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Ah, does it work the same way when using dual/clone setup? And if I want to watch video fullscreen on my old TV and still can use my PC? My issue was NVIDIA dropping the FEATURE/OPTION from its latest drivers and video cards. Even Vista pulled it. :(

See:
1. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=65266
2. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=49636
3. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=29212
4. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=78251
5. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=50477
6. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=43756
etc.

Ah, does it work the same way when using dual/clone setup? And if I want to watch video fullscreen on my old TV and still can use my PC? My issue was NVIDIA dropping the FEATURE/OPTION from its latest drivers and video cards. Even Vista pulled it. :(

See:
1. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=65266
2. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=49636
3. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=29212
4. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=78251
5. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=50477
6. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=43756
etc.

Ah, does it work the same way when using dual/clone setup? And if I want to watch video fullscreen on my old TV and still can use my PC? My issue was NVIDIA dropping the FEATURE/OPTION from its latest drivers and video cards. Even Vista pulled it. :(

See:
1. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=65266
2. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=49636
3. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=29212
4. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=78251
5. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=50477
6. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=43756
etc.

Just FYI - NVIDIA already provides conformant OpenCL 1.0 drivers and has submitted a *GPU* implementation to Khronos already...

NVIDIA Submits OpenCL 1.0 Driver to Khronos for Conformance Certification for Windows and Linux

Unless of course you have a device (like newer macbooks) with nvidia's mobile chipset, which shares system memory and can therefore take advantage of Zero-copy access, in which case there is no transfer penalty because there is no transfer. A limited case, but useful for sure.

No they haven't. Only as of last month have they had a release candidate for the developers-only crowd. I think you're thinking of CUDA, which is an nVidia-only technology similar to OpenCL, but differing in implementation (and I believe openness as well). Along with OpenCL, DirectX 11 is also bringing "Compute Shaders" into the DirectX model, making this kind of thing a requirement for a DX11 GPU.

for a project like this, CUDA can give a great amount of processing power for a very low price.

What is CUDA?

It was really the same size? Wow, that's pretty cool!

Heh, I'm still on the lookout. I have high hopes for a Tegra-powered netbook - a slimmed down GeForce 9400M would be excellent with a high-resolution screen, and I really like the long battery life ARM provides (although it'd be sorta useless to me unless I could get some form of Linux on it). An ION netbook wouldn't be so bad either, though, but I haven't yet noticed any of them with a high resolution.

The Sony VAIO P? Yeah, looks cool, but too many pixels (never thought I'd say that!), too expensive, and, I think, too small.

      --- Mr. DOS

It was really the same size? Wow, that's pretty cool!

Heh, I'm still on the lookout. I have high hopes for a Tegra-powered netbook - a slimmed down GeForce 9400M would be excellent with a high-resolution screen, and I really like the long battery life ARM provides (although it'd be sorta useless to me unless I could get some form of Linux on it). An ION netbook wouldn't be so bad either, though, but I haven't yet noticed any of them with a high resolution.

The Sony VAIO P? Yeah, looks cool, but too many pixels (never thought I'd say that!), too expensive, and, I think, too small.

      --- Mr. DOS

Does FreeBSD even have any 3D video drivers for Nvidia or AMD? If not, then it's not worth even thinking about using it on the desktop for most people.

Yes

I had a very bad experience with my old nVidia nForce4 Chipset motherboard RAID chip while using it and just recently found that none of the old or new drivers work correctly when the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD is plugged into the motherboard causing my Windows OS to freeze during boot-up when the driver is initialized or the RAID capability just doesn't work at all. I even wrote up an entire account of this problem in a few threads, one on nVidia's forum and another on HardOCP Forum to warn users about trying to use Intel SSDs with their older nForce4 hardware that I linked to below.

The Silicon Image 3114 PCI to SATA 1 controller chip has serious issues also that caused it to drop my RAID-5 and destroy the 2 TB array. It has issues with PCI bus contention and also is incompatible with the Creative Labs X-Fi PCI sound card on the same bus causing audio stuttering and pops. A few people mentioned that the issue might be IRQ sharing but I tried the sound card in all different PCI slots with different IRQs and the problem was still there. Jet another bad experience with off-brand storage chips.

My current Asus P6T motherboard for Intel Core i7 with the JMicron JMB363 PCIe to SATA chip and JMicron JMB322 SATA 1 to 2 Port Multiplier chip are also having issues with the internal SATA ports where one of them is port-multiplied and if a hard drive and an LG Blu-Ray optical drive is connected at the same time to the internal ports the optical drive will randomly disappear and re-appear in the operating system.

So Marvell is not the one and only manufacturer of storage interconnect chips to have these problems. My experience is that pretty much all of them have issues to varying degrees driving users mad when they realize after purchasing the motherboard and trying to use these chips.

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Data Storage Systems - The Hidden Cost of an SSD Upgrade (Intel SSD + nForce4 Chipset = No RAID! -> Upgrade)

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Motherboards - nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!

NVIDIA Forums > nZone > Hardware > nForce Mobos > nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!, MediaShield installer does not install services, GUI, or files

OverclockersClub Forums Hardware Processors, Motherboards and Memory - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi and Silicon Image 3114 on DFI SLI-DR

I had a very bad experience with my old nVidia nForce4 Chipset motherboard RAID chip while using it and just recently found that none of the old or new drivers work correctly when the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD is plugged into the motherboard causing my Windows OS to freeze during boot-up when the driver is initialized or the RAID capability just doesn't work at all. I even wrote up an entire account of this problem in a few threads, one on nVidia's forum and another on HardOCP Forum to warn users about trying to use Intel SSDs with their older nForce4 hardware that I linked to below.

The Silicon Image 3114 PCI to SATA 1 controller chip has serious issues also that caused it to drop my RAID-5 and destroy the 2 TB array. It has issues with PCI bus contention and also is incompatible with the Creative Labs X-Fi PCI sound card on the same bus causing audio stuttering and pops. A few people mentioned that the issue might be IRQ sharing but I tried the sound card in all different PCI slots with different IRQs and the problem was still there. Jet another bad experience with off-brand storage chips.

My current Asus P6T motherboard for Intel Core i7 with the JMicron JMB363 PCIe to SATA chip and JMicron JMB322 SATA 1 to 2 Port Multiplier chip are also having issues with the internal SATA ports where one of them is port-multiplied and if a hard drive and an LG Blu-Ray optical drive is connected at the same time to the internal ports the optical drive will randomly disappear and re-appear in the operating system.

So Marvell is not the one and only manufacturer of storage interconnect chips to have these problems. My experience is that pretty much all of them have issues to varying degrees driving users mad when they realize after purchasing the motherboard and trying to use these chips.

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Data Storage Systems - The Hidden Cost of an SSD Upgrade (Intel SSD + nForce4 Chipset = No RAID! -> Upgrade)

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Motherboards - nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!

NVIDIA Forums > nZone > Hardware > nForce Mobos > nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!, MediaShield installer does not install services, GUI, or files

OverclockersClub Forums Hardware Processors, Motherboards and Memory - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi and Silicon Image 3114 on DFI SLI-DR

They have this nifty little SoC called Tegra, announced about 1 year and a half ago, which still has to prove it's not vapourware.

If they aren't OpenCL compliant, ... then I'll pass. The upcoming ATi updates are rolling in OpenCL which allows for us to have cross-compilation even if Nvidia thinks everyone's gung-ho about CUDA.

AFAIK, Nvidia released OpenCL drivers that run on-top of the nvidia cuda runtime
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_opencl.html

Since all recent Nvidia chips are CUDA enabled, they are by default also OpenCL enabled.

So I was looking around after seeing this earlier to try and make sense of what older generation codenames match to the newer generation codenames, and found this: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_m_series.html (scroll down).

Basically it goes GTX > GTS > GT > GS > G

The old 9400/8400 line has become the 210/110
The old 9600/8600 line has become the 230/130
The old 9800/8800 GT/GS has become the 250/150
And The old 9800/8800 GTX/GTS has become the 280

There are a few other cards that fall in the middle of categories, but that seems to be the basic gist of it as far as I can tell.

Heres another useful resource for comparing mobile gpu's: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

Why doesn't flash do it already?

It's already been planned. From here:

NVIDIA, the inventor of the GPU, and Adobe Systems Incorporated announced that they are collaborating as part of the Open Screen Project to optimize and enable Adobe® Flash® Player, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform, to leverage GPU video and graphics acceleration on a wide range of mobile Internet devices, including netbooks, tablets, mobile phones and other on-the-go media devices./quote

Nvidia recommends at least a 300W power supply for the 9400 GT, 300W or 400W for the 9600 GT (depending on which model you get), and at least 400W for the 9800 GT.

Granted, if you run these cards with the minimum power supply rating you're going to have a hard time throwing in a RAID array or somesuch nonsense, but the machines in TFA are using 2.5" hard drives and special "ECO" 9800 GTs which use "40% less power than a standard 9800 GT" (putting it easily under the 300W mark).

You're not going to get the same performance out of it as you would out of a beefed-up 9800GT, you're going to have a hard time upgrading one of these very much, and personally I wouldn't call this machine a "gaming PC", but they're not actually lying.

Nvidia recommends at least a 300W power supply for the 9400 GT, 300W or 400W for the 9600 GT (depending on which model you get), and at least 400W for the 9800 GT.

Granted, if you run these cards with the minimum power supply rating you're going to have a hard time throwing in a RAID array or somesuch nonsense, but the machines in TFA are using 2.5" hard drives and special "ECO" 9800 GTs which use "40% less power than a standard 9800 GT" (putting it easily under the 300W mark).

You're not going to get the same performance out of it as you would out of a beefed-up 9800GT, you're going to have a hard time upgrading one of these very much, and personally I wouldn't call this machine a "gaming PC", but they're not actually lying.

Nvidia recommends at least a 300W power supply for the 9400 GT, 300W or 400W for the 9600 GT (depending on which model you get), and at least 400W for the 9800 GT.

Granted, if you run these cards with the minimum power supply rating you're going to have a hard time throwing in a RAID array or somesuch nonsense, but the machines in TFA are using 2.5" hard drives and special "ECO" 9800 GTs which use "40% less power than a standard 9800 GT" (putting it easily under the 300W mark).

You're not going to get the same performance out of it as you would out of a beefed-up 9800GT, you're going to have a hard time upgrading one of these very much, and personally I wouldn't call this machine a "gaming PC", but they're not actually lying.

I hear this a lot in CUDA/GPGPU-related threads on slashdot, primarily from people who simply have zero experience with GPU programming. The bottom line is that in the present and for the foreseeable future, if you are going to try to accelerate a program by offloading some of the computation to a GPU, you are going to be tying yourself to one vendor (or writing different versions for multiple vendors) anyways. You simply cannot get anything approaching worthwhile performance from a GPU kernel without having a good understanding of the hardware you are writing for. nVidia has a paper that illustrates this excellently, in which they start off with a seemingly good "generic" parallel reduction code and go through a series of 7 or 8 optimizations -- most of them based on knowledge of the hardware -- and improve its performance by more than a factor of 30 versus the generic implementation.

Another thing to keep in mind is that CUDA is very simple to learn as an API -- if you're familiar with C you can pick up CUDA in an afternoon easily. The difficulty, as I said in the previous paragraph, is optimization; and optimizations that work well for a particular GPU in CUDA will (or at least should) work well for the same GPU in OpenCL.

Can't wait for the APL support. Reorganising my keyboard keys in anticipation.

Well, everywhere else in the world, Linux runs the CUDA Toolkit, so I can imagine that in Soviet Russia, a Beowulf cluster of Nvidia cards run Linux.

Except, like, you know:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/freebsd_180.51.html
But maybe a binary Nvidia driver from 21st april 2009 is too old an un-maintained for you?

And where would FreeBSD fail as a desktop OS?

http://www.freebsd.org/ports/
20.000+ ports not enough for you?

And they make a point of not binary closed drivers to, OpenBSD crew have made a lot of wifi progress by reverse engineering instead of having closed stuff, and Linux have been able to take lots of advantage of their work. They are proud of their drivers and open-source solutions vs accepting only having a closed solution.

So, very insightful of you... I seriously doubt you've got any idea whatsoever why BSD would be better as a server either, not to mention the BSDs out there are pretty different and it wouldn't make sense to group them together like that, they don't have the same advantages. I guess it's just something you've happened to have heard somewhere, but yes, FreeBSD used to be considered superior as "a server" a long time ago, FreeBSD 5 probably lost some of that but I would assume they have catched up by now. But it all depends on what you need and how you set the system up in general anyway.

Hmm - Professional products from Nvidia site:
http://store.nvidia.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=nvidia&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&productID=67049700

Quadro FX 5600 $2,999.00
Quadro FX 4600 $1,999.00

and...
PNY Quadro FX 5800 Graphics Card - nVIDIA ... $3,039.35

I heard about these from my co-worker who is shopping for a couple. Perhaps the high-end cards are still around, just not where you are looking for them.

You bet, much more agreement. On of the problems Ive seen some people make at big technology companies (MSFT, AMD, Compaq, Dell, HP, Intel) is that they think end users are stupid. Its one of my little pet peeves.

Im a developer at heart, but Ive been fortunate for many years to work closely (or be in) core engineering groups that work with partners, and sometimes customers directly. Ive even gotten to define a couple of large customer studies, both qualitative and quantitative - very fun.

One thing that I learned along the way is that customers are definitely not stupid. Ive heard terms used such as "Joe six pack", "Ma and Pa Kettle", "Ted Trailer Dweller". For example "Ted Trailer Dweller" will never figure that out.

It pisses me off every time it happens. Of course, consumers by and large are smart people - they just may not be gadget-heads, or very technically literate.

Regards to your comment:

If they want to watch a DVD they can buy a player with LCD display that runs on batteries and plays the Hollywood stuff for $79. For $30, they can get one that looks lovely on their 40" LCD at home. They dont need that on their PC.

This is exactly the kind of business assumption that will doom you to failure as the VP of development for the hypothetical Linux distribution company I put you in charge of in one of my previous posts.

People absolutory, positively, want to watch DVD and Blue Ray content on their PCs. Both desktop and mobile. I can speak extremely authoritatively here. Today, this means they watch this content by stuffing an optical disk in their PC. As weve already discussed, this will transition to a downloading streaming model over time. Here is an example; for a while business oriented laptops didnt come with a DVD player, they just had a CD player. But watching DVDs on laptops was a big differentiator for OEMs marketing to the business traveler.

If you want to play a restricted DVD on your computer you can boot Linux Mint

This makes may point perfectly: Rebooting to watch a movie? Only a very small tiny insignificant fraction of techno-heads would ever do this. This is a complete and utter non starter for consumers. Come on - how much shit has MSFT taken that XP has to be rebooted just to update the video driver and and some other stuff? Reboot to use a major feature of the platform, and rebooting into another distribution? No OEM on the planet would ever agree to that.

You said:

Soon, as you probably know, the computer will be evolved enough at low enough power to be embedded in the TV.

Soon is actually today in a very real way. Im confident you are familiar with NVIDIAs ION platform. This platform is really, really amazing and its just their first stab at it.

You said:

I do adamantly believe that there are some practices that are not best practices. Microsoft is not alone in employing some of these practices. ... no, Im not ever going to be fond of this corporation.

Fair enough. I completely understand that position. And Im not at all seeking fondness. I also understand that at points in time, governments have agreed with it too. I dont know enough about the stuff you mention here to comment in a meaningful way. Positively, or negatively. What I can say is that everyone is playing hard ball. Even the FOSS folks.

Ya - Apples market cap is stellar, so is their most recently quarterly results. In my personal opinion, this is MSFTs biggest competitor in the consumer space. But, I would suggest to you that market cap isnt a very good indicator of who is doing something right or wrong.

You said:

Do you know why all the major vendors offer Linux platforms now? Its not because they dont like Microsofts cob

You got modded informative because you had nVidia in a link.

TI always pairs their Cortex CPUs with beefy DSPs capable of very complex decoding. The OMAP 3530(in use in devices right now) is able to decode 720p h.264 by offloading it to the DSP. A DSP is similar to a GPU, but this one lacks floating point capabilities. It's just really fast for integer stuff.

They'll probably pair an even faster one for the Cortex A9's, enabling 1080p h.264.

It would also be great if they included a graphics chip (or gpu as part of a SoC system) that could handle h.264 decoding for the netbook.

You mean something like this:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_tegra_600_us.html
?

I believe that this is what you are looking for.

Not to mention everyone seems to be missing the big fat monkey wrench that is going to be thrown into the Intel IGP market: HD video. More and more of the videos out there are going HD. nearly every monitor sold now is a high def wide screen, and folks will want their laptops to have a decent picture like their desktops do. Nobody like video that plays like a slideshow, and Intel IGP sucks major ass on video playback.

Add to that the fact that Nvidia has a ticking timebomb that is probably what had Intel spooked, namely Ion which has been shown to play high def and even be able to game with either an Intel Atom OR a Via Nano. And honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Intel keeps getting pissy that Nvidia just doesn't buy Via. If you put the Ion and the Nano together in an affordable Netbook? Money in the bank. While it wouldn't have as good a battery life as the Atom, I frankly doubt folks would give a shit when they go "oooh" while seeing HL2 or HD video playing on the Netbook with the Ion+Nano combo. Add to that the fact that Nano has built in crypto that would be awesome for having full disk encryption without a performance hit, and frankly Intel is being really fucking stupid IMHO.

I don't know who is calling the shots at Intel, but they seem really determined to piss off everyone, and in the PC business burning your bridges is NEVER a good idea. If Nvidia buys Via they could take a serious chunk of the Netbook market with Ion+Nano, if AMD wins they are screwed, and they are looking at antitrust with the EU. It seems to me that the success of the Core2 arch has gone to their haed and they frankly think their shit don't stink. But if it is one thing we have seen in IT it is that the winds can shift in a heartbeat, and burning all your bridges and pissing off all your partners can come back to bite you in the ass. I just hope Intel gets its act together, or I will be going with AMD or Nvidia. I want choices on my GPU, not the Intel IGP crap, thank you very much. I will glady take last year's AMD or Nvidia offering over ANYTHING that Intel has released today, and I haven't seen any solid numbers to show that Larrabee will change that opinion.

Take a look at this: http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex.html These things hold graphics cards externally, though they're only for desktops. There are models that hold as many as four external graphics cards. They're not cheap though.

But while I'm already burning karma maybe I should point out this:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9100m_g_mgpu_us.html

So motherboard GPU GeForce 9100M G + SLI connected discrete GPU 9200M/9300M GS = 9400M.

So it seems like it's not an improved 8400m, and the 9300M GS is slower than the 8400M GS (which is slower than 8400M GT:)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9100m_g_mgpu.html

Faster than X4500 but still suck for anyone who actually need any graphics power and to claim that it will run the latest games is absurd, even though DX10 pick-up has been slim and demands seem to have stalled somewhat for the last two years or so.

But while I'm already burning karma maybe I should point out this:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9100m_g_mgpu_us.html

So motherboard GPU GeForce 9100M G + SLI connected discrete GPU 9200M/9300M GS = 9400M.

So it seems like it's not an improved 8400m, and the 9300M GS is slower than the 8400M GS (which is slower than 8400M GT:)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9100m_g_mgpu.html

Faster than X4500 but still suck for anyone who actually need any graphics power and to claim that it will run the latest games is absurd, even though DX10 pick-up has been slim and demands seem to have stalled somewhat for the last two years or so.

You might want to check out CUDA. It lets you run parallel algorithms on a GPU, and you should be able to get hardware that can run significantly more than ~26 Gflops for less than $800.

Well, it's not needed "today" but... you know, nobody needs photoshop for drawing a simple line. http://www.nvidia.com/object/builtforadobepros.html

What I don't get is why doesn't Nvidia just buy out Via already? Since we have seen with Ion that an okay CPU+decent GPU equals a pretty nice platform for more folks needs, and with Intel trying to get into GPUs with Larrabee and AMD buying ATI it seems really foolish to me that Nvidia has left Via out there so long.

With the Nano they would have a good chip to combine with their GPUs in the Laptop/Netbook/ and desktop PCs, and then later if they wanted to integrate it with their GPUs they could. It just seems to me to be really stupid not to hedge your bets with the competition moving into their spaces. This way they could still sell GPUs and chipsets for both Intel and AMD motherboards and have a completely top to bottom Nvidia solution to offer OEMs as well. Frankly I am shocked that Intel hasn't tried to buy out Via just to cut off the chance of Nvidia snapping them up and to get all of those patents that Via holds. But from they way it looks like the market is going, especially in the mobile space(which Nvidia should have a nice jump on with Tegra) it seems crazy to me that Nvidia hasn't just bought Via by now.

You know real time raytracing isn't something that has to be done on the CPU. There's no reason you can't write a raytracer for a GPU.

In fact NVIDIA already has a fully interactive raytracer. They demoed it last summer at NVISION, and SIGGRAPH '08. I'm sure as they expand CUDA support you'll see more and faster raytracers.

Go check out http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nvision08-IRT.html

I'd like to add that using 3d graphic card (Nvidia CUDA/GPGPU) would really speed things up. I ran into that the other day when researching possible methods for 3d navigation in robots using 2 cams.

GPU CV reports 100x speedup on nvidia.com

Um, that is why I posted what I did about the cellular companies pushing Netbooks. Because they can offer it as a bundle with a card for their network and then you don't have the dropout problem. Lets be honest here: Most folks actually don't stray too far from home. Sure you have professional business travelers but they have their own gear that the company picks up the tab for. For the average user a Netbook+cellular network card will do everything they want it to do and then some.

And as for the poster above saying it is a fad? Have you seen the Ion? That thing is already nicer than a lot of folks laptops are right now. Push an Ion platform Netbook with Cellular service and you have a home run, baby! Folks will be so happy that they have a little box that can play videos and WoW so smooth they won't even think about that Intel IGP laptop they have sitting at home. Mark my words the Ion is going to be big and the cellular networks just LOVE lockin customers. With an Ion Netbook they will probably have a waiting list of customers ready to hand them their monthly payments. And what company doesn't want to be in that position?

I'm betting that the cell company that pushes an Ion laptop in a bundle deal will easily sell 6-8 to 1 when it comes to Netbooks VS smartphones. Despite what they do folks still see them as phones. The iPhone took off because it is by Apple and trendy. But the average folks ain't paying $600 for a phone, I don't care how fancy it is. But to them a Netbook is just a little laptop, and to them laptops are more expensive and more "worth it" so they won't mind the lock in, especially if the company gives them an Ion Netbook for $100 with the plan. Trust me the Netbooks will go nowhere but up.

2.1.2 Linux/FreeBSD Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux or FreeBSD operating systems, or other operating systems derived from the source code to these operating systems, may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files).

I still don't like the binary blob approach, but they aren't actively blocking any redistribution. They're encouraging it. It's just that distros like Debian don't use it because they have a (valid, IMHO) philosophical argument against binary blobs.

I believe it would be quite easy for nVidia to buy Via outright in this economy or if they didn't want to spend the money I believe it would be even more trivial to work out a chip agreement with them. Remember this is all about money. Companies aren't going to care about past disagreements when a good deal is handed to them on a silver platter.

What kind of chip agreement? Well from what I have seen it is like this. While Via has dabbled in the past with desktop and laptops with their chips there were never able to get any real market penetration. On the other side they have done well in the SFF and embedded markets. I believe the nVidia can hand them those markets on a silver platter. Have you seen the Ion? Replace the Atom chip with a Nano and you have just given Via the tiny green PC market. Make the case a little bigger, add 2 PCI and a PCIe slot and you have just given Via the HTPC market as well. Can you imagine a HTPC with the Ion platform graphics combined with the low power and heat of the Nano and the ability to do on the fly decryption for premium content thanks to the built in crypto engine of the Nano? It would be money in the bank!

And in return Via would give the Nano to nVidia for Netbooks/Notebooks, and desktops that cost over, say $300. This gives nVidia several markets which THEY can clean up in and with the Netbook being a hot seller right now it would give them THE killer product in a form that they could get to market quickly so they could strike while the iron is hot. Can you imagine a Netbook for $450-550 depending on RAM/HDD that can actually game and do 1080p thanks to the Geforce 9400? Again, money in the bank. So IMHO whomever came up with the idea of doing their own x86 when such a great product like the Nano can be snatched up or cross licensed needs to be SO fired. They need the Nano if they want to get into this market. And if they buy Via outright they can then use their patents and engineers to customize later chips for their own CPU/GPU plans. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

a 3 Ghz or faster 80386DX CPU ?

  One with all the RAM it can handle as (core speed) cache?

Just 4 Gb of RAM, a 32-bit address, and make it as fast as you can. Forget about that 64-bit bullshit, I'm not running the Social Security database. But it must be on a single chip, or as close as it can be. Memory access times are limited by the speed of light once you get into the GHz range, a nanosecond is 300 millimeters.

To go with that, let's have some thousands of cores for number crunching. Mega cores, giga cores, you can never have enough cores for number crunching. But these cores need not have 64-bit capability, all they need to do is multiply-add operations, as quickly as possible.

The CPU industry, unfortunately, has been too long in a monopoly situation. Nvidia has done some impressive progress in getting an alternative thinking to the market, let's see what they can bring next.

... sortof. NVIDIA has a 386(!) SoC from the acquisition of ULI.

I'm skeptical about a new entrant like NVIDIA gaining any traction in the x86 market, they would have better luck pushing out their ARM chips.

Is Tegra dead then? It sure was promising... I have been waiting for nVidia to come out with retail items equipped with Tegra since Q3 2008. Atom + Ion seems a direct threat to Tegra. I waited as long as I could for Tegra, but due to need and desire I ended up with an iPhone. All I can find are the original plugs for Tegra technology: http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_tegra_600_us.html "The first NVIDIA Tegra 600 Series-based devices are expected to begin shipping in mid-2009".

And it looks like Microsoft bitch slapped Nvidia over it. I guess that is why they have this page linked right on their front page. Linky Did they have anything about Vista up in 2006?

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opengl_3_driver.html

Now where's Intel? :p

Right here!

It works on XP and Vista with the vast majority of games available today. It's completely changed the way I game. Check it out. http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d_stereo.html

On that first option. Has anyone compared the available development tools for linux?

http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/compilers/clin/277618.htm

http://developer.amd.com/cpu/Pages/default.aspx

and nvidia vs ati

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html#

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/Pages/default.aspx

According to the NVidia website, US$199.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.HTML

http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-028594.htm
(^Ewww)