Popular Mechanics has posted a "how-to" guide on putting together a $500 HTPC. They have some good advice.
"NVIDIA's new ION graphics processor is powerful for integrated graphics. Think of it as a supercharger for the PC's visual performance. It excels at handling full 1080p video with 7.1 surround sound and transcodes video up to 10 times faster than an Atom CPU alone. ION can even handle a few games without choking."
They also know that CUDA is important because the GPU is recommended for video processing.
"An HTPC needs a movie converter. TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress (with NVIDIA's CUDA) is fast and straightforward. Just pick a source file, a codec format and then encode."
With its large number of processor cores, the GPU is an ideal processor for the massively parallel nature of video processing.
Intel Business Practices
Court documents in the New York antitrust case against Intel surfaced last week and it did not look so good:
"The document filed with the court contains examples gleaned from internal e-mails showing those companies felt pressure from their own high-volume customers, such as large financial services companies, to introduce AMD-based servers. Those computers provide network services in essential applications.
Yet they didn't, because, as an IBM executive wrote in a 2005 e-mail, "I understand the point about the accounts wanting a full AMD portfolio. The question is, can we afford to accept the wrath of Intel...? It is a very hard question to deal with."
In a Nov. 10, 2005, e-mail also cited in the court document, Michael Dell, founder and chief executive officer of Dell Inc., wrote Intel's Paul Otellini, "We have lost the performance leadership and it's seriously impacting our business in several areas," referring to his company's inability to offer AMD-based computers because of agreements with Intel, which at the time offered no chips with comparable features as AMD’s then-new Opteron line.
Otellini replied, "There is nothing new here. Our product roadmap is what it is. It is improving rapidly daily. Additionally, we are transferring over $1B (billion) per year to Dell for meet comp (sic) efforts. This was judged by your team to be more than sufficient to compensate for the competitive issues."
Last Wednesday Intel continued to defend their brand of funny business, in regards to the New York antitrust case:
"First and foremost, Intel simply disagrees with the New York Attorney General's assertions. The Attorney General's decision to file suit against Intel is just plain wrong," MacKenzie stated in e-mail correspondence.
Finally, last Thursday Intel decided to shell out Dr. Evil money to rival AMD to settle their legal battles.
"Intel Corp. will pay rival Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion after the chip makers on Thursday agreed to end all outstanding legal disputes, closing a long-running battle between the companies."
NVIDIA has some funny business of their own, in the form of cartoons:
"A satirical website has sprung up that has run a series of cartoons lampooning the behavior of the world's largest chip maker — Intel Corp."
The site is simply a parody of events occurring within the semiconductor sector, with particular focus on its largest and most-commented-upon competitor.
NVIDIA ION-Based Samsung N510
Samsung was one of the first ION-based systems on the market. Folks in Europe like it.
"The ION concept works on this from the graphics side, and this is ideal. Netbooks were able to manage internet and office applications anyway. So far they had a problem with acting as a multimedia player. That's over and it really is fun. Due to the 11.6 inch monitor and a fit graphic processor a netbook is no longer a compromise."
NVIDIA ION has redefined the netbook category by removing their limitations.
By combining an NVIDIA ION GPU with an Atom processor, NVIDIA is able to deliver premium PC performance and features in low-cost, small form factor PCs. The netbook Samsung N510 with ION was tested and won the award Top Technology from Germany's PC Games Hardware Magazine in the December 2009 issue.
Jen-Hsun Is A Mac Daddy
While showing off his tablet PC prototype in Dubai, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang sang praises of Apple.
Mr. Huang said that in his home they're "all Apple." According to him "Apple uses the best technology for their [computers]. Apple says to their customers: if you buy a computer from us you can be sure we have selected the best technology inside for you. That is their promise to consumers.
Their promise to consumers isn't we've selected the best technology for you with the exception of what Intel allows us to use. That's not their promise. And that's why Apple uses the best technology where they want whenever they want. And that's why I'm all Apple! At home it's just Macs everywhere. It's NVIDIA's technology in all of them, but I use Macs."
Apple makes good stuff.
NVIDIA’s New Reality (Server) Show
The NVIDIA RealityServer platform is a powerful combination of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and 3D web services software that delivers interactive, photorealistic applications over the web, enabling product designers, architects and consumers to easily visualize 3D scenes with remarkable realism.
ExtremeTech has the scoop on the new Reality Server from NVIDIA in the form of a demo video.
NVIDIA PhysX, DirectCompute and OpenCL
PhysX is the most widely used physics API with support across all platforms; console, PC and even the iPhone. NVIDIA's Developer Relations team works with game developers to add GPU-accelerated PhysX effects into some of the hottest PC games--so, GeForce gamers are going to be in for a real treat.
"PhysX is a simplified way to do physics in the game engines. OpenCL and even Direct Compute are very complicated languages that work mostly on a driver programming level. PhysX is a programming layer that works independent of driver based technologies and allows the game developer to work through the complicated new language with an easy to use interface.
Wall Street Journal has released Walt Mossberg's highly anticipated Fall PC Buying Guide. In it he specifically recommends buying a system with a discrete GPU:
"The new operating systems allow software makers to speed up some tasks by offloading them from the main processor onto the graphics chip. So, if possible, get a discrete graphics processor, which has its own memory. Otherwise, find a potent integrated graphics chip, which shares your main memory."
That's a nice way of saying stay away from Intel integrated graphics for Windows 7 and Snow Leopard and get an optimized PC for GPU computing. A modern PC uses the GPU and the CPU in a co-processing design.
ION, No More Worries
While ION has almost single-handedly redefined the netbook, a few people still expressed some reservations about the product:
"Our big worry about ION has been battery life. Nothing that's gone before has suggested that adding a graphics chip capable of running HD movies and even some games – you can play Call of Duty 4 relatively happily – will do anything other than decimate a netbook's battery. In our tests, though, the N510 ran for over seven hours, with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi active. That's not just good for a netbook, that's incredible. There's no way it should last that long. But it does."
It's nice to over deliver:
"As a flagbearer for ION it confounds our admittedly low expectations. It doesn't just set a new benchmark for netbook performance, it actually delivers on all the pre-release hype. And for that, it gets heartily recommended."
By combining a an NVIDIA ION GPU with an Atom processor, NVIDIA is able to deliver premium PC performance and features in low-cost, small form factor PCs.
Another Intel Anti-Trust Case
A new anti-trust case against Intel surfaced last week, this time in New York. Following the lead of foreign regulators, New York's attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel.
The lawsuit charges that Intel violated state and federal laws by abusing its dominant position in the chip market to keep AMD at bay. But an Intel spokesperson shrugs it off:
"It is the AMD case filed 4.5 years ago. It's the same case the EU brought. There's nothing significant or new here that hasn't been discovered." Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.
As the world’s first interactive ray tracing engine, the NVIDIA OptiX ray tracing engine leverages the massively parallel power of NVIDIA GPUs for maximum performance and scalability. In providing a programmable ray tracing pipeline, the OptiX engine gives developers great flexibility to accelerate their ray tracing applications, bringing previously unseen levels of interactivity to a wide range of uses.
These include auto styling, design visualization and visual effects. It’s also ideal for non-rendering disciplines, such as optical design, acoustical design and collision analysis.
"This(OptiX) opens the door to a new level of interactive realism. Ray tracing's inherent parallelism makes it a perfect fit for GPU computing. The OptiX engine makes it easy for developers to exploit that power to create an exciting new class of applications. It enables critical design tasks — such as examining reflections, refractions and shadow – to be performed now in real-time." - Jeff Brown, NVIDIA’s GM for Professional Solutions
The NVIDIA OptiX ray tracing engine is now available for downloading.
Most Respected Semiconductor Company, Maybe
The Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) announces the nominees for awards to be presented at the GSA Awards Dinner Celebration on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif. NVIDIA was nominated along with Broadcom and Xilinx for Most Respected Public Semiconductor Company achieving $500 million to $10 billion in annual sales.
Three New CUDA Centers Of Excellence
The CUDA Center of Excellence (CCOE) program by NVIDIA recognizes, rewards, and fosters collaboration with universities at the forefront of massively parallel many core computing research. NVIDIA recognizes institutions having demonstrated their commitment to revolutionizing science and engineering research with GPU Computing across a host of science and engineering research projects as CUDA Centers of Excellence. We have expanded the list to include Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University and University of Tennessee.
They join an elite list of five other universities as CUDA Centers of Excellence, including: Harvard University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Utah, in the U.S.; Cambridge University, in the UK; and National Taiwan University, in Taiwan. Additionally, more than 250 other universities around the world teach the CUDA C programming model.
More Awards for NVIDIA Notebook GPUs
When laptops equipped with CULV processors first hit the market, they tended to be simple designs, much like the first netbooks, and focused on size, forsaking function. Now laptop makers are figuring out that a balanced PC designed with a GPU and a CPU doing co-processing is a better path. In that light, the GeForce G210M-based ASUS UL80Vt-A1 has been awarded the PC Magazine Editor's Choice award.
GeForce notebook GPUs offer graphics performance that is second to none, and graphics plus such as PhysX support for in-game physics, CUDA-support for GPU computing applications and downloadable drivers from the NVIDIA Verde driver program.
Win the Ultimate ION Notebook
NVIDIA is giving away 12 HP Mini 311 netbooks. Specs include: 320GB Hard Drive, 3GB Memory, Windows 7 Home Premium, 802.11g with Bluetooth, external Blu-ray player with 3 Blu-ray movies, case, HDMI cable, and $50 credit from Roxio CinemaNow.
The netbook is loaded with GPU computing goodness: Total Media Theater 3 with SimHD plug-in by Arcsoft, MediaShow 5 by Cyberlink, Badaboom by Elemental Technologies and vReveal by MotionDSP.
Get your game on with: The Sims 3 by Electronic Arts, Portal by Valve and Left 4 Dead by Valve.
NVIDIA nForce chipsets have traditionally been full of innovative features - even better than Intel's own chipsets. NVIDIA ION has redefined the netbook category although it has been widely reported that NVIDIA will not be making any new chipsets for the Intel platform until their dispute with Intel is resolved. A lot of innovations on the PC platform come from the chipsets.
Just a few weeks after the news hit, we learn that Intel is postponing USB 3.0 implementation until 2011. With no competition in chipsets, it seems Intel has decided that innovation is not needed for USB any time soon.
With no one to push Intel to innovate, PC enthusiasts are left with Intel chipsets and the features and performance they deliver, or lack there of.
Intel Appears to be Overcompensating
I first noticed it when my Acer Aspire Revo showed up from Newegg. As I eagerly opened the brown shipping box I was greeted by a giant Intel sticker. This thing was huge, measuring a full 3 inches across. Then an office mate got new a HP Mini 311.
Guess what? Same giant sticker. Color me paranoid, but in 15 years I have seen exactly two products with these massive Intel logos stickers placed on as an afterthought to the packaging.
Both of them have been in the last month, and both of them were NVIDIA ION-based products. Coincidence? Perhaps Intel would have you believe that their processor is the key ingredient in these PCs.
ION is hot for the holidays. DigitalTrends calls it out by name.
"Netbook computers made a huge splash last year with unbelievably low price tags, but this year, the big news will be all the newfound features and power. NVIDIA sops up a majority of the credit with its new ION graphics processor, which gives the anemic Atom processor a major shot in the arm.
Unlike last-generation notebook systems, which couldn’t play any games from the last decade and choked on high-quality Hulu videos, Ion-equipped netbooks will play relatively demanding computer games and even full 1080p HD video. Screens have also stretched from 10 inches all the way up to 12, and a newfound focus on industrial design has produced some netbooks that are downright pretty."
They name the Lenovo S12, Samsung N510 and HP Mini 311 100R as top picks.
17. HP Mini 311-1000NR 22. Microsoft Zune HD 32. Alienware M15x 67. Sony PlayStation 3 80. Dell Studio One 19
New Entry-level Mobile GPU Raises the Bar
Consumers who enjoy the GeForce 9400M, will want to check out the GeForce G210M.
"...and while the GeForce 9400M G integrated graphics are better than any other current IGP, the G210M appears to be at least 50% faster. When you don't need graphics performance, you can also shut off the G210M and use the GMA 4500MHD. It's a design that simply works."
GeForce GPUs offer graphics performance that is second to none, and "Graphics Plus" features including:
NVIDIA Verde downloadable drivers for notebooks
CUDA-support to GPU computing applications
PhysX support, for in-game physics
Come On Feel the Noize
Rudy Sarzo of Quiet Riot and Ozzy fame is a fan of CUDA and had a session at GTC talking about CUDA and audio processing. Rudy's posted the latest installment of "Audio Video Tech Blog" on how he created the music video for "Vicious Circle" on a shoestring budget in 2001 and how contrasts it with today's GPU computing technology.
"The whole creative process of editing and choosing the preferred B-Roll footage took me about four hours but in contrast the rendering process to a 720x480 AVI took me over two hours. Just to show how far technology has advanced over the years, I can now render that same video with my NVIDIA Quadro video card in 6 minutes or less by taking advantage of NVIDIA's CUDA GPU driver."
GPU Computing is the use of the massively parallel architecture of the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a computational engine using high level languages and APIs. It has changed video processing for the better. From the user's perspective, the application just runs faster because it is using the high-performance of the GPU to boost performance.
CUDA Shows DirectCompute The Way
The Taranfx blog has a story about DirectX 11 and touches on CUDA as a precursor for DirectCompute.
"NVIDIA's CUDA marked an evolution. Microsoft wasn't about to let the GPGPU market get away and now has its own language for using the GPU. The model they chose, like OpenCL, appears to be quite similar to CUDA, confirming the clarity of NVIDIA's vision.
The advantage over the NVIDIA solution lies in portability—a Compute Shader will work on an NVIDIA or ATI GPU and on the future Larrabee, plus feature better integration with Direct3D, even if CUDA does already have a certain amount of support."
NVIDIA has demonstrated their support for DirectCompute by being the first to release support for DirectCompute in their GPUs. They support open standards, plus standards that allow NVIDIA to offer new innovations to customers well in advance of industry standards, such as CUDA C. Their goal is to lead the industry in new amazing directions and create value for their customers.
Fastest. Notebook. Ever.
Remember all the hub-bub that transpired when NVIDIA sent out some benchmarks they ran in house and proclaimed the GeForce GTX 280M SLI-based Alienware M17x notebook was the fastest notebook on the planet? Some sites called them "dodgy." Well, PC Gamer is the latest media outlet to put it to the test.
"Oh, and it is the fastest laptop in the universe. Well, at least the fastest I've ever tested, and by a wide margin.” - PC Gamer - Holiday Issue 2009 (print)
They gave the system another Editor's Choice award. That makes about 2 dozen, most with quotes that say it is the fastest ever.
GPU Leadership
HPCwire's Micheal Feldman does a good job for connecting the dots one three announcements from NVIDA:
A modern PC should have two processors: a graphics processor (GPU) and a central processer (CPU). NVIDIA see's the future as co-processing.
Jen-Hsun Interviews
Two interviews with NVIDA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang hit this week. First in X-bit Labs:
"In the future, software is the most important thing; anyone can make chips, it is really expensive, but anyone can do it. The hard part is to inspire people to create amazing things. We have software, systems, architecture, tools, compilers, and languages, whatever it takes..,"
So when we invented CUDA instantaneously he understood how he can help people with CUDA, it took him almost one year to convince the company to use CUDA, he was our best sales men, remember there are millions and millions of gamers out there and they are smart, so you want the gamers from your side."
Quadro Makes a Difference
NVIDIA had a pair of Quadro related announcements last week week. NVIDIA announced that Hess Corp., a leading global independent energy company, is using HP Z800 workstations outfitted with NVIDIA Quadro GPUs and NVIDIA SLI Multi-OS technology to investigate reducing IT costs while increasing productivity for geosciences professionals.
Open Inventor 8.1 by VSG integrates the CompleX engine, enabling advanced 3D applications to fully scale across the multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) powering NVIDIA Quadro Plex visual computing systems. This technology turns a single workstation into a visual supercomputer, providing engineers and scientists an immersive, ultra-high resolution experience capable of handling extremely large visual scenes, such as those used in seismic interpretation and other oil & gas-related research.
