nVidia Press Conference

[Madpistol]

I hate to agree here because I love my PC, but I think the assessment is right. PC's are probably on the way out in favor of smaller, more mobile parts. We've already been though the whole "bigger is better" phase in the US. Now, people are moving back towards much more sleek and efficient parts. Unfortunately, PC's aren't exactly known for efficiency. CPU's, by themselves, can use upwards of 130 watts (before overclocking). Now, we've got Graphics cards that use 300-watts or more. To put in perspective, my Acer laptop has a 65-watt power supply. The current technology on desktops is, in my opinion, sort of like a Hummer: Big, brutal, and not very environmentally friendly.

PC's do win on the customization front though. You'll probably never be able to fully customize a tablet down to the last component like you're able to do with a custom desktop PC.

This is going to become more of an enthusiast market than ever in the next several years. Unfortunately, that means that we may not have the options that we once had.

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by Madpistol

I hate to agree here because I love my PC, but I think the assessment is right. PC's are probably on the way out in favor of smaller, more mobile parts. We've already been though the whole "bigger is better" phase in the US. Now, people are moving back towards much more sleek and efficient parts. Unfortunately, PC's aren't exactly known for efficiency. CPU's, by themselves, can use upwards of 130 watts (before overclocking). Now, we've got Graphics cards that use 300-watts or more. To put in perspective, my Acer laptop has a 65-watt power supply. The current technology on desktops is, in my opinion, sort of like a Hummer: Big, brutal, and not very environmentally friendly.

PC's do win on the customization front though. You'll probably never be able to fully customize a tablet down to the last component like you're able to do with a custom desktop PC.

This is going to become more of an enthusiast market than ever in the next several years. Unfortunately, that means that we may not have the options that we once had.

I have quietly been thinking the same thing myself these last couple of years. Personally I hope it doesn't happen, but i'm sure it will. Can't imagine gaming on a laptop ever unless it has at least a 22" screen. And even then, i'd want bigger.

[Redeemed]

Originally Posted by Muppet

I have quietly been thinking the same thing myself these last couple of years. Personally I hope it doesn't happen, but i'm sure it will. Can't imagine gaming on a laptop ever unless it has at least a 22" screen. And even then, i'd want bigger.

There's always going to be a market for what we do here. But it's gonna' shrink. It'll be far more of an "enthusiast" thing- much more of a hobby than merely common piece of house hold electronics.

It's likely our options will shrink some, and prices may go up. The prices going up is likely what will help the market shrink. For example, if they went up too high, I'd have to ditch this hobby.

[stncttr908]

Right, it may not even be up to companies like NVIDIA at all. What happens when Microsoft makes a total paradigm shift in the way Windows looks, runs, and feels (for example, what if the way we interface with computers changes drastically, what if cloud-based storage really takes off, what if you "lease" processing time on a centralized computer network rather than your own, physical PC?), what then? These are probably questions that will be answered far down the road, but you certainly can't expect the PC as we know it to exist forever. As others have mentioned here, it has pretty much been the same for decades now. All good things end.

[jcrox]

Originally Posted by Redeemed

There's always going to be a market for what we do here. But it's gonna' shrink. It'll be far more of an "enthusiast" thing- much more of a hobby than merely common piece of house hold electronics.

It's likely our options will shrink some, and prices may go up. The prices going up is likely what will help the market shrink. For example, if they went up too high, I'd have to ditch this hobby.

I see the future of the market in exactly the opposite way.

AMD and Intel basically have a 2 company monopoly on PC CPUs. Nvidia wants in badly but from what I understand even if they did purchase a company (if I remember correctly there were rumors of purchasing VIA awhile back) that can legally produce x86 processors the purchase of said company would negate that license to create x86 CPUs. It's a very anti-competitive market in many aspects.

Introduce ARM processors. While an ARM processor alone can't currently compete with an x86 CPU, if a company where to figure out how to harness the power of a GP-GPU in conjunction with an ARM processor now you're talking about a smaller computer with a smaller foot print and an enormous amount of processing power.

AMD didn't purchase ATI because they wanted into the video card market. They wanted the GP-GPU technology.

This would give us a whole new set of options. It may also give us a whole new view on what brute force hacking is as well.....

[Madpistol]

Originally Posted by jcrox

I see the future of the market in exactly the opposite way.

AMD and Intel basically have a 2 company monopoly on PC CPUs. Nvidia wants in badly but from what I understand even if they did purchase a company (if I remember correctly there were rumors of purchasing VIA awhile back) that can legally produce x86 processors the purchase of said company would negate that license to create x86 CPUs. It's a very anti-competitive market in many aspects.

Introduce ARM processors. While an ARM processor alone can't currently compete with an x86 CPU, if a company where to figure out how to harness the power of a GP-GPU in conjunction with an ARM processor now you're talking about a smaller computer with a smaller foot print and an enormous amount of processing power.

AMD didn't purchase ATI because they wanted into the video card market. They wanted the GP-GPU technology.

This would give us a whole new set of options. It may also give us a whole new view on what brute force hacking is as well.....

I think you're right, but consider this. High-end CPU's still only have transistor counts around 700-million. High-end GPU's are now nearing 3 billion transistors. High end GPU's also use more power than CPU's.

There's no doubt that GPU's are more efficient, but I think once they start merging (ala Fusion) we're going to see that small improvement in efficiency disappear. Now the market is going to start moving towards highly parallel code. Therefore, the market in CPU's is going to start to shift towards a lot of less powerful cores as opposed to a few very powerful cores in current CPUs.

And what has a lot of less powerful cores?... a GPU.

[jcrox]

Originally Posted by Madpistol

I think you're right, but consider this. High-end CPU's still only have transistor counts around 700-million. High-end GPU's are now nearing 3 billion transistors. High end GPU's also use more power than CPU's.

There's no doubt that GPU's are more efficient, but I think once they start merging (ala Fusion) we're going to see that small improvement in efficiency disappear. Now the market is going to start moving towards highly parallel code. Therefore, the market in CPU's is going to start to shift towards a lot of less powerful cores as opposed to a few very powerful cores in current CPUs.

And what has a lot of less powerful cores?... a GPU.

Yes, "High End" GPUs use more power than CPUs but... you can still create a lower end GPU that uses less power than a CPU and yet still destroys a CPU when it comes to the specialized functions that it performs. Those functions are very specialized thus the need for something like an ARM processor to handle the rest.