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Comments: 132 +-   The Future According To nVidia on Monday May 26 2008, @04:43AM

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 26 2008, @04:43AM
from the when-all-you've-got-is-a-hammer dept.
graphics
software
hardware
NerdMaster writes "Last week nVidia held their Spring 2008 Editor's day, where they presented their forthcoming series of graphics processing units. While the folks at Hardware Secrets couldn't tell the details of the new chips, they posted some ideas of what nVidia is seeing as the future of computing. Basically more GPGPU usage, with the system CPU losing its importance, and the co-existence of ray-tracing and rasterization on future video cards and games. In other words, the 'can of whoop-ass' nVidia has promised to open on Intel."
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Submission: The Future - According to nVidia by NerdMaster (918117)
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  • Who will have the better Linux driver support? (Score:5, Informative)

    by pembo13 (770295) on Monday May 26 2008, @04:48AM (#23542553) Homepage
    That's my main influence when I purchase video cards.
    • I fail to see how this is redundant. I too choose video cards based on how well they are supported under Linux. Or rather, I choose the ones with the less shitty support. Any Linux users who's ever tried to use any OpenGL app more complex than glxgears knows the pain, so I reckon Linux (or any OS other than Windows I suppose) support isn't a trivial, or a fanboy issue.

      So no, the post isn't redundant, because this issue isn't yet solved (not to mention, how can a first post be redundant?).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by morcego (260031)

        so I reckon Linux (or any OS other than Windows I suppose) support isn't a trivial


        Considering how many problems I have always seen, I would say that even on Windows it is anything but trivial.

        Video drivers suck. On whatever platform you choose.
      • First posts are redundant because moderators are too fucking STUPID and have little understanding of the language they supposedly speak.

    • Re:Who will have the better Linux driver support? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by darthflo (1095225) on Monday May 26 2008, @06:19AM (#23543007)
      nVidia will probably continue their controversial blob model (i.e. you get a binary object plus the source to a kernel module that, with the help of said object, works as a driver). Purists rage against it because it's against freedom and-so-on, pragmatists tend to like the full 3D acceleration that comes with it.
      Intel is going the Open Source road, trying to be as open as possible. Unfortunately, from a performance PoV their hardware sucks. Their products are intended as consumer-level, chipset integrated solutions and, considering that, work nicely. Don't try any 3D games, though.
      ATi opened a lot of specs, so community-developed and completely open drivers are on the horizon. Unfortunately the horizon is quite far away and the movement towards it is similar to a kid on a tricycle. The situation is prone to improve though. Performance-wise, ATi may be a good choice if you'd like to play the occasional game, but they don't really compare to nVidia (which is unlikely to change soon).
      In the end, I'm going to stick to nVidia in the near future, using intel wherever low energy consumption is strongly desired (i.e. notebooks and similar). ATi just ain't my cup of tea, I wouldn't be putting a red card in a Windows box either, but my preference of nVintel is just such -- a preference. Go with whatever suits you best.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Purists rage against it because it's against freedom and-so-on, pragmatists tend to like the full 3D acceleration that comes with it.

        Bullshit.
        Closed drivers suck for pragmatic reasons.
        Just because YOU haven't paid the price yet doesn't mean it isn't true.

        I bought two top-end nvidia cards (spent $350+ each on them) only to find out that because my monitors don't send EDID information their binary-blob drivers wouldn't work. The problem was that my monitors required dual-link DVI and even though these top-of-the-line cards had dual-link transceivers built into the chip (i.e. every single card of that generation had dual-link transceivers

    • That's my main influence when I purchase video cards.
      Hi!

      I'm the CEO of NVidia and I spend all day reading slashdot. Despite that I hadn't noticed that Linux was popular until I read your post.

      I'll tell the driver developers to start fixing the drivers now.

      Thanks for the heads up

      Jen-Hsun Huang
      CEO, NVidia Inc
      • Given that nVidia already makes Linux drivers, it seems to me that the only way they could spend less money on them short of not supporting Linux at all would be to open specs and source, thus getting the Linux community to write their drivers for them.

        And those drivers would actually be better. Better Linux support for less money.

        So what's the holdup?
          • I doubt very much that it's either of these. Remember, we only need specs for an interface, it doesn't have to be schematics for the whole card.

            No, the real reason very likely has to do with the geForce/Quadro scam. Specifically, the fact that you can take a geForce (typically, what, $200?) and soft-mod it into a Quadro (at least $500, and most are $1k and up).
              • Down, fanboy.

                The last time I looked at the graphics scene, they were actually neck and neck. There were reviews for new cards from each, and depending on the publisher, they might go one way or another.

                At no point do I remember ATI no longer being relevant.

                So, do you have anything to back that statement up, or are you just going to keep parroting the nVidia party line?
    • For me, fullscreen TV output. There's none in 8xxx series and it's broken in older card drivers. See as an example [nvidia.com].

    • Not nVidia. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SanityInAnarchy (655584) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Monday May 26 2008, @03:00PM (#23547799) Journal
      Possibly Intel, possibly ATI.

      But nVidia is the last to publish specs, or any sort of source code. ATI and Intel already do one of the two for pretty much all of their cards.

      So, in the long run, nVidia loses. It's possible they'll change in the future, but when you can actually convert a geForce to a Quadro with a soft mod, I very much doubt it'll be anytime soon.

  • Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gd23ka (324741) on Monday May 26 2008, @04:49AM (#23542561) Homepage
    The future according to Sun or IBM.. faster CPUs. The future according to Nvidia... more GPUs .. the future according to Seagate.. exabytes and petabyes, the future according to Minute Maid.. , the future according to Blue Bonnet .. lower cholesterol, the future according to ATT "more bars in more places", the future according to ...

    Another paid for article. Yawn.
    • It doesn't have to be paid for, it's just a report on what nVidia is saying, it doesn't say that's definitely what will happen. After reading the summary I thought exactly what you are thinking though. The main CPU may lose a little 'importance' when it comes to games and physics simulations, but it's not going away anytime soon..
      • I don't think that games are main drivers of computing. I think that business apps are. nVidia might think that they are going to rule computing, but they won't. They'll be a dominant player, but they should remember S3 graphics and Vesa. You're only as good as your last product, and given that they aren't particularly open they might lose their market at any time.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Scoth (879800)
          Business apps might be the drivers of the most sales, but I tend to think games are the drivers of "progress". There are very few business apps that need more than NT4 on a decent sized screen with a fast enough processor to run Office. I think even Office 2007's minimum requirements say something about a 500mhz processor. Heck, a large number of companies could probably get away with Windows 3.1, Word 1.1A, Eudora Light for e-mail, and maybe some sort of spreadsheet/accounting software. You really don't ne
      • I think the point they are trying to drive,which is true IMHO,is that the CPU just isn't going to be giving you the big boosts anymore. As someone who remembers saving up so I could make the jump from 400Mhz to 1.1Ghz I can say that from first hand experience they are right. Once everyone has gone dual and quad core adding another 400-600Mhz on your CPU really isn't going to do much,whereas jumping a couple of generations on GPU will give you a pretty big boost.

        The place where I can see the CPU making bi

        • Slightly OT,but does anyone know where I can find a micro that has at least one USB and preferably runs Linux? I have to fit the CPU into a 4in diameter rocket and so far most of the ones I'm finding require daughter boards that won't fit.

          http://www.gumstix.com/ [gumstix.com]

          or

          http://gumstix.com/waysmalls.html [gumstix.com]

          As they say "linux computers that fit in the palm of your hand"

          I believe the verdex boards are 2cm by 8cm.

          Price is about the same as desktop gear, figure you'll drop about $250 on a basic working system.

        • I agree overall, I used to think that upgrading my GPU would be the most important thing back when I had my 1GHz Athlon, though eventually when that machine fried, I found out that a faster CPU enabled me to get the most out of my GPU. It's back to the stage again where any 2GHz dual core CPU should be fast enough for anyone with the current generation of games and apps, but I'm sure they'll find some more interesting uses for CPU power in the next few years. The way things are going, maybe everything will

    • Re:Yawn (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 26 2008, @05:06AM (#23542649)
      The future according to Goatse.. P1st fR0st!
      The future according to anonymous coward.. more trolling, offtopic, flamebait-ness, with the odd insightful or funny.
      The future according to Ballmer.. inflated Vista sales (it's his job, damnit!).
      The future according to Microsoft shill 59329.. "I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but Vista really is t3h w1n! Go and buy it now!"
      The future according to Stallman.. Hurd.

      BTW The promo video for HURD is going to feature Stallman as a Gangsta rapper, and features the phrase: "HURD up to ma Niggaz."

    • Re:Yawn (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 26 2008, @05:24AM (#23542715)
      The future according to the past...the present.

    • Re:Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)

      by darthflo (1095225) on Monday May 26 2008, @06:24AM (#23543035)
      Three things: - None of the futures you mentioned contradicts any of the others. Quite obviously Blue Bonnet won't predict the future of the storage market and Minute Maid won't be the first companyto know about new processes in CPU manufacturing.
      - What's the future according to Minute Maid anyways? Really, I'm intrigued!
      - Did you notice the interesting parallel between the future according to ATT and what the american government seems to be steering to? More bars in more places (and as many people behind them as possible(?))? What a strange coincidence...
    • The future according to Sun or IBM - faster CPU's using more cores per processor.

      The future according to Nvidia - faster GPU's using more stream processors.

  • Price / Perfomance works for me (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rog7 (182880) on Monday May 26 2008, @04:50AM (#23542565)
    I'm all for it.

    The more competition the better.

    Anyone that worries too much about the cost a good GPU adds to the price of a PC, doesn't remember much what it was like when Intel was the only serious player in the CPU market.

    This kind of future, to me, spells higher bang for the buck.
  • "the 'can of whoop-ass' nVidia has promised to open on Intel."

    Yep, I'm sure the Intel Devs have all taken a sabbatical.

  • Surprise, Surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by allcar (1111567) on Monday May 26 2008, @04:50AM (#23542575)
    The leading manufacturer of GPUs wants GPUs to become ever more important.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I am a bit skeptical. If AMD's experimentation with combining the CPU and GPU bears fruit it might actually mean the end for the traditional GPU's. nVidia doesn't have a CPU that can compete with AMD and Intel so I think nVidia is the one in trouble here. But I suppose nVidia has to keep up appearances to keep the stocks from plummeting.

      • If AMD's experimentation with combining the CPU and GPU bears fruit it might actually mean the end for the traditional GPU's.
        Until the wheel of reinvention turns once again and people start realising that they can find performance gains by splitting the graphics processing load out onto special hardware.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by pdusen (1146399)
          Right. The special hardware being separate graphics-optimized cores, in this case.

        • This answer is very interesting because I seem to remember that MMX was introduced because Philips planned to create specialty co-processor(s) (boards) (around 96/97) to off-load multi-media tasks, so that sound processing would take less CPU cycles and to introduce video processing. Intel did not like this idea and added MMX just to cut off such things.

  • Competing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Yetihehe (971185) on Monday May 26 2008, @04:53AM (#23542593)
    FTFA:

    basically more GPGPU usage (i.e. the use of the graphics chip to process regular programs) and the co-existence of "competing" technologies like ray tracing and rasterization
    Hmm, they aren't really competing technologies. Raytracing CAN be an extension of rasterization, some RT algorithms even use some form of rasterization for visibility testing... But if nVidia don't embrace RT, they risk going to second position (no, not extinct, as you can do RT on nvidia cards today, but it would be better with some native api and better hardware support).

    • Well API isn't their department (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Monday May 26 2008, @05:08AM (#23542661)
      nVidia doesn't do the APIs for their cards. They have no properitary API, their native APIs are DirectX and OpenGL. In fact, the advances in those APIs, more specifically DirectX, often determines the features they work on. The graphics card companies have a dialogue with MS on these matters.

      This could be an area that OpenGL takes the lead in, as DirectX is still rasterization based for now. However it seems that while DirectX leads the hardware (the new DX software comes out usually about the time the hardware companies have hardware to run it) OpenGL trails it rather badly. 3.0 was supposed to be out by now, but they are dragging their feet badly and have no date when it'll be final.

      I imagine that if MS wants raytracing in DirectX, nVidia will support it. For the most part, if MS makes it part of the DirectX spec, hardware companies work to support that in hardware since DirectX is the major force in games. Until then I doubt they'll go out of their way. No reason to add a bunch of hardware to do something if the major APIs don't support it. Very few developers are going to implement something that requires special coding to do, especially if it works on only one brand of card.

      I remember back when Matrox added bump mapping to their cards. There was very few (like two) titles that used it because it wasn't a standard thing. It didn't start getting used until later, when all cards supported it as a consequence of having shaders that could do it and it was part of the APIs.

  • Will they become platform supplier? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sznupi (719324) on Monday May 26 2008, @05:01AM (#23542621) Homepage
    I was wondering about this...now that nVidia wants CPU to loose its importance _and_ they started to cooparate with Via on chipsets for Via CPUs (which perhaps aren't the fastest...but I've hard the latest Isaiah core is quite capable), will we see some kind of merge?

    • I was wondering about this...now that nVidia wants CPU to loose its importance _and_ they started to cooparate with Via on chipsets for Via CPUs (which perhaps aren't the fastest...but I've hard the latest Isaiah core is quite capable), will we see some kind of merge?

      Wouldn't that be great! It's about time that graphics processing, IO, an other things are sent to their own processors. Anyway, wasn't that done before - Amiga?

  • I made sure that my current machine had an nVidia graphics chip, so that I could play with stuff like CUDA. But my machine also runs Vista and, some 18 months after its release, there still isn't a stable version of CUDA for Vista. Plus, seeing as my machine's a laptop, I doubt that even the beta drivers available from nVidia would install, seeing as how they're prone to playing silly buggers when it comes to laptop chip support.

    So nVidia, instead of spouting off about how great the future's going to be, ho
  • ... the pc architecture is going to be catching up to where the Amiga and various consoles have been for the past 2-3 decades (in terms of basic high level design ideas)?

    :)

    Funny how things work, isn't it.

  • Why not employ numerous Field Programable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) instead of a CPU? You could program one or more FPGA to be optimized to execute each of the functions the software needs. Need more FLOPs? Program for that. Need scalar computation? program for that. Seven FPGAs running one way and nine running another. At some point, FPGAs may completely replace the CPU as we know it today. The HPC community is already looking at this possibility for some types of computations.
  • nVidia seems to be a litte late to this game [wikipedia.org]. ;-)
  • Focus generally seems to be on "bigger" as opposed to "more efficient." Add more cores, increase the frequency, etc etc.

    Some other tasks focus on "trimmed down and more efficient" but then tend to fail in the power output arena.

    I was wondering how difficult it might be to make a motherboard or graphics card with multi-processors. One small one for general-purpose computing (basic surfing, word-processing, 2d graphics or basic 3d), and a bigger one that could be used to "kick in" when needed, like an ove
    • I agree. In TFA they refer to the GPU taking over more and more specifically in gaming applications, but even then the more you free up the main CPU to do other things like AI hopefully the better games will get. If you recall Weitek when they made a much faster (albeit single precision) math coprocessor than Intel's own 80387, it would be like Weitek saying "We forsee that you'll need that 386 far less in the future."

      If nVidia or any other GPU manufacturer tries to get too generalized they run the risk o
    • But nVidia didn't claim that the GPU would replace the CPU. They even went to lengths to deny it in the article. The version that the poster linked to was void of details, a better description is available at the Inquirer [theinquirer.net] who weren't under NDA.

      The hi-light of the press conference seems to be the censored part revealing that nVidia will be fab'ing ARM-11s in the near future in direct competition with the Intel Atom. Looks like they're not planning to go down without a fight...
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