Thursday, was required to enable high-end Nvidia graphics on future Intel Core i7 systems.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the representative said Nvidia was quickly getting boxed out by AMD's ATI graphics unit at his company. Though there are also performance reasons for this newfound preference for ATI graphics over Nvidia, in this specific case PC makers, and users alike, don't want to add a special Nvidia chip to enable graphics on high-end gaming systems, he said.
And this reaction is echoed at Anandtech and other hardware Web sites. "We heard from the very start that most motherboard manufacturers weren't going to use the nForce 200 + Intel X58 combination," according to Anandtech, referring to the i7's supporting silicon, the Intel X58 chipset.
At issue is Nvidia's Scalable Link Interface, or SLI, a critical technology for game enthusiasts who want to use more than one Nvidia graphics board to power the most demanding PC games like Crysis. Nvidia had been saying that the only one way to get to high-end game nirvana was by using its own supporting silicon.
But the Thursday announcement changed all that. Now users can configure SLI systems for Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors "natively" as Nvidia puts it. That is, without the Nvidia nForce 200 chip. "That's (the nForce 200) been the only solution. And that's been a very, very high-end solution," said Tom Peterson, director of Technical Marketing for MCP production at Nvidia.
All of this can be traced back to an earlier issue centered on whether Nvidia would make chipsets based on Intel's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology to work with the i7. The company has indicated that it will not. "When we go to Bloomfield (i7 processor) we've already announced that we have no intention of building a QPI-based chipset. Because of that, we've offered only nForce 200," Peterson said.
(Correction: Nvidia maintains that it has a QPI license but has elected not to make a QPI chipset.)
This, in turn, has fueled speculation that Nvidia will get out of the chipset business. "I can see where some people would think that in the longer term, especially with the (i7)" said Dean McCarron, principal and founder of Cave Creek, Ariz.-based Mercury Research.
But McCarron thinks Nvidia will stay in the business in the near term. And this is borne out by Nvidia's indication this week about an impending announcement of a new integrated graphics chipset for Intel's current Core 2 architecture--not the i7.
Update on August 28 at 3:30 p.m. with comments on SLI and AMD-ATI
Nvidia is extending its support for Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors while it prepares to announce next-generation integrated graphics silicon.
The announcement marks an effort to expand Nvidia offerings on Intel's next high-end desktop platform, which had previously been referred to as "Bloomfield." Intel branded it Core i7 prior to the company's developer forum last week. Nvidia has already said that it has no intention to build a chipset for Intel's next-generation interconnect technology called QuickPath Interconnect or QPI, which is part of the i7 design.
Nvidia said Thursday that it will license its Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology for Intel's Core i7 processor. Nvidia's technology will work in tandem with Intel's X58 chipset, the supporting silicon for the Core i7, which is due to ship in volume in the fourth quarter.
SLI allows systems to be configured with multiple graphics boards. So, for example, system builders and users can build systems with two, three, or four Nvidia boards.
In essence, Nvidia is offering what it calls "native" licensing of SLI to its partners and system builders. Native licensing will not require the use of Nvidia's nForce 200 bridge chip and thereby the company hopes to broaden the range of its graphics offerings on i7-based PCs.
To date, Nvidia has only offered nForce 200, "which is basically an SLI chip that acts like a PCI Express bridge. That's been the only solution and that's been a very high-end solution. We'll continue to offer this," said Tom Peterson, director of Technical Marketing for MCP production at Nvidia.
PCI, or peripheral component interface, is the most common interface inside a PC for add-in boards.
Nvidia diagram shows supported configurations for Intel "Bloomfield" Core i7 processor and X58 chipset: x8 and x16 refer to the number of PCI "lanes." Generally, the more lanes, the higher the performance.
(Credit: Nvidia)The distinction between native and nForce 200 is that native SLI "allows for more common configurations," said Bryan Del Rizzo, an Nvidia spokesman.
One source at a U.S.-based PC maker said that Nvidia was losing ground to AMD-ATI by not bringing out an SLI solution that could appeal to more system builders and users, especially with Intel's Core i7 on the horizon.
"It's something that customers have been asking us for a long time and actually a big change for Nvidia," Peterson said.
Nvidia will certify partner circuit boards in its Santa Clara, Calif., certification lab, Peterson said. Certification is required to enable SLI.
On another front, Nvidia will announce a new high-performance "motherboard GPU" in the coming weeks. This will be a follow-on to its GeForce 8200 mGPU, which is an integrated graphics chipset for desktop PCs that use Intel processors.
The upcoming mGPU will compete with the Intel G45 integrated graphics chipset.
Update at July 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT with additional information and corrections concerning the Intel-Nvidia dispute.
Nvidia said Monday that its multichip technology will be architected to work on Intel's upcoming Nehalem chip platform.
Nvidia SLI technology supports multiple graphics boards.
(Credit: Nvidia)This announcement may help Nvidia to work around a standoff with Intel over whether Nvidia can make chipsets that work with Intel's next-generation Nehalem platform, due later this year. And also demonstrates that despite Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang' s rhetoric, Nvidia must cooperate with Intel in order to thrive.
Monday's announcement has no relation to separate licensing negotiations, according to sources familiar with the discussions. In other words, Nvidia is not announcing a chipset for Nehalem--which would require a license. It is simply a statement that Nvidia will support Nehalem with its nForce 200 Scalable Link Interconnect (SLI) chip.
However, some reports say Nvidia has reached an agreement with Intel to license Intel's Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) technology, paving the way for Nvidia to design chipsets for Nehalem.
The nForce 200 chip will work with Intel's "Bloomfield" line of Nehalem processors and the accompanying Intel chipset. SLI allows Nvidia to use multiple graphics boards in one system.
Upcoming SLI motherboards will use Nvidia nForce 200 SLI silicon, Intel Bloomfield processors, and Intel Tylersburg (X58) chipsets, Nvidia said in a statement.
"The nForce 200 SLI processor features patented SLI technology for graphics bandwidth management and multi-GPU peer-to-peer communications, both required to optimize graphics performance," Nvidia said. GPU stands for graphics processing unit.
Future systems "can be powered by one, two, or even three Nvidia GeForce GPUs, including the new...GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 GPUs," according to Nvidia.
Nvidia included statements from system suppliers in the Monday release. "It's great to see that Nvidia opted to enable SLI on the future Intel Bloomfield platform," said Rahul Sood, CTO Voodoo Business Unit, HP. "Make love not war I say...and Nvidia's (enabling) of Intel chipsets to support SLI will make our jobs much easier."
Nvidia claims that nForce 200 SLI silicon with Intel's new Bloomfield processor and Tylersburg chipset core logic chipset will deliver up to a 2.8X performance boost over traditional single graphics card platforms.
Motherboards and PC systems that will use the Nvidia nForce 200 SLI chip, Nvidia GeForce GPUs, and Nvidia SLI technology will be available from companies such as Acer, ASUS, Dell, Falcon Northwest, Legend, and Velocity Micro.
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