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NVIDIA Unveils GRID Servers, Tegra 4 SoC and Project SHIELD Mobile Gaming Device
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA made some bold moves at their CES 2013 press conference and announced a couple of potentially game changing products. GeForce GRID is a cloud gaming solution. It allows PC game content to be run and rendered in the cloud and then streamed to any device that can run the GRID receiver utility, like a Smart TV, tablet, or a smartphone. GeForce GRID server architecture combines an NVIDIA-designed server packed with GPUs with NVIDIA-developed software and virtualization layer. A rack of 20 GRID servers was shown, powered by 240 GPUs, capable of 200 TFLOPS and roughly equivalent to the performance of 720 Xbox 360 consoles. The biggest news to come out of NVIDIA's press conference, however, had to do with Tegra 4. Not only was the next-gen SoC officially unveiled, but a new portable gaming device based on Tegra 4, dubbed Project SHIELD, was also demoed. NVIDIA's Tegra 4 builds upon the success of the Tegra 3 by incorporating updated ARM15-based CPU cores with 72 custom GeForce GPU cores, which offer up to 6x the performance of Tegra 3. The A15 cores used in Tegra 4 are up to 2.6x faster than the A9-class cores used in Tegra 3. As a companion to the Tegra 4, NVIDIA also took the wraps off of their new Icera i500 programmable 4G LTE modem processor. Icera i500 features 8 custom, programmable processor cores and is approximately 40% smaller than many fixed function modems. The biggest surprise to come out of NVIDIA's press conference was Project SHIELD, a Tegra 4-powered mobile gaming device running Android that's sure to put Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo on high alert. Project SHIELD offers a pure Android experience without any skinning or other customizations, save for the SHIELD app environment, that can play any Android game. Project SHIELD has the ability to stream PC games from a GeForce GTX-equipped PC as well. The device is shaped much like an Xbox 360 game controller, but features a 5", flip-out capacitive touch display with a 720P resolution. The device can also stream to an HD TV via HDMI or a WiDi-like wireless dongle. In fact, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed Project SHIELD playing a 4K video on an LG 4K TV."
Would be an excellent part for the upcoming console generation.
I miss the old Dreamcast controller with its LCD display in it.
A modern take on that would have a nice 5" touchscreen LCD with built-in GPU.
It would be expensive as hell of course...
This is the system of our wet dreams. For years we have talked about cloud gaming devices. And in theory internet speeds are fast enough to make this work.
This is actually very interesting. How will Sony, Microsoft and the consoles compete with this? Could this thing be used to bring back arcade gaming? I could see arcades coming back with something like this here.
They want their X Windows back.
Have gnu, will travel.
And in theory internet speeds are fast enough to make this work.
Internet speeds aren't fast enough to make this work, not just bandwidth, but also latency.
Local ping times are far too high to be usable. Local Verizon FIOS has 25ms pings across the city, nevermind across the country.
You need sub 3ms ping times.
That is one long paragraph.
#DeleteChrome
What makes GRID any better than OnLive? Specifically in regards to latency, is the lag reduced between controller input and display? Unless nVidia is prepared to upgrade everyone else's infrastructure, I don't see this taking off.
as long as it's wifi only streaming 3g / 4g data cost will run up fast and don't even think of roaming as say 1-2 hours of that can cost more then a buying a high end gameing laptop.
GRID is probably where MMO games will move, one think sorely lacking in MMO's is a persistant environment that -everyone- sees the same. So much shitty consumer hardware is out there, that you're stuck making games like FFXIV (which looks pretty) have to conform to 5 year old game consoles capabilities. This may not work that well for action MMORPG's (where it's sorely needed) and would work better on turn-based combat (eg WoW) by sending everyone the same image but from their own "camera"'s POV.
Plus it completely eliminates bots and cheating at the client end, so no more malware,crippleware,spyware crap needs to run on the user's system.
Sadly, this is where it's needed, but I don't see companies wanting to move all the "rendering backend" inhouse anytime soon since that's a huge increase in electricity costs. Nice try though.
Humm from my experience with some laptops, usually its not a good idea to have a screen directly over keys (or buttons). I've seen a couple of screens with "marks" from the keys, although this might be due to the quality or age of the laptops in question... Perhaps the SHIELD has the buttons below the level of the screen when closed? :)
I'm nitpicking, I know, but that was the first thing that crossed my mind while looking at the pictures
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
I could have sworn there was another company that recently discovered that you cannot in fact stream 1920x1080 uncompressed over a standard internet connection and went bankrupt. Now Nvidia is trying to do it? So a server can render it, great. So a PC can receive and render it, great. How does the data get between the two? In a delayed, heavily compressed format with a 50+ ms delay, that's how. Totally pointless.
herpa derp. it wasn't GPU power that killed onlive, it was everyones crumby slow broadband.
How will Sony, Microsoft and the consoles compete with this?
By making stuff that isn't unresponsive junk.
Lemme know when you can stream a 4k render (as in 4096i) to my house with a 50ms latency and reaction time.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
also need data centers close to major city's to keep ping times down so you need more then one to cover the main land usa.
AK and HI may need there own as well.
WTF is the point of streaming the entire game rather than the cloud just taking care of the back end
nvidia is going down the toilet with apple and qualcomm killing their business so they had to make up this crazy idea to stay relevant
geeks love to wait for crap and nvidia is the master of a paper launch
expect this to hit stores by august 31 to and in the mean time geeks will be creaming their shorts reading blog posts about how awesome this and watching unboxing videos made by the PR guys
This is the system of our wet dreams. For years we have talked about cloud gaming devices. And in theory internet speeds are fast enough to make this work.
Who is this "we"? I dream of having a handheld device that runs games. I want it to work where wireless coverage is spotty or nonexistent, without that a portable device is worse than useless, it's a rock I have to drag around because it's expensive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is that true though? I have tried Gaikai when they were still around for trial, and it was quite playable, and my ping was definitely above 3ms.
According to a study of power efficiency focused in tablets with different CPUs (nVidia Tegra3, Qualcomm Krait APQ8060A, Samsung Exynos Cortex A15) from anandtech.com ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showdown and http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis ), nVidia Tegra3 is less efficient than Intel Clovertrail platform:
* Intel Clovertrail vs nVidia 3: "Ultimately I don't know that this data really changes what we already knew about Clover Trail: it is a more power efficient platform than NVIDIA's Tegra "
* Intel Clovertrail vs Qualcomm Krait: "We already know that Atom is faster than Krait, but from a power standpoint the two SoCs are extremely competitive. At the platform level Intel (at least in the Acer W510) generally leads in power efficiency. Note that this advantage could just as easily be due to display and other power advantages in the W510 itself and not necessarily indicative of an SoC advantage."
* Intel Clovertrail vs Samsung Exynos Cortex A15: "The Cortex A15 data is honestly the most intriguing. I'm not sure how the first A15 based smartphone SoCs will compare to Exynos 5 Dual in terms of power consumption, but at least based on the data here it looks like Cortex A15 is really in a league of its own when it comes to power consumption. Depending on the task that may not be an issue, but you still need a chassis that's capable of dissipating 1 - 4x the power of a present day smartphone SoC made by Qualcomm or Intel. Obviously for tablets the Cortex A15 can work just fine, but I am curious to see what will happen in a smartphone form factor"
Local ping times are far too high to be usable.
I remember seeing marketing materials from that cloud gaming company, the large one whose name I forget.
They had some lovely graphs about latency. They'd managed to get the rendering and compression latency way down (impressive, but probably possible).
They's also apparently done the same to the network latency. Given that all this supposedly happened in the data centre it smelled like a herd of bulls had recently wandered through.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I wonder whether the big game studios will really go develop stuff for something like this. They were always complaining about piracy on the psp and ds. They can now develop for the vita and 3ds that haven't been hacked (yet) with a small userbase or develop for Android with a huge userbase but guarantee that users will pirate.
I see what you did there.
none
In a test performed by Anandtech, the Tegra 4 was compared to Intel's latest, by turning off everything: the Wifi, the apps, the screen, the memory, the power, unplugging the battery and comparing the power drain, it was determine that BOTH processor achieved the same level of power consumption!
Anandtech says, "well Intel have really shown it can level the playing field here, with no detectable difference between the power draw of both processors when they're doing bugger all. We could recommend either processor for the user who like to do bugger all with their computers and just leave them powered down".
With 1080p 5" android phones being all the rage, why bother with 720p?
Unless the server is very close to you, the latency between button press and action is too high. I have tried onlive and similar they all suffer from this. For some game styles it is fine, but anything with fast action makes this an exercise in frustration. The speed of light is a real bitch.
Local ping times are far too high to be usable.
I remember seeing marketing materials from that cloud gaming company, the large one whose name I forget.
They had some lovely graphs about latency. They'd managed to get the rendering and compression latency way down (impressive, but probably possible).
They's also apparently done the same to the network latency. Given that all this supposedly happened in the data centre it smelled like a herd of bulls had recently wandered through.
Onlive. Their offerings were so great that they went bankrupt.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Who is this "we"?
I think he means NVIDIA - NVIDIA have been hoping for ages somebody will be stupid enough to actually try this.
Same thing with Intel when they were trying to find a buyer for their Larrabee chips - real-time raytracing for cloud games! Only a billion dollars of Intel chips and motherboards needed!!
No sig today...
3g/4g latency will make the device unplayable. No need to worry about running up the bill, you would be far to frustrated to play for more than a couple minutes.
How can you have such a completely different experience from my own? I tried Gaikai at work during lunch breaks. Our offices are on top of a datacentre and we have a few 10Gbps direct links to LINX (london internet exchange). I don't think gaming connectivity gets any better than what I have there. Yet Gaikai SUCKED donkey balls every single time I tried it. I absolutely hated the latency and never played for more than 15 minutes before I got annoyed with it.
Onlive. Their offerings were so great that they went bankrupt.
Ah yes. Thanks. That's exactly the bunch of scam artists I was referring to.
I say scam because they basically made shit up about the biggest problem which was network latency. Oh and usually quoted the one way latency, not the ping time, which is much more significant in gaming.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This is a cloud of one.
It is connected to a Geforce650 or better via HDMI. So that aspect is pretty gimmicky.
And IMHO for your portable gaming needs you'd be better served by a full tablet + a PS2 controller.
This is a tech demo and I do not expect it to go into production anytime soon. nVidia are trying to get more OEMs to buy their Tegra4 SoC. And honestly an Asus Transformer with this baby makes me actually pretty happy in the pants.
Tegra4's party piece is that it can display different stuff via HDMI on a telly than what you see on the tablet. Add some basic controllers to the tablet and what you get is a Wii U. Only portable. And good. And pretty much open. Question is, when will Android actually support this.
Tegra3's party piece was that it could do that proprietary nVidia 3D thing. Only a couple of games support it. Tried it with Riptide attached to my monitor and it was pretty neat.
My great hope is that Tegra4 is as good as current gen game consoles(but proper high-res). Propably not since they haven't changed the GPU a lot. But quad core A15 is pretty beefy. Tegra3 tablets typically also have more RAM than a PS3 or XBOX360.
The grapevine has it that nVidia had been snubbed by both Sony and Microsoft over ATI for the next gen consoles. So it stands to reason that nVidia will show much more interest in Android based game consoles with their Tegra3 SoC. If I were them I'd get in bed with the Ouya folks and design an Ouya2 based on Tegra4. Pronto.
20 minutes into the future
I'm not sure what Verizon is doing wrong, but certainly something. I'm using cable in Finland (DNA Welho). Ping to regional exchange point (FICIX) is roughly 7ms, ping to Rovaniemi (~1000km) on different operator is roughly 25ms, ping first hit in Germany (Level3 Dusseldorf) is 44ms.
Maybe this isn't a solution for FPS games, but I would love to be able to play Civilization V from the cloud with all the graphic bells and whistles.
Exactly. In Street Fighter 4 players are pretty much required to time button presses to 1 frame which is about 16ms (Game runs at 60fps). This needs to be performed many times during a round and missing the 16ms window gets you killed. Games like this will not be cloud friendly anytime soon.
Yeah? Is that why Onlive games looked like shit? I tried a couple of their games and they looked like they were stuck on low-mid graphics settings.
Nightmares, not wet dreams. Yes, we've talked about it for years -- that we've heard hilarious rumors that people are seriously entertaining the idea, and what a dumb idea it is. And in theory, my internet speed is nearly 5% fast enough for it to be viable. Maybe in twenty years it'll be not-necessarily stupid, but still not nearly as good for me, or as profitable for nVidia, as for me to buy chips to render locally.
These days home consoles are pretty close to general-purpose computing boxes, and could quite easily be used as clients for cloud-gaming services just as they're currently used as clients for cloud-video services. Sony recently bought Gaikai after all, they've got to be doing something with it. (Rumour has it, all their back compatibility...)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Yep, and remember that the (imaginary) market for this system would be people with tablets connected over 4G or home WiFi.
Nobody with a desktop PC would be simultaneously:
a) Rich enough to subsidize the hardware investment needed by the service providers to make this work (monthly fee...$50?)
and
b) Too poor to buy a $150 graphics card (which is what this hardware will equate to in six months time).
No sig today...
There are at least two other android game devices. There is the Archos GamePad, which has already shipped in Europe and looks similar to a PSP in my opinion, and there is the not-yet-released Wikipad, which looks to be just a large size tablet that has a snap on game controller.
And there is the Ouya which was mentioned here on slashdot recently.
I can't help but wonder if the android hardware game device market is about to get really crowded.
Nvidia makes the mistake of thinking its audience might be informed- big mistake.
At this conference, they showed a variety of services, which should be understood individually.
1) The proprietary GRID server rack system. The difference with Nvidia's solution is that the rack includes a butt-load of low-to-mid end Nvidia graphics chips. These are a solution looking for a problem. Nvidia foolishly suggested cloud gaming (rendering on the server- images set via the internet to the clients)- a model that has already crashed and burnt 1.5 times (Onlive went bust, Gaikai gained little traction and was sold). Worse, Nvidia's weak GPU solution is not good for processing the AAA games that people love on their PCs.
2) The launch of the Tegra 4- a high end ARM SoC, with a very high end GPU (graphics).
3) The launch of a reference design for a mobile Android gaming device based on the Tegra 4
4) The launch of a 'streaming' technology that allows PC games to be rendered on the desktop, and then wirelessly transmitted to a hand-held Android device, allowing the tablet to 'run' even the most powerful PC games. Of course, Nvidia was saying that their service would be proprietary, requiring specific Nvida graphics cards in the PC, and a Tegra 4 mobile device.
The new Nintendo Wii U does the same thing, using AMD/ATI technology. Third party apps already exist allowing you to hack current PC games and send their output to generic Android devices.
As one might imagine, the problem is simply one of real time video encoding (for the game output), and then playing back the video-stream on the Android device. Meanwhile, input is gathered on the Android device, and transmitted back to the PC to 'control' the game. It is obvious that such software methods will work at their best when built into the drivers on the PC, and this is what Nvidia is offering.
5) The Tegra 4 is revealed to be extremely power-hungry when all its processing units are being thrashed. No surprise here. The new paradigm for high-end ARM chips is parts that can go from extremely low power usage all the way up to power profiles usually associated with notebooks- and I mean in the same chip. We are actually close to mains-powered desktop ARM parts (which will easily rival Intel on a performance per chip cost basis). The market is demanding that the high-end mobile parts can achieve ever higher performance figures, regardless of the impact on battery life.
6) Nvidia showed various 'soft' smart-TV like functions by using the Tegra 4 as input for a 4K TV. Here we see the growing logic of using an external Android device as the heart of 'smart' TVs, rather than relying on the dreadful proprietary hardware/software solution the TV manufactures build into the TV itself.
So, in conclusion, Nvidia was really just releasing its latest ARM SoC, the Tegra 4. This part will go up against a lot of competition, and is a risky bet. Nvidia really needs the market to value Tegra's unique functions, and this really only means Nvidia's new GPU cores. Unfortunately for Nvidia, the power of their graphics can only be unleashed in mobile devices with very substantial battery capacity, and proper cooling- nothing like your current cheap tablet ecosystem. If Tegra 4 is placed into an ordinary tablet design or phone, the chip will have to be choked to a fraction of its potential, else the battery will last less than 1 hour, and the device will get very hot indeed.
The Tegra 4 may represent Nvidia giving up on the old Android mobile market, and focusing instead on applications that can provide more power, and dissipate more heat, like set-top boxes, and chunky hand-held gaming devices.
A Tegra 4 console is a waste of time. nvidia is one of the few companies that can make a big, powerful GPU. If nvidia wants to get into consoles, they should team up with Valve and make a 'traditional' Desktop console. They will need a good CPU. Project Denver might suffice, but it might be better to turn to IBM. Valve will be the senior player in such a console, and that might be too much for nvidia's ego.
The server will be close to you, the system allows you to stream gameplay from your home PC on your home network, to you, sitting in the living room so you don't get bitched at by the other half for leaving her alone all evening again.
Old 40nm design pitted against latest Intel 32nm design.
Intel design doesn't impress outright.
Was this the one done with Windows RT, that cannot make use of Tegra 3's low power companion core? Yes, yes it is.
...should be just about enough to run one instance of Crysis 4. If you've got an OC-192 internet connection, you might be able to play it in HD as well!
You need sub 3ms ping times.
Have you given this even a few minutes of thought? A 3 frame latency is not unusual for a game. 30 fps is not unusual either. 30 fps means 33.333 ms per frame, so 3 frames is 100 ms. Then there's also the latency in your mouse and your screen. You absolutely do not need 3ms ping times even for competitive FPS, except maybe if you're at the international level. If a game can run at 60fps and with 1 frame latency you're down to about 16 ms game latency, so if your ping is 25 ms that's 31 ms which puts you right in the same range. Where on earth did you get that 3ms number from?
Whether or not Nvidia releases support for color management on Tegra 3 will definitely influence confidence in their newer systems. These companies thrive off marketing developing technologies for profit, leaving basic features and documentation in the background.
The streaming video is of course compressed, by the required GeForce 650+ GPU which has dedicated low-latency h.264 encoding hardware. The Shield unit supports 2x2 MIMO 802.11n, which should be more than capable.
nVidia haven't given any latency figures, but hands-on reports all indicate "no detectable lag" over local connections. Some mention visible encoding artefacts, so the bitrate used may not be very high.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
its not really a console its just a android with a built in controller. pretty much anything you can aruldy do with a tablet.if anything its a smart move even if the sales are not good they put very little investment into it and it makes no difference if they quit making them down the road because they are android and will still get apps and games.
i think its a good idea as long as its not going to be overpriced or anything. think bought it they made this thing when people have been asking for dedicated button android systems and the fact android has been walking all over handheld gaming systems the last couple years. i know i would get one.
I know this can easily be expanded into a fallacy, but just think about what they could have accomplished by spending all those hours practicing a real martial art. /off to conquer the world
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nah, if you turn off everything, Windows RT stills runs Tegra 3's fast cores, because it doesn't know how to run on the single low power core that Android runs on most of the time, even when playing video, running Wifi etc.
So what Anandtech did, is to let Intel engineers come in and pull the wool over their eyes. Comparing Clovertrail in it's only viable low power configuration (doing nothing, not running a phone, not running a Facebook messanger, doing nothing), against a Tegra 3 running on it's full cores (due to Windows RT's inability to be efficient).
They also threw in a few high resolution Android and iOS devices (which use a lot more GPU's to drive the high resolution displays) against the low resolution Windows surface.
And the Acer W510 + dock, yes, a dock with a battery in it. They measured the battery life of laptop with an extra battery against other tablets. Oh boy.
Nothing much since real martial arts are pretty useless in any real life scenario.
nVidia should be embarrassed to have released this "game console".
It has to be about the shittiest design for any game controller/portable game platform ever. Tacking on a folding screen to a game controller hasn't been seen since the 1990's, and this device is the functional equivalent of the Atari joystick you could plug into your TV and play 1 of 50 games they used to sell in mall kiosks a few years back. Has nVidia even seen the PS Vita. Sleek, well integrated screen built into a controller, not a screen tacked on haphazardly to some cheap Taiwan controller.
Also this idea of just using the Android gaming market on a game console is silly. A game designed for a touch screen does not necessarily translate into one that can be played with a controller, or even played on a TV, yet Ouya and nVidia are making the mistake of creating a game console that just plays Android games. What is the Google Play store supposed to do, fragment gaming across numerous platforms and have games that cannot be played on various devices with different configurations? Having a list of requirements to buy and play an Android game will ruin Google Play store completely.
nVidia has no industrial design experience at all. Lets face it, everything they have made to date gets put into a box and hidden away from view, so obviously using the same designers that design heatsinks and fans for video cards are not going to cut it for creating consumer electronic devices.
This is a fail, period. While nVidia might make the chips that play games well, nVidia is obviously not capable of creating the devices that play games well. nVidia should pull out of the game consoles now and save face and fire every person involved in this fiasco.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
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