October 2009

10/23/09

NVIDIA News Brief - 10/23/09 @ 12:51 pm - By: MikeC - Source: Email
Verde is Not Just More Green Sauce
Admit it. We've been drinking the green Kool-aid a long time, but Verde is more than just more "green sauce." Verde is the name for NVIDIA's notebook drivers - the only GPU company that gives consumers a way to update drivers for their notebook GPUs. So what?
So you should not buy a multi-GPU notebook that does not support driver updates, says AnandTech:
"Alienware's M17x is similar, and Alienware even supports ATI HD 4870 CrossFire, but with the mobile driver situation we would recommend sticking with NVIDIA's mobile GPUs -- especially if you plan on running multiple GPUs. That makes the GTX 280M SLI our preferred high-end gaming solution for notebooks, and you have a choice between notebooks like the Eurocom M980NU and Alienware M17x."
NVIDIA's quarterly driver release program is a big win for notebook consumers. These drivers allow them to maintain top performance, quickly fix bugs, and unlock the same features and functionality that their desktop counterparts have.
Pick Your Own Physics Poison
NVIDIA supports open standards, plus standards that allow them to innovate in a timely fashion, the way CUDA C and PhysX do. NVIDIA wants great features to come to games and GPUs as fast as possible.
"In the end, we decided to acquire Ageia because they'd already got a really nice SDK designed for parallel processing - we just did a C for CUDA implementation and we've been doing that ever since. We've also been helping the Bullet Physics guys with their GPU implementation - it's based on our OpenCL samples and they've been using NVIDIA hardware to do their development.
"Anyone who wants to do physics on the GPU is all goodness for us, so if the Havok guys get around to doing some OpenCL stuff on the GPU, that's good for NVIDIA. All we really want is to see lots of GPU based implementations - we did the PhysX thing because we wanted to get the ball rolling."
NVIDIA believes that innovation is good. If innovation comes through DirectX, OpenCL, CUDA C, Bullet or PhysX, it does not matter to NVIDIA.
Nexus on Film
At GTC NVIDIA introduced Nexus, the industry's first development environment for massively parallel computing that is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio, the world's most popular development environment for Windows-based solutions and Web applications and services.
Nexus will help with development of GPU computing and graphics applications that use CUDA C, OpenCL, DirectCompute, Direct3D, or OpenGL. Nexus offers debugging and profiling functionality that no other vendor offers, all available in the standard development environment Microsoft Visual Studio. You can see it in action here.
FUD control
NVIDIA employees took to some forums recently to answer some questions about some FUD. You can spot them on threads from icrontic.com and hexus.net.
More GTC Wrap-Ups
GTC was an impactful conference that gave attendees a glimpse into the future of computing. GTC coverage continues to trickle in, this time from Hardware Canucks.
"The majority of people reading Hardware Canucks right now are gamers and enthusiasts who use their graphics cards for playing games. Unfortunately, we sometimes have a narrow view of the GPU world that centers around review graphs and sky-high framerates, but nowadays there is more to the industry than that.
We have to remember that even though NVIDIA is thinking outside of its typical gaming markets, the technologies it is developing within CUDA can and will have positive implications for the gaming community as well. In NVIDIA's world, the role of the GPU hasn't changed. Rather, it has evolved into a tool that can be used to not only show worlds of fantasy but also help unravel medical mysteries or be used in a studio to visualize a movie's special effects."
Industry analyst Jon Peddie put his thought to film and describes GPU computing developments as "astounding" and says:
"We truly, truly are at an inflection point in the computer industry at this time."
1920 Cores= High Performance Computing
Colfax International introduced the world's first server featuring up to eight NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPUs. The Colfax CXT8000 supports up to eight CPU cores and 1920 GPU cores with nearly eight Teraflops of peak single precision GPU performance in a single 4U system. See it on Geeks3d.

"CXT8000 will deliver a compelling solution providing customers access to supercomputing power to handle larger and more complex compute-intensive workloads outside of the datacenter, reduce design and development cycles, and drive new levels of innovation and productivity."
The NVIDIA Tesla C1060 transforms a workstation into a high-performance computer that outperforms a small cluster. This gives technical professionals a dedicated computing resource at their desk-side that is much faster and more energy-efficient than a shared cluster in the data center. The Tesla C1060 is based on the massively parallel, many-core Tesla processor, which is coupled with the standard CUDA C programming environment to simplify many-core programming.
Jensen in the Merc
San Jose Mercury News sat down with NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang to discuss the evolution of the GPU.
"The single most important thing for any processor is getting adoption by software developers. We have 90,000 registered developers for CUDA. We've been evangelizing for three years. But the evangelism process was really about supporting the natural pull from the market. The market is dying for a speed-up in computing. And there are all of these new types of applications from computer vision and image processing to CT scan, reconstruction and seismic analysis to weather prediction. There is just so much pent-up demand for more computing resources. So the developers reached out to us and really pulled it out of our hands."
Quadro Digital Video Pipeline Changes Film Making
PNY paid a visit to HDWorld 2009 in New York last week and showed off the Quadro Digital Video Pipeline. PNY Technologies, NVIDIA Corporation, Brainstorm and NextComputing demonstrated how broadcast, film and new media production professionals can take advantage of this fully integrated, GPU-based solution for real-time acquisition, processing and delivery of HD video.
"NextComputing's integration of the Quadro Digital Video Pipeline into compact, portable workstation computers will enable broadcasters, filmmakers and content providers to take what historically could only be done with a combination of powerful fixed-location systems or rack-mount servers, and now bring it on-location," said Jeff Brown, general manager, NVIDIA Professional Solutions Group. "This level of performance-on-the-go has the potential to radically enhance creativity and accelerate production timelines for film and video professionals. This provides huge benefits to anyone working with high-resolution digital video and graphics who needs the flexibility to utilize this type of production power in the field."

The NVIDIA Quadro Digital Video Pipeline is the industry's first fully integrated, GPU-based solution for acquisition, processing and delivery of high resolution video, providing advanced capabilities for graphics rich production and delivery of video for broadcast, post production, film, and new media.
GeForce GT 220 and 210 Have Arrived
Last week NVIDIA announced channel availability of the GeForce GT 220 and GeForce 210 GPUs based on NVIDIA's second generation unified architecture. AlienBabelTech gave it an award for innovation and an award for good value.
"Add to that the ability to use the GT220 as a PhysX accelerator in the latest games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Darkest of Days, video encoding using Mediacoder (Free) or Badaboom ($29.99) and the GT220 suddenly looks like an interesting proposition."
DriverHeaven liked it too.
"For consumers on a budget who are looking for a decent upgrade in advance of Windows 7 the GT 220 is a very attractive purchase. Highly recommended."
These GPUs are based on the same architecture as the GTX 200 series. They are manufactured on the TSMC 40nm process and have some additional features including:
Increased offload for VC-1 and MPEG-2 video codecs

Full Support for DivX

Integrated PCIe audio controller supporting 7.1 LPCM HD Audio

DirectX 10.1 / Shader Model 4.1 Support

NVIDIA MB Chipsets - 10/08/09 @ 4:16 pm - By: MikeC - Source: Email

Quite a bit of conflicting information has been circulating in regards to NVIDIA's motherboard products for the AMD and Intel platforms. Branded under nForce and ION, Ken Brown, Platform Products Manager at NVIDIA, passed along the following statement.

We've received a number of inquiries recently about NVIDIA's chipset (MCP) business. We'd like to set the record straight on current and future NVIDIA chipset activity.
On Intel platforms, the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M/ION brands have enjoyed significant sales, as well as critical success. Customers including Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer, ASUS and others are continuing to incorporate GeForce 9400M and ION products in their current designs.
There are many customers that have plans to use ION or GeForce 9400M chipsets for upcoming designs, as well.
On AMD platforms, we continue to sell a higher quantity of chipsets than AMD itself. MCP61-based platforms continue to be extremely well positioned in the entry CPU segments where AMD CPUs are most competitive vs. Intel.
We will continue to innovate integrated solutions for Intel’s FSB architecture. We firmly believe that this market has a long healthy life ahead. But because of Intel's improper claims to customers and the market that we aren't licensed to the new DMI bus and its unfair business tactics, it is effectively impossible for us to market chipsets for future CPUs. So, until we resolve this matter in court next year, we'll postpone further chipset investments for Intel DMI CPUs.
Despite Intel's actions, we have innovative products that we are excited to introduce to the market in the months ahead. We know these products will bring with them some amazing breakthroughs that will surprise the industry, just as GeForce 9400M and ION have shaken up the industry this year.
We expect our MCP business for both Intel and AMD to be strong well into the future.

ATI Radeon 5870 - 10/03/09 @ 3:24 am - By: MikeC - Source: N/A

As some of you may know, I purchased an Asus EAH5870 graphics card, which is based on the new Radeon 5870 Graphics Processing Unit from AMD/ATI. Things have been kind of slow around here and it's always fun to check out the latest products in graphics hardware.

One of my objectives in this exercise is to update our graphics benchmarking suite and then put the EAH5870 to the test along with a variety of NVIDIA-based graphics cards.

Having just installed the EAH5870, I've posted a number of screenshots from the Catalyst Control Center software, which includes idle GPU temperature readings.

Click here to check it out.

Update:

Here are some of the games that are likely to be used in determining the performance of a graphics card. The following list shows the games that were benchmarked and the number of times a particular game was used.

The following list shows the web sites that were represented in this compilation.

NVIDIA News Brief - 10/02/09 @ 9:41 pm - By: MikeC - Source: Email

Zune Continues To Go Zoom

The NVIDIA Tegra-powered ZuneHD continues to make news. ChannelWeb has five reasons the ZuneHD will hang tough with competition.

"And in the home, HD television and clear images are important. That's why Microsoft pulled out all the stops and put NVIDIA's Tegra system-on-a-chip platform -- which the chip maker calls the world's first HD mobile processor -- in the Zune. The mobile device from Microsoft is built to show movies and television shows in 720p."

NVIDIA Tegra continues to be a differentiator for Zune HD.

"The Zune HD is a major leap forward when it comes to Zune performance benchmarks. Thanks to all the efficiencies afforded by the latest Nvidia Tegra processor and the power-thrifty OLED display, the Zune HD's battery life is rated longer than the iPod Touch battery life, boasting 33 hours of audio playback and 8.5 hours of video (both with Wi-Fi turned off)."

But is Zune any good?

"The Zune HD delivers one of the best portable music and video experiences money can buy.”

Uh, did somebody say zoom?

HP Mini 311: Paparazzi Gone Too Far?

HP launched the Mini 311 last week and just like all the other hot, young celebrities some underground films surfaced on the internet shortly thereafter. We suspect the footage was stolen by contractors from a locked safe.

Gottobemobile.com has footage of the HP mini 311 playing Call of Duty 4, transcoding and upscalling standard DVDs to near Blu-Ray quality in real time. ABC news also had footage of Mark Spoonauer singing the praises of NVIDIA ION, saying it is "redefining the netbook."

3D Vision Aids In Brain Mapping

Drs. Bas Rokers, Alex Huk and Larry Cormack, Neurobiology researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, are utilizing a DepthQ HD 3D projector along with NVIDIA 3D Vision to present their studies of how the human brain perceives 3D motion.

They found, surprisingly, that 3D motion processing occurs in an area in the brain-located just behind the left and right ears-long thought to only be responsible for processing two-dimensional motion (up, down, left and right). They even made a video titled "How the Brain Sees 3D."

GPUs Are Here To Help

eWeek has a pictorial on how GPUs boost PC performance.

"The benefits of GPUs, from their ability to run such tasks as video applications to the fact that they can hold significantly more processing cores than CPUs, dovetail with the increased demand from consumers and businesses for better performance around such diverse workloads as video, gaming and math-intensive applications."

Ba-Ba Ba-Ba Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba Batman (In 3D With PhysX)

Batman: Arkham Ayslum with PhysX continues to get rave reviews, even from the hold outs.

"We've been skeptical of the added value of cosmetic physics effects, but we can say for this title, and provided you have the hardware to handle it, PhysX improves the gaming experience considerably."

Too bad they didn't try it out in 3D, too.

"...playing Batman: Arkham Asylum in 3D is a real treat and it's an experience that's really enhanced by the product. While the scene where the Scarecrow pops out at you is a little startling, it's a lot more effective when you have the 3D Vision glasses on. The bats that swirl around Batman when he earns experience or when a label of an area comes up looks pretty slick as some bats do jump off the screen as they swirl about."

Batman is a great example of the "Graphics Plus" consumers receive with NVIDIA GPUs.

"If you have the PC to run it, it looks incredible. To really get the full experience, having an NVIDIA setup brings out all the visuals that make Arkham Asylum come to life. Yes, you can still have a blast playing it on other types of hardware but you'll be missing out on some of the cooler visuals without a PhysX capable setup. 3D is also pretty slick as well adds to the overall enjoyment of the game."

Verde: Once a Quarter

NVIDIA is the only GPU company that gives consumers a way to update drivers for their notebook GPUs. They named the program Verde.

NVIDIA's quarterly driver release program is a big win for notebook consumers using NVIDIA GPUs. These drivers allow them to maintain top performance, quickly fix bugs, and unlock the same features and functionality that their desktop counterparts have. It also means that NVIDIA can extend support for "Graphics Plus" technologies to notebooks as well as desktops.

For NVIDIA, this represents a strategic move that allows them to enable features on notebooks that are becoming more valuable to consumers. It also allows NVIDIA to offer an unprecedented level of customer service that no other GPU maker can claim.

ATI: Physics Switcharoo SNAFU

Right before mourning "the death of GPU physics", AMD had the great idea that they would partner up with the Intel owned Havok Physics engine. Since then over a year has past and not a peep. Until now.

Now their plan is "Bullet." The reality is that AMD has no GPU driver for OpenCL and NVIDIA has had one for some time. What does that really mean to people developing Bullet Physics for OpenCL? Fudzilla asked the creator of the Bullet Physics, Erwin Coumans.

"Bullet's GPU acceleration via OpenCL will work with any compliant drivers, we use NVIDIA GeForce cards for our development and even use code from their OpenCL SDK, they are a great technology partner."

NVIDIA is the leader for stereoscopic 3D, GPU physics, OpenCL, DirectCompute and GPU Computing.

Intel: Naughty or Nice?

The NY Times ran a story about how the The European Union published e-mail excerpts from computer makers and Intel to show that Intel pressured chip buyers into choosing Intel over rival AMD.

If you recall, Intel was hit by a record EU antitrust fine of $1.45 billion last May for what the EU said was using "strong-arm sales tactics" such as threatening to withdraw price rebates to squeeze out AMD.

"You can see for yourselves the way in which Intel broke the law and deprived millions of European consumers of choice of the type of computer chip they wanted to have in their computers."

Review the story and decide for yourself.