Intel Licenses NVIDIA SLI Technology For P55 Chips 63
adeelarshad82 writes "NVIDIA announced that Intel has licensed the company's SLI technology for inclusion in upcoming products — as have a slew of major hardware partners such as ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI. This means the P55 chipsets that power those new socket LGA 1156 motherboards, which are based around the next-gen Nehalem architecture, will let you build systems using two or four NVIDIA-powered GPUs. Specifically, the licensing agreement covers the Core i5 and Core i7 microprocessors."
Monopoly? (Score:2, Informative)
So does Intel hold enough share of the chipset market, for this to become an antitrust issue?
Unless nVidia will license that same technology to ATI, it sounds like it freezes ATI out of the multi-GPU-on-Intel-chipsets market.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:4, Insightful)
ATI has crossfile.
and no, this is not an antitrust issue (unless it's against nVidia), as Intel is paying nVidia for the tech.
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Well considering ATI is actually AMD now.. not too sure AMD would even want that. I'm fairly certain you can get SLI going on AMD platforms still.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, it's AMD.
Second of all, ATI is owned by AMD. Because of them, AMD makes graphics cards. AMD also sells technology that allows two AMD cards to be used on one motherboard. Therefore, AMD will probably not pay money for the same technology that lets people purchase and use two competitor's products.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless nVidia will license that same technology to ATI, it sounds like it freezes ATI out of the multi-GPU-on-Intel-chipsets market.
s/ATI/AMD/g
why would AMD promote SLI when they can sell crossover? It seems they would cannibalize their own GPU market by supporting SLI on their chipsets.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
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Unless nVidia will license that same technology to ATI, it sounds like it freezes ATI out of the multi-GPU-on-Intel-chipsets market.
Why would AMD want to license nVidia's SLI when it is a direct competitor to its own Crossfire technology?
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Yeah, it sounds like a conflict of interest to want your competitor's cards on YOUR chipset that supports YOUR cards already. On the other side of the coin, though, I'd rather have my competitor's cards on MY chipset than lose a sale to my competitor's chipset because they support my competitor's cards.
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Re:Monopoly? (Score:5, Informative)
You have it backwards. Crossfire works on pretty much any motherboard with multiple PCIe slots, provided they have sufficient bandwidth between them. SLI requires the motherboard manufacturer to purchase a license from Nvidia to support SLI on the board.
If I'm not mistaken, Intel's X58 board was the first Intel-made board to support SLI, and I don't think anyone made a P45 board supporting it.
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I'm happily running 2 ATI Radeon 4850's in CrossFire (when needed) on my P45-based Gigabyte mainboard, so I think you've got something mixed up here...
np: RJD2 - Hidden Track (Deadringer)
Kiss and make up ... (Score:2)
Mod (Score:1)
Jen-Hsun Huang (Score:2, Interesting)
So this is how the Nvidia CEO intended to open a can of whoop ass on Intel. What a dumb-ass...
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Intel and NVidia have a complex relationship. On the one hand Intel and NVidia are jointly a natural alternative to AMD now it has bought ATI.
Right now of course Intel sell vast numbers of low end GPUs and rely on NVidia for the low volume high end stuff - i.e. SLI for gamers. So Intel pretty much has to support SLI.
On the other they are both hinting they will compete directly. Intel has been talking about CPU/GPU hybrids (i.e. Larrabee) for ages and there have been persistent rumours NVidia will launch an
Not sure who should pay (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it Intel that paid NVidia or the other way around? Having support for SLI is defo good thing for NVidia and for Intel, the question is who should care more.
I doubt Intel pays much (Score:4, Interesting)
nVidia does charge for SLI licenses. Reason being that they are also in the motherboard chipset market and want you to buy theirs. Intel wasn't all that pleased with the situation and so refused to license QPI to nVidia, which would mean no Core i7 chipsets. Well, that got all resolved and licensing started happening both ways. My guess is neither side is paying the other all that much.
Is this IP going too far? (Score:2, Insightful)
TFA says that the Intel chipsets will be limited to 8 lanes instead of 16 to give Nvidia an advantage for thier own chipsets.
Why is a license needed to interface with an IC in the first place?
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Re:Is this IP going too far? (Score:5, Informative)
If that's what TFA says, then it's full of it. The design of Bloomfield/P55 is such that there are 16 PCIe lanes coming straight from the CPU, and then another 4 lanes coming off of the P55 chipset, routed back up to the CPU through whatever interconnect Intel is using (it is in effect just a Southbridge, with the Northbridge integrated in to the CPU). This is because Bloomfield was intended to be used with a single x16 PCIe slot, it's a mid-range product. Nehalem/X58 is Intel's high-end product, and it has a much faster QPI connection coming off of the CPU to interface with a proper Northbridge to feed more PCIe lanes.
So what you have to do is split the 16 lanes in to two sets of 8 lanes, and then use those lanes to make two x16 slots that only have half the bandwidth they're supposed to (something the PCIe standard allows). That's why the Intel chipsets will be limited to 8 lanes.
The NVIDIA chipset mentioned is the NF200, which is a PCIe bridge. It would sit at the end of the 16 lanes coming from the CPU, and in turn offer 32 lanes (2x16) for PCIe slots. This gives you the full 16 lanes of bandwidth to each slot, but it doesn't get you any more bandwidth to the CPU. You still only have 16 lanes of bandwidth to the CPU. The only advantage to using a bridge chip is that it means the full bandwidth of the CPU can be dynamically allocated to a single PCIe slot, and that two PCIe devices can communicate with each other at full speed (the NF200 also has a few SLI commands that make sending data out from the CPU faster by automatically replicating it to the two slots). This does little to solve the fact that you have too little bandwidth in the first place, which is why you won't see the NF200 used too much. Plus bridges add latency and complexity to motherboard designs.
As for why a license is needed at all: because NVIDIA says so. Their products won't work in SLI mode unless they see a license or a NF200 bridge chip (which is an automatic buy-in for SLI). It's a scummy system really, the license doesn't actually do anything. At best it means some token testing was done to make sure SLI worked, when if you build to PCIe spec it would work anyhow.
There's no technology here (Score:3, Interesting)
This is just a weak form of DRM. Nvidia's drivers check the motherboaïrd against a whitelist and if the mobo is on the list the driver allows SLI. Naturally, chipset/motherboard makers have to pay protection money, er licensing fees, to get on the list.
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Nothing, which is why there is at least one Windows application that does exactly that.
details?
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No, Google.
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Oh, and I'm gonna do Crossfire soon... why throw out a perfectly good card when getting another matching one will speed it up almost linearly? Got one 4670 that's a little slow on some games at 1680x1050, I figure a second one (given the benchmarks) will blow my socks off at that res.
Sounds interesting but ... (Score:1)
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Seems like a push from Apple (Score:2)
... to get this to be a reality or I would expect to see Apple grabbing some of AMD/ATi harmony as the alternative.
Apple is pushing OpenCL and it's rather limited [CPU-core bound OpenCL only] if none of Apple's systems have SLI support.
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Wasn't SLI only supposed to be for being able to talk to multiple chips for a single output? OpenCL (and NVidia's CUDA) however don't need SLI in order to talk to multiple GPU's. I have a machine with 4 GPU's and CUDA works just fine. I really don't see the advantage of SLI other than bragging rights and the difference between 200fps and 300fps, most games (and other real time video outputs) have enough with a single video card and all others (scientific output) like to save their output on disk so stuff do
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Nope (Score:2)
Apple doesn't support SLI, and if they wanted to they could "license" it directly from Nvidia.
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Apple doesn't support SLI, and if they wanted to they could "license" it directly from Nvidia.
Apple has had no need for SLI until now. The same option for Crossfire if Apple wanted to use Intel boards with Crossfire support. OpenCL changes all bets.
Intel has failed us again (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, I've been less than pleased with the whole SLI vs CrossFire debacle. It's a friggin PCI-Express bus! This is nothing more than software and/or firmware enforced lock-in, and it stinks. I would have preferred for Intel to reject the SLI tax entirely. NVidia is the small player here, they're the ones who should be bending over backwards to get the big guys to promote their products. I don't want to pay an SLI tax on my motherboard, NVidia should be plenty glad that I'm buying two expensive GPUs instead of one, and they should consider a partnership with Intel like a divine blessing because Intel is 10 times larger and has far greater reach into every single market.
The situation is simple: right now, I own a perfectly fine motherboard that doesn't support SLI (Intel P35). I also have a perfectly fine Geforce 8800 and would have loved to add a second, but I can't because my board isn't on the SLI whitelist. My options are:
A. buy the second card, and replace my motherboard with an overpriced unstable NForce 750 board
B. fuck NVidia and buy two brand new AMD cards
Assuming equal performance, option B would cost me far less, even though I would prefer the NVidia GPU. Their SLI lock in has thus resulted in a lost sale.
Now I'm just one guy, but here's the funny part: I used to sell gaming rigs... lots and lots of 'em. When people heard about SLI, all the hardcore guys wanted it, but when they found out they had to taint their lovingly assembled systems with an NForce board, most of them backed off. It wasn't even about the money, it's about NVidia's awful track record in the chipset biz. They make even SIS look good. They never really fixed the NF2/3/4 disk corruption glitches, and they trashed the one good thing they had going for them: Soundstorm. That was a long time ago, but the way they handled those very public screwups left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
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A single new card draws less power, makes less noise and heat, takes up less space, and probably runs faster in almost every game (but maybe not synthetic benchmarks.) SLI is a bust.
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1) New better performing cards don't always draw less power than an older single card (GTX 285 needs more power than a 8800 GTS 512).
2) Yes, they do usually make less noise and heat
3) Less space--never. Go from a 8800 GTS 512 to a GTX 285 or a 4870, check it out.
I agree with you that a single card is better for heat and simplicity (installation, drivers, & game support), but lately I've noticed that SLI/Crossfire really is the future. In some games you just can't get the framerates you want at the detai
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1) New better performing cards don't always draw less power than an older single card (GTX 285 needs more power than a 8800 GTS 512). 2) Yes, they do usually make less noise and heat 3) Less space--never. Go from a 8800 GTS 512 to a GTX 285 or a 4870, check it out.
He was talking about a single new card compared to two older cards in SLI.
1) A GTX 285 needs more power than a GTS 8800 512, but it DEFINITELY does not need more power than two GTS 8800 512 cards.
2) Newer cards almost invariably make less noise and heat than older cards, and certainly less than two older cards.
3) I don't care how big your single new card is, it still takes less space than two older cards. Even the ridiculously-sized GTX 2XX series only take up about the same amount of space as two other
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3) No. The problem now is that of length. Everyone's cases nowadays can hold two video cards. Unless u buy a midsized or micro sized case, u can fit 2 cards. But all the new cards like the 285, 275, 4870x2 are all really damn long. I can fit a 8800 gts 512 in, but NOT a gtx285. It's just too long to fit in my case the way it's set up inside.
And btw actually ur wrong on the other front as well. Pop in a 285 and it takes up two PCI slots. But slightly less powerful cards only take 1. So 2 cards fit where only
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I have an newish model Asus NForce board, and it is top-notch. Someone who refuses to buy new NVidia hardware because some old NVidia hardware was flakey is someone who is out of sync with reality.
I agree that NVidia should be giving away SLI licenses to support the purchase of their GPUs. But if you want SLI right now, just go for an NForce board--they rock.
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<weasel>But...but..but... that's interefering with the free market!</weasel>
WHAT FREE MARKET ?
In an ideal world, I would agree with you. I WANT to agree with you, but the reality is that government is not looking out for you and I, it is looking out for Merck, Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup. Not Average Joe and Plain Jane. They certainly cannot come to grips with the possibility that technology should be a common good, rather than a privately leveraged asset. "That's hippie talk! Star Tre
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Uhm, SiS chipsets were actually quite good at least from the time of 735. The only real problem with them was that they were usually put on cheapest motherboards...which still worked perfectly until failure from non-chipset related issues (just now caps failed on my ASRock SiS 746fx motherboard, which gave me flawless 5 years otherwise).
Even X360 has SiS southbridge... (well, perhaps not the best example reliability-wise ;p, but the issues with it also seem to be not related to SiS)
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I get what you're saying, and I agree that SiS chips are almost universally paired with shitty ass boards, but my gripes are with the actual chipset's functionality and driver support. I feel they are today where VIA was 7-8 years ago in terms of stability.
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Weird, for me, and for 7 or so years they are on par with Intel in stability & being non-problematic, while just slightly slower (in strictly chipset related areas - say, PCI bus)
Even better if you managed to get one of few good motherboards (MSI 745 for example)
PS. "today"? SiS disappeared from the general market ~3 years ago, unfortunatelly...
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You understand wrong. They are socket-incompatible, you need to go all-in on one or the other.