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VIA and NVIDIA Working Together For PC Design
Vigile writes "With AMD buying up ATI and Intel working on their own discrete graphics core, it makes sense for NVIDIA and VIA to partner together. It might be surprising, though, that rather than see the rumors of NVIDIA buying VIA come true, the two companies instead agreed to 'partner' on creating a balanced PC design around VIA's Nano processor and NVIDIA's mid-range discrete graphics cards. During a press event in Taiwan, VIA showed Bioshock and Crysis running on the combined platform. They also took the time to introduce a revision to the mini-ITX standard, which Intel has adopted for Atom, that pushes an open hardware and software platform design rather than the ultra-controlled version that Intel is offering."
the video game industry is the one pushing the development of computing!
It would be grand to be able to buy a low watt, small box gaming machine that doesn't require 6 fans to keep it cool.
However, with the way things are at the moment in the pc gamespace, I'd be pretty cautious expecting any decent performance, even with their Crysis and Bioshock demoes.
I do miss the days when games had 128 multiplayer maps, ran on cheap $200 video cards well and had more story rather than the shinies but I guess that's progress for you. *sigh*
NVIDIAVIA would be one hell of an ugly name!
It makes that monstrosity Macradobia look like Scarlett Johansson by comparison!
http://www.object404.com
Competition can't hurt. Now that we have Intel, AMD/ATI, and Nvidia/VIA all throwing their hat in the ring it will keep prices down and of course spur innovation considering its a race to the find the best technology. Personally I would like to see Intel taken off it's high considering it delayed all their 45nm production just so they could sell out their older chips. Of course they were able to do that because AMD is so behind in the 45nm race.
So great hopefully we will see some real progress and we can have affordable laptops that have OK power. Because right now most normal laptops have integrated chips (you can't really fit a video card into a normal laptop) and of course the integrated card is horrible. Also the integrated card (at least in my laptop) sucks up all the power and makes my laptop have 3x less life. Also my integrated card overheats.
So yea it would be great if we could have decent video processing on normal mass market laptops.
Good Luck and may the best chip win!
You got my attention! Now price and availability? Is it multicore? Can I do this:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/31/1633214&from=rss
?
Price and availability? Can we have a laptop that has a draw on wacom style touch screen where the keyboard is? I still want a keyboard though, but I guess I could use a docking station with a monitor. Can I get it like eee size and eee cheap and put 6 of 'em together in a custom beowulf cluster that grows and shrinks as the various laptops enter and exit the house over wifi N, or wimax, or whatever?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
seems as though that would indicate some changes would be in order? the lights are coming up all over now. conspiracy theorists are being vindicated. some might choose a tin umbrella to go with their hats. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.google.com/?ncl=1216734813&hl=en&topic=n
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?hp
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/02/nasa.global.warming.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/05/severe.weather.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/02/honore.preparedness/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01dowd.html?em&ex=1212638400&en=744b7cebc86723e5&ei=5087%0A
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/05/senate.iraq/index.html
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=weather+manipulation&btnG=Search
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented ev
Invenio via vel creo
Doesn't AMD own Via? I could swear that happened like, four or five years ago. Than again, I could always be wrong, I haven't slept since Thursday.
mix in a little WiFi capability for leeching off hotspots, and you now have a true hacker toy that can lug anywhere!
PDAs and Smartphones just don't cut it. They suck for doing stuff like coding and compiling your own programs.
http://www.object404.com
Ever hear of Smart Dust?
That's almost exactly what they're trying to achieve.
http://www.object404.com
I am a big fan of the Nano. I think it has potential to be huge if it lives up to 1/2 of it's claims. I always cried thinking I would need to use the Chroma crap that Via Integrates. Nvidia Graphics on a Nano platform. Tiny little gaming boxes and notebooks. Dear lord, its nerd heaven! Media centers for the poor! I am buzzing with glee just thinking the possibilities. KUDOS!
Will nvidia make chipsets for via as via ones suck?
I don't know about you all, but I'm not sure three entities making all the processing hardware is enough.
Whenever I see these "strategic partnerships" which basically means "mergers so the DOJ won't notice", I think about what's happened to the airlines and the oil companies (oh and telecom). Going in different directions, they are, but the consumers are getting screwed all around when these big outfits team up.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Might there be a chance to finally get open source drivers from nvidia now they team up with VIA?
One thing that has puzzled me is why aren't more companies just copying OLPC design, may be enhance the processor, memory etc., and sell for say, $200-$300. I don't think OLPC foundation will say no to sell or share their design. Not that their design is some top secret anyway.
He used and spelled "discrete" correctly.
wow.
He used and spelled "discrete" correctly.
wow.
ummm... the story? yeah, sure.
Whatever.
He used and spelled "discrete" correctly.
me. --a by-product of public education
...but does it run Crysi---SWEET JESUS!
Hmmm, the old Mini-ITX format had multiple vendors (VIa, Intel, others) using it and right now the only vendor using Mini-ITX 2.0 is VIA-NVidia. How is this more open? And in what sense was Intel making the old standard less open -other than jumping into that market and doing well?
BTW, I have to laugh at the sight of a Mini-ITX board with a relatively low power VIA cpu having a huge, power sucking NVidia discrete GPU board on it. Surely anybody that cares about performance graphics is not using this catagory of board. Logically , NVidia would do an integrated graphics chipset for the Mini-ITX format, but a PCI-Express external card that quadruples the chassis height (and probably quads the power consumption of the board) is a joke. Ask embedded systems developers (still the main market for Mini-ITX systems) if this is really what they're looking for. VIA and NVidia cobbled together a frankenstein combination of technologies just to make the Atom look bad with irrelevant perf specs.
The problem is :
- Intel has always been a strong pusher for open source (see their graphic drivers as an example)
- AMD has too (AMD64 Linux released before the actual processor, thanks to massive help from them - and thanks to Transmeta's code-morphing to help test before the chips come to life).
And since they acquired ATI, Radeons have seen lot of open-source efforts (before acquisition was mostly reverse engineering. Now AMD is slowly releasing the necessary documentation so open source drivers can be written).
(And in addition, ATI Radeon chips benefit from some technology available to AMD CPU, like smaller process and efficient low power to make them competitive with them)
- But VIA/nVidia the situation is reversed.
VIA is the one who are slowly catching up with the open source movement (started releasing documentation for their integrated graphic cores).
But the 500lb gorilla interested in buying them are nVidia who haven't done absolutely anything to help open-source movement. Project Nouveau is still only relying on reverse engineering. If nVidia buys VIA maybe there's even a chance that they choke VIA's previous open source effort.
So for the player there might be some interests (cheap low power machine, that can still run Vista and play games - as touted recently by nVidia)
But for the penguin-fans this might be a set back in the road to liberate drivers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Intel is only catching up with that now (with their future Quickpath technology. And it's hardly an *open* standard, given the fights with nVidia over the right to implement it).
The main problem of AMD is that they only have brilliant ideas, but no advantages in fabs processes. Intel is always one step further along the race for smaller process.
(But still, being on process generation late, and still being able to have competitive offerings in the mid-range category shows that indeed their ideas are clever). Now if Nvidia and VIA gets in the game and supplants amd That's going to be a sad day for open source supporter. NVidia was never open source friendly and VIA is hardly in a position to influence them. And we already lost an open source supporters in the GPU maker battles a couple of years ago (3DFx was a big proponent for the DRI infrastructure, for example).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Depending how you break it down the future will be on a shifting scale from the cpu's doing everything(intel) to gpu's doing the grunt work(nvidia) with AMDTI sitting in the middle. Intel-AMD-nVidia.