Nvidia CEO "Not Afraid" of CPU-GPU Hybrids

J. Dzhugashvili writes "Is Nvidia worried about the advent of both CPUs with graphics processor cores and Larrabee, Intel's future discrete graphics processor? Judging by the tone adopted by Nvidia's CEO during a financial analyst conference yesterday, not quite. Huang believes CPU-GPU hybrids will be no different (and just as slow) as today's integrated graphics chipsets, and he thinks people will still pay for faster Nvidia GPUs. Regarding Larrabee, Huang says Nvidia is going to 'open a can of whoop-ass' on Intel, and that Intel's strategy of reinventing the wheel by ignoring years of graphics architecture R&D is fundamentally flawed. Nvidia also has some new hotness in the pipeline, such as its APX 2500 system-on-a-chip for handhelds and a new platform for VIA processors."

Comments

Intel?

[icydog]

Did I hear that correctly? NVidia is going to beat Intel in the GPU department? What a breaking development!

In other news, Aston Martin makes better cars than Hyundai!

Re:Not scared... no kidding?

[Yvan256]

No competition? What? Did ATI die or something?

Yes I know they got bought by AMD, but they still exist and they still make GPUs AFAIK.

And if your argument is that nVidia is better than ATI, let me remind you that ATI/nVidia and intel/AMD keep leapfrogging each other every few years.

Did anyone expect him to surrender?

[WoTG]

IMHO, Nvidia is stuck as the odd-man out. When integrated chipsets and GPU-CPU hybrids can easily handle full-HD playback, the market for discrete GPUs falls and falls some more. Sure, discrete will always be faster, just like a Porsche is faster than a Toyota, but who makes more money (by a mile)?

Is Creative still around? Last I heard, they were making MP3 players...

He should be afraid

[Yvan256]

I, for one, don't want a GPU which requires 25W+ in standby mode.

My Mac mini has a maximum load of 110W. That's the Core 2 Duo CPU, the integrated GMA950, 3GB of RAM, a 2.5" drive and a DVD burner, not to mention FireWire 400 and four USB 2.0 ports under maximum load (the FW400 port being 8W alone).

Granted the GMA950 sucks compared to nVidia's current offerings, however do they have any plans for low-power GPUs? I'm pretty sure the whole company can't survive on the FPS-crazed game players revenues alone.

They should start thinking about asking intel to integrate their (current) laptop GPUs into intel CPUs.

Re:He should be afraid

[forsey]

Actually nVidia is working a new technology called HybridPower which involves a computer with both an on board and discrete graphics card, where the low power on board card is used most of the time (when you are just in your OS environment of choice), but when you need the power (for stuff like games) the discrete card boots up.

The PC is just a toy

[klapaucjusz]

If I understand them right, they're claiming that integrated graphics and CPU/GPU hybrids are just a toy, and that you want discrete graphics if you're serious. Ken Olsen famously said that "the PC is just a toy". When did you last use a "real" computer?

Ray tracing for the win

[symbolset]

Ray vs raster. The reason we have so much tech in Raster is because processing was not sufficient to do ray. If it had been we'd have never started down the raster branch of development because it just doesn't work as well. The results are not as realistic with raster. Shadows don't look right. You can't do csg. You get edge effects. There are a thousand work-arounds for things like reflections of reflections, lens effects and audio reflections. Raster is a hack and when we have the CPU to do the real time ray tracing rendering raster composition will go away.

Raster was a way to make some fairly believable (if cartoonish) video games. They still require some deliberate suspension-of-disbelief. Only with raytracing do you get the surreal Live-or-memorex feeling of not being able to tell a rendered scene from a photo, except for the fact that the realistic scene depicts something that might be physically impossible.

Re:Ray tracing for the win

[75th Trombone]

Parent +1 Insightful.

The reason we can so easily tell the difference between CGI creatures and real creatures is not the photorealism of it, but the animation. Evaluate a screen cap of Lord of the Rings with Gollum in it, and then evaluate that entire scene in motion. The screen cap will look astonishingly realistic compared to the video.

Computers are catching up to the computational challenges of rendering scenes, but humans haven't quite yet figured out how to program every muscle movement living creatures make. Attempts for complete realism in 3D animation still fall somewhere in the Uncanny Valley.

Re:Ray tracing for the win

[ardor]

Wrong. All of it.

Raytracing doesnt magically get you better image quality. EXCEPT for shadows, the results look just like rasterization. As usual, people mix up raytracing with path tracing, photon mapping, radiosity, and other GI algorithms. Note: GI can be applied to rasterization as well.

So, which "benefits" are left? Refraction/reflection, haze, and any kind of ray distortion - SECONDARY ray effects. Primary rays can be fully modeled with rasterization, which gives you much better performance because of the trivial cache coherency and simpler calculations. (In a sense, rasterization can be seen as a cleverly optimized primary-ray-pass). This is why hybrid renderers make PERFECT sense. Yes, I know ray bundles, they are hard to get right, and again: for primary rays, raytracing makes no sense.

"Suspension of disbelief" is necessary with raytracing too. You confuse the rendering technique with lighting models, animation quality and so on. "edge effects" is laughable, aliasing WILL occur with raytracing as well unless you shoot multiple rays per pixel (and guess what... rasterizers commonly HAVE MSAA).

Jeez, when will people stop thinking all this BS about raytracing? As if it were a magical thingie capable of miracously enhancing your image quality....

Raytracing has its place - as an ADDITION to a rasterizer, to ease implementation of the secondary ray effects (which are hard to simulate with pure rasterization). This is the future.

NOTHING to do with existing games.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Until Intel can show us Crysis

If Intel is right, there won't be much of an effect on existing games.

Intel is focusing on raytracers, something Crytek has specifically said that they will not do. Therefore, both Crysis and any sequels won't really see any improvement from Intel's approach.

If Intel is right, what we are talking about is the Crysis-killer -- a game that looks and plays much better than Crysis (and maybe with a plot that doesn't completely suck), and only on Intel hardware, not on nVidia.

Oh, and Beryl has been killed and merged. It's just Compiz now, and Compiz Fusion if you need more.

I think AMD has a better plan

[scumdamn]

Intel is and always has been CPU-centric. That's all they ever seem to focus on because it's what they do best. Nvidia is focusing 100% on GPUs because it's what they best. AMD seems to have it right with their combination of the two (by necessity) because they're focusing on a mix between the two. I'm seriously stoked about the 780G chipset they rolled out this month because it's an integrated chipset that doesn't suck and actually speeds up an ATI video card if you add the right one. Given, AMD isn't the fastest when it comes to either graphics or processors but at least they have a platform with a chipset, CPU, and graphics that work together. Chipsets have needed to be a bit more powerful for a long-ass time.

Just like the FPU

[spitzak]

Once upon a time the floating point was done on a seperate chip. You could buy a cheaper "non-professional" machine that emulated the fpu in software and ran slower. You could also upgrade your machine by adding the fpu chip.

Such FPU's do not exist today.

I think Nvidia should be worried about this.