NVIDIA To License Its GPU Tech

An anonymous reader writes "Today in a blog post, NVIDIA's General Counsel, David Shannon, announced that the company will begin licensing its GPU cores and patent portfolio to device makers. '[I]t's not practical to build silicon or systems to address every part of the expanding market. Adopting a new business approach will allow us to address the universe of devices.' He cites the 'explosion of Android devices' as one of the prime reasons for this decision. 'This opportunity simply didn't exist several years ago because there was really just one computing device – the PC. But the swirling universe of new computing devices provides new opportunities to license our GPU core or visual computing portfolio.' Shannon points out that NVIDIA did something similar with the CPU core used in the PlayStation 3, which was licensed to Sony. But mobile seems to be the big opportunity now: 'We'll start by licensing the GPU core based on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture, the world's most advanced, most efficient GPU. Its DX11, OpenGL 4.3, and GPGPU capabilities, along with vastly superior performance and efficiency, create a new class of licensable GPU cores. Through our efforts designing Tegra into mobile devices, we've gained valuable experience designing for the smallest power envelopes. As a result, Kepler can operate in a half-watt power envelope, making it scalable from smartphones to supercomputers.'"

Comments

Re:Translation:

[hairyfeet]

I'm sorry but according to Notebook check the chip you have is faster than the Atom it was originally made to compete against and has a faster CPU to boot. Before you take too much stock into what a particular benchmark says you might want to look up "Intel cripple compiler" to see how badly rigged anything compiled with the Intel compiler comes out, in one test they took a Via CPU and simply by changing the CPUID from "Centaur Hauls" to "Genuine Intel" they scored a full 30% HIGHER on the benchmark! Wow, amazing huh?

As for your specific situation I can tell you what the problem is AND how to fix it, the problem is...you bought an Acer. Sorry but Acer is pretty notorious for skimping in every way they can if you will look up "replace thermal paste" and that model you will find many Youtube videos showing you how to remove the shitty thermal pad they used and replacing it with something that works. I would suggest Arctic Silver, first pre-treat both the CPU and the heatsink to get the paste into the tiny imperfections, followed by putting a grain of rice sized drop on the CPU and reseating the heatsink. I have had to do that trick a few times on acers that end up in my shop because of "being slow" and you'd be amazed how much having an actual functional heatsink helps.

As for Intel getting busted...citation please? The only thing I heard of was a payoff to AMD to get them out of court, that is NOT "getting busted", that is bribery. and you name the Intel CPU and I can produce a nice long errata sheet for it as well, i don't think there has been a CPU since the 286 that didn't end up with a long errata list. I also frankly don't put much stock in an "errata" that is only being seen by some guy running an EXTREMELY niche OS and then ONLY when he compiles with a certain version of GCC. AMD offers their own compiler, based on GCC as a matter of fact, so why this dude doesn't use that? who the fuck knows.

Meanwhile I've sold hundreds of AMD units, both desktop and laptop, no complaints about speed. I was impressed enough that my entire family is on AMD, 5 desktops a laptop and I too have a netbook but unlike you I went with the better build quality Asus EEE and am VERY pleased by the performance, in fact after 3 years I still get over 4 hours on a battery watching movies, 5 websurfing, and I can slap an HDMI cable between my netbook and any TV and use it as an HTPC which I have done on several occasions, works great.