Exclusive: NVIDIA Talks About GT300, 40nm, Ion and Tegra

During this year’s Computex 2009 show, NVIDIA took the stage with a number of new Ion- and Tegra-based products, showcased by some of the company’s partners. Despite rumors prior to the debut of the computer show in Taiwan, the Santa Clara, California-based graphics maker didn’t reveal any details regarding its much-anticipated 40nm-based graphics processing units. However, the launch of the new Ion-based PCs, as well as the highly anticipated Tegra devices, confirmed NVIDIA’s business orientation, becoming a company that is involved in more than just graphics.
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While we weren’t able to make it to Computex ourselves, we looked for the chance to find out more about what the graphics maker is preparing in the near future, as well as the company’s opinion on the current computer industry. The opportunity was just around the corner, as NVIDIA was actively promoting its latest technologies around the world, holding press events to demonstrate some of the things that were on display at Computex. We took this opportunity and sat down for a one-on-one with the company’s Igor Stanek, Product PR Manager for our region. We wanted to go through some of the most important aspects of the manufacturer’s business, taking into consideration the latest rumors that surfaced on the Internet.

Mr. Igor Stanek was kind enough to provide us with a perspective on what NVIDIA is focusing on, as well as on what to expect from the future line of ARM-based Tegra devices. Unfortunately, we could not find anything about the much-rumored next-generation GPU architecture, allegedly called GT300, whose existence is still a mystery. However, we do have some useful insights into what is to come from NVIDIA. Now, without further ado, we will let you go through the interview itself.

NVIDIA is evolving from a company that was mainly focused on delivering graphics cards for computer enthusiasts and supporting the latest games in the industry to one that is set on providing solutions that could power a complete computer system. What can you tell us about that?

I.S: GPUs are used by gamers around the world to play the latest games at their best. GPUs though have become a power warehouse, thanks to their parallel architecture. The industry and the scientists have now realized that they can use this incredible parallel computing architecture to do other things than games. CPUs are no longer increasing in clock speed yet consumers are demanding more from their PCs today than ever before. In order to provide the much needed performance to deliver on these consumer expectations, the only path available is to go multi-core or parallel – i.e., add more cores and split demanding workloads across them. Due to the very nature of computer graphics, GPUs excel at doing many things at once and are ideally suited to this new heterogeneous computing environment. If you look at what Microsoft and Apple are working on with their new OSes you understand how GPUs are rapidly becoming the most desired chip inside the PC; the upcoming Windows 7 and Snow Leopard use GPU to full extent.

Scientists are using it to accelerate calculation by a factor they were never able to achieve before with CPUs. We consider ourselves a company that provides specific solutions to the resolution of complex problems; whether they are common or most complex ones in medical, astrophysics and more. We develop tailored solutions in different fields; one example is our Quadro business where we develop products that solve specific problems like SDI capture, multi display financial visualization. Dedicated 1U GPU racks, etc.

After seeing all those new Tegra-based and ARM-based devices at Computex this year, can you project a future where an ARM-based device can provide users with everyday computing?

I.S: It all depends on your definition of everyday computing. When you use a Tegra chip your everyday computing is not limited to typing email and surf the web; you expect things that you do on your regular PC but in a smaller footprint. These devices deliver desktop-class Internet browsing with Flash video and animation acceleration and high-definition video playback, all with cell phone-class power management – making days of HD mobile Internet experiences a reality.

Consumers are looking for an always-connected device for social media applications such as Facebook and YouTube, as well as great multimedia performance for recording and watching HD movies and videos on the go. Tegra includes an entire computer-on-a-chip, including an ARM 11 core processor, so to answer your question, yes Tegra, which includes an ARM process, is a fully capable and modern device that fits your communications and entertainment device in your pocket.

Putting that into perspective, can we think about a future without x86?

I.S: I don’t think anybody is saying x86 is out of the picture, but CPUs are losing their breath and GPUs becoming much more important. It’s very simple. Just check how much time you need for transcoding of video on ION and how powerful CPU you need to match ION speed. I think that future is in well balanced PC with CPU and GPU living in harmony. CPU will have more control tasks in operating system and GPU will be focused for most of visual computing staff including some heavy computational tasks. This is the architecture of the future. I believe that PC with 1000 USD CPU and Intel integrated graphics card is already history.

Tegra has been one of the main highlights at Computex this year. How important is Tegra for your future product lineup?

I.S: Tegra is a strategic line of products for NVIDIA. The world is going mobile and expectations are for low power always on, always connected and powerful devices that can do HD is growing rapidly.

Should we expect more Tegra devices to become available in the near future?

I.S: The response from our customers is phenomenal. Tegra is strategic to us and we have a great roadmap that we are sharing with our ecosystem, as I said our partners are extremely satisfied with performance, features and especially the low power used by these devices. We cannot announce products on behalf of our customers, but there are many coming

Do you think Microsoft will play a significant role in the adoption of Tegra?

I.S: Microsoft Windows Embedded CE is a great operating system and we support it with our Tegra devices. We do also provide support for Google Android.

Can you tell us something about the alleged GT300 that has been rumored in the media recently?

I.S: I am not aware of that code name.

What can you tell us about your next-generation chips, transitioning from 55nm to 40nm?

I.S: We don’t comment about unannounced products.

There were reports about TSMC’s problems with their 40nm manufacturing node. What can you tell us about that?

I.S: That is a question you should ask TSMC. We have new mobile parts being announced shortly that will be using 40nm process. It’s not all about process though; it’s also about efficiency of the architecture. 40nm process coupled with this efficient architecture works well for Notebooks, so we are launching this first on notebook.

During Computex AMD took the opportunity to showcase the world’s first 40nm DirectX 11 GPU, revealing a couple of videos with their next-generation solutions. How do you comment on that?

I.S: Simply, that we are thrilled about what we are working on. Stay tuned!

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BY Traian Teglet, Technology News Editor
Source：Softpedia

© 2001 - 2009 Softpedia. All rights reserved.

Rumors of NVIDIA's Next GPU

NVIDIA's next-generation GPU design, the G300, may turn out to be the biggest architectural leap the graphics chip maker has ever attempted. If the early rumors are true, NVIDIA has decided move the architecture a step closer to the CPU and make GPU computing even more compelling for HPC.
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Publicly, the company has been tight-lipped on what the upcoming architecture will look like, but that doesn't prevent GPU-obsessed journalists from speculating. Some of this speculation may be based on wishful thinking, but it looks like there may be a few loose-lipped NVIDIANs out there giving us a reasonably accurate peek at the silicon. It's also likely that sources at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), NVIDIA's GPU manufacturing partner, are also feeding the rumor mill.

By the way, the G300 is often referred to as the GT300, but the latter refers only to the high-end Tesla version of the architecture, the one the supercomputing crowd would be most interested in. (Hat tip to Rick Hodgin at geek.com for clearing that up.) For our purposes, I'll just refer to it as the GT300 since HPC users are going to be mostly interested in the top-of-the-line parts anyway.

What follows is speculation heaped on top of speculation, so be warned that none of this may be true. But it makes for fun reading.

Back in April, Theo Valich in Bright Side of News reported that the new GT300 is going to have a lot more power and flexibility than the current crop of GPUs. Writes Valich:

GT300 isn't the architecture that was envisioned by nVidia's Chief Architect, former Stanford professor Bill Dally, but this architecture will give you a pretty good idea why Bill told Intel to take a hike when the larger chip giant from Santa Clara offered him a job on the Larrabee project.

According to Valich's sources, the GT300 will offer up to 512 cores, up from 240 cores in NVIDIA's current high-end GPU. Since the new chips will be on the 40nm process node, NVIDIA could also crank up the clock. The current Tesla GPUs are running at 1.3-1.4 GHz and deliver about 1 teraflop, single precision, and less than 100 gigaflops, double precision. Valich speculates that a 2 GHz clock could up that to 3 teraflops of single precision performance, and, because of other architectural changes, double precision performance would get an even larger boost.

In a later post Valich writes that the upcoming GPU will sport a 512-bit interface connected to GDDR5 memory. If true he says, "we are looking at memory bandwidth of 256GB/s per single GPU."

More importantly though, NVIDIA is said to be moving from the traditional SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) GPU computing model to MIMD (multiple instruction, multiple data) or at least MIMD-like. As the name suggests, MIMD means you can run different instruction streams on different processing units in parallel. It offers a much more flexible way of doing all sorts of vector computing, and is a standard way to do technical programming on SMP machines and clusters. Presumably CUDA will incorporate MIMD extensions to support the new hardware. MIMD also happens to be architecture supported by Intel's upcoming Larrabee chip.

In fact, both the GT300 and Larrabee may end up dropping into the market at the same time -- sometime in the first half of 2010. But, as I've reported before, Intel has said it is not targeting the HPC market with Larrabee, at least not for next year. NVIDIA, on the other hand, will almost certainly be pushing GT300 silicon into its HPC Tesla products as soon as possible.

There was some speculation that the GT300 would hit the streets this year, but reports of trouble with TSMC's 40nm manufacturing technology may have slowed NVIDIA's plans. Also keep in mind that the new architecture has to drag along a growing list of programming standards -- CUDA, DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.1 and OpenCL -- so getting the new chips to satisfy everyone is no small feat.

If the speculation about the GT300 is basically true, NVIDIA will significantly expand its commitment to the GPU computing market. The Inquirer's NVIDIA curmudgeon, Charlie Demerjian, thinks too much so. He writes:

Rather than go lean and mean for GT300, possibly with a multi-die strategy like ATI, Nvidia is going for bigger and less areally efficient. They are giving up GPU performance to chase a market that doesn't exist, but was a nice fantasy three years ago.

Demerjian's rant on the GT300 is slanted toward his focus on traditional graphics apps and his obvious antipathy toward NVIDIA, but the point he makes about NVIDIA's devotion to GPU computing is valid enough.

Let's face it, if Intel fails to connect with Larrabee, the company will just write it off and keep selling its gazillion other flavors of x86. AMD has a more conservative GPU computing strategy, so it has less to lose if the market fizzles. NVIDIA is the one that has really stuck its neck out. The GT300 just sticks it out a little further.

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BY HPC wire staff
Source：HPC wire

Copyright © 1994-2009 Tabor Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

NVIDIA ION Linux Performance

Earlier this year NVIDIA introduced the ION, which is their new system platform that pairs a GeForce 9400M GPU with an Intel Atom processor to make it an appealing platform for those desiring a netbook or nettop computer but are interested in a higher level of graphics performance than what is currently possible with Intel's integrated graphics. Products using the NVIDIA ION have been slow to emerge, but in recent weeks, we have begun seeing more devices around, including those from smaller manufacturers. One company that is now selling an ION-powered nettop is ZaReason, which is a Linux-focused hardware company. In this article we have a whole arsenal of Linux-based tests showing off the NVIDIA graphics performance with the Intel Atom processor under Linux.
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NVIDIA's ION platform is designed to provide superior graphics performance and quality than what is available with the Intel 945 graphics that up to this point were all that was available in Atom-based products. NVIDIA reports that the ION platform is capable of full 1080p HD video playback with 7.1 surround sound, can take advantage of their CUDA technology, and is capable of playing many more recent games than what is supported with the 945 IGP. Right now, the ION platform just supports the current selection of Intel Atom processors, but NVIDIA is developing an ION solution for use with VIA Nano processors too.

The NVIDIA ION graphics processor currently has a 450MHz core clock with an 1100MHz shader clock. Its texture fill rate is 3.6 Billion per second, supports up to 16x anti-aliasing, has 300MHz RAMDACs, supports 128-bit High Dynamic range precision, is dual-link DVI supported with resolutions up to 2560 x 1600, and supports NVIDIA PureVideo HD. HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and VGA connections.

The ZaReason system we have our hands on is called the Ion Breeze 3770 and was just released a few days ago. We will have our full review on the ZaReason Ion Breeze 3770 in the near future, but this ION-based nettop uses the Intel Atom 230 processor and depends upon a Zotac ION motherboard internally. Our review unit was configured with 3GB of RAM, a 1TB Seagate ST31000333AS hard drive, and was allocated with 512MB of memory for its GeForce 9400M.

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BY Michael Larabel
Source：Phoronix

Copyright © 2004 - 2009 by Phoronix Media.

Nvidia CEO on x86 Project: "Haven't Found It Yet"

Is Nvidia working on a CPU?
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With both Intel and AMD working towards integrating GPU and CPU together, Nvidia is left standing on its own with its graphics specialty. This lead to rumors that Nvidia was looking to get into the x86 processor business and going head to head with its already-big competitors.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told the New York Times that if such a project was going on at his company, he hasn’t found it yet.

“If we have such a product, I haven’t found it yet,” Mr. Huang said. “It’s just not important right now.”

Obviously even if there was work on an x86 CPU at Nvidia (and the CEO managed to find it), Huang still wouldn’t be one to reveal the news in a single interview.

If Nvidia isn’t working on a special x86 project in house, it could partner with Via Technologies, which does hold an x86 license from Intel – a key piece to the puzzle. Nvidia is rumored to be investing heavily into Via – something also denied by Huang. At any rate, we’ll know for sure at Via’s investor meeting later this month.

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BY Marcus Yam
Source：Tom's Hardware US

Tom's Hardware is part of Bestofmedia Network – Copyright ©2009 Bestofmedia. All Rights Reserved.

Nvidia ION to get 40nm refresh by year’s end

The Nvidia ION platform is currently based on the 55nm manufacturing process. However, by the end of the year, Nvidia looks to move the GPU part to 40nm according to Fudzilla. This will, of course, put it in the same timeline as Intel’s next-gen Atom CPU, Pineview.
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As things stand we don’t know what speeds the new Pineview processor will run at, although several rumours point to a dual-core chip which could make a big difference in netbook performance. The ION 2 is expected to release in the fourth quarter of this year, in –line with the rumoured dual core launch of Pineview and ahead of the single core Pineview launch in Q1 2010.

The benefits of ION 2 should be faster performance and a greater number of shaders with the same (or lower) power efficiency. Whilst Intel is moving from a three-chip to two-chip platform with Pine Trail, it is widely expected to support the ION/ION2 platform for future netbooks.

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BY Netbook Choice Staff
Source：Netbook Choice

Copyright © 2009 Netbook Choice.

NVIDIA Tegra: HD video playback under 1Watt

NVIDIA is taking it to Intel, with an Atom-smashing CPU for smartphones and netbooks that sips less than 1W power.
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In what is probably the most exciting announcement at Computex so far, Nvidia unveiled its new Tegra platform which promises powerful mobile computing while using under 1W of power.

It caught many people of guard. Nvidia has been talking about Tegra for some time, but has claimed that it’s something that will only be used in things like Point Of Sale devices – almost certainly to throw (fierce rival) Intel off the scent. There were no clues as to its announcement with Huang giving a long-winded preamble in which saw him arrogantly say that the day’s announcement was “unlike any announcement before at Computex” and that Nvidia had declared itself a “visual computing” company, that it was the “best visual computing company in the world” and that it was “the only visual computing company in the world”.

However, Huang then redeemed himself by holding up the guts of a Tegra device showing it to be a PCB (printed circuit board) that was barely the size of a packet of gum. With glee, he played back his Intel rival’s speech which goaded Nvidia by saying that adding a GPU to a mobile device wouldn’t allow playback of HD media. But in the demonstration that followed, Nvidia showed that it could... and with aplomb.

Tegra is an ARM-based 8-core processor where each core does a different task. When the other cores aren’t required they are put to sleep and only awakened when absolutely required. Most tasks require under 1W of power. Conversely, Intel’s Ultra Low Voltage processors use around 15W to achieve far less performance.

The eight cores are:

• ARM 11
• ARM 7
• GPU
• 2D Engine
• HD Video Encoder
• HD Video Decoder
• Audio
• Imaging

Nvidia backed up the performance claims by playing the Full HD trailer to Star Trek using a Tegra device with no stuttering whatsoever - the notion of plugging your Tegra-based phone into your HD TV is salivating. Tegra also smoothly navigated through Flash Earth which is another task that netbooks simply can’t do.

Initial figures showed that battery-based Tegra devices could playback music for 25 days as opposed to 5 hours on those with an Atom chip. HD Video playback would go on for 10 hours as opposed to 3 hours and old games like Quake could hit a playable 46fps on Tegra as opposed to 17fps on Atom.

While it will be some months before devices appear, working samples of netbooks and tablets were displayed from some OEM partners. Two unnamed phone carriers have reportedly picked up two products already, however, on a world map of partners, Australia was left blank.

We’ll be fascinated to see if Nvidia’s claims stand up. The company has promised to smash the power and efficiency of Intel’s Atom and it looks to have done so in one fell swoop.

When we asked Intel to comment, a spokesperson dismissed the technology and said Intel could make it far more efficient with better software support. However, they acknowledged that they weren’t anywhere near hitting the market with a similar performer.

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BY Nick Ross
Source：apc

© 1997-2009 ninemsn Pty Ltd - All rights reserved.

NVIDIA's Tegra takes on Intel in the MID/PMP market

It's not quite clear that the MID has a future, but on the off chance that it does, Intel and NVIDIA are going to fight over it. And NVIDIA may well win.
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When the Tegra line was launched a year ago at COMPUTEX, NVIDIA pitched it as being aimed at the mobile internet device (MID) market, and the idea seemed to be that NVIDIA could grow it up into netbooks and down into smartphones. Then at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, the graphics giant renewed its push into MIDs with the announcement of a Tegra-based $99 hardware platform, which, at the time of the announcement, had scored some design wins with Asian ODMs.

At this year's COMPUTEX, NVIDIA is banging the MID drum yet again, and is showing off the fruits of those earlier design wins in the form of over 20 Tegra-based mobile devices that range in form factor from smaller MIDs to netbooks. I'll tackle the issue of Tegra in netbooks in a separate post, but as far as the Tegra-based MID goes, this is probably NVIDIA's fight to lose.

One form factor, two rationales, two acronyms, two markets

Intel's case for the x86-based MID/Ultramobile PC (UMPC) form factor is built around two potential usage scenarios, one for enterprise and one for consumers. The enterprise scenario is what I'll call the "legacy Windows app in your pocket" scenario, and the idea behind it is that there are all of these special-purpose enterprise Windows applications that companies would like to deploy away from the desktop, but without having to buy anyone a laptop just to run a single app. An example here would be some custom in-house Windows app that a FedEx worker might use to track inventory as he wanders around a warehouse, or a data collection app written in Access that a franchise manager would use in the course of an on-site audit of a retail location.

So in this first use case, you don't need to run Windows on the go—you just need to run one specific Windows app on the go, hence the idea of purchasing a cheap UMPC and turning it into a portable, single-purpose widget that lets you deploy this one Windows app across an entire mobile workforce at a very low cost. (For such applications, Intel prefers the term UMPC to MID, though the hardware is basically the same.)

Intel's second, consumer-focused usage scenario is centered around Linux and is aimed at wireless carriers. The idea here is that a wireless company in Europe or Asia (they're not aiming at the US market with this yet) will offer an (x86-based) entertainment and connectivity device that runs a customized, carrier-branded Linux distro and connects to the wireless network. Customers can buy these to surf the Web, download music, and play videos, and they essentially function like giant cell phones. Both Intel and NVIDIA agree on calling this second, consumer-focused device a "MID."

(Incidentally, what both of these scenarios have in common is that they envision the MID/UMPC as an application-specific device, and not as a general-purpose computing platform that can provide a scaled down version of a desktop experience.)

Tegra isn't going to hurt the enterprise usage scenarios—the tanking economy has probably already done that one in, since nobody has room in their IT budget for an experiment like that. But I can't imagine that Tegra will not blow a big, fat hole in the second, consumer-focused scenario. Tegra is bound to be a better fit in every conceivable way—performance, battery life, features—for a wireless, Linux-based MID/portable media player (PMP) than anything x86-based. This will be even more true once Adobe is done porting Flash and AIR to ARM (more on this in the next article).

Vendors like Compal, who now are making MIDs and netbooks based on both Atom and Tegra, will figure out shortly that you get more media playback performance per watt from an ARM product like Tegra than you do from anything Intel is selling, and because it's running a customized Linux distro anyway the carriers won't care that it can't run Windows.

It's also the case that there is a huge ecosystem of ARM-based media SoCs out there to choose from, so if they don't like Tegra they can pick something else. Given that reality, why would they hitch their wagon to x86, where Intel is the only vendor with a SoC part?

It looks likely that in the long-run, the Windows-based netbook is the only place where mobile x86 is truly compelling, at least until Intel gets close enough to performance/watt parity with ARM offerings that it can win on price.

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BY Jon Stokes
Source：ars technica

Ars Technica © 2009 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved.

AMD previews first DX11 GPU, Nvidia focuses on mobile

AMD has many challenges, but lately its ATI graphics business has been on a roll. Now the company is trying to capitalize on the momentum. At Computex, AMD demonstrated the first GPU to support DirectX 11, Microsoft’s next-generation graphics API (AMD’s DX11 press release).
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Microsoft first demonstrated DX11 at PDC2008 and WinHEC2008 late last year, and the API Windows Vista and Windows 7 could be release as early as July. AMD’s new GPU will support major DX11 features such as tessellation, a technique for improving the quality of games, and the compute shader, which is Microsoft’s approach to using the GPU to accelerate applications in much the same manner as Nvidia’s CUDA and AMD’s Stream.

Though they didn’t give any details, AMD said graphics cards based on the new GPU will be available by the end of 2009. This is significant because Nvidia isn’t expected to have DX11-compatible GPUs until well into 2010.

That’s not to say that Nvidia hasn’t been busy at the show. Its Ion platform, which combines Intel’s Atom with a more powerful GeForce 9400M GPU received a Best of Computex award. I recently wrote a post on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12, which is the first major netbook to use Ion. At the show, Nvidia announced 20 additions products that will use it including nettops, all-in-one desktops, notebooks and motherboards (Nvidia Ion press release). Acer, Asus and MSI all plan to release nettops based on Ion, according to Nvidia, but the continued lack of notebooks or netbooks from major OEMs on this list is conspicuous. Similarly, Nvidia continues to demonstrate prototype mobile devices based on its Tegra chipset here at Computex, but far as I can tell, there’s no news on major design wins.

Nvidia did announce that it was working with Adobe–as part of Adobe’s Open Screen Project–to support GPU acceleration of video and graphics in the Flash Player on mobile devices that use Nvidia GPUs including Tegra. This could be a nice advantage for Tegra-based devices, but it may take some time to implement. Finally, back in the U.S. at the E3 gaming show, Nvidia and Alienware announced a 17-inch gaming laptop, the M17x, with three GPUs: two GeForce GTX 280M high-end GPUs and a GeForce 9400M. The SLI configuration supports a hybrid mode–9400M only–to save battery life when not gaming.

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BY John Morris
Source：ZDNet

John Morris is a former executive editor at CNET Networks and senior editor at PC Magazine. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

英特尔刁难PC厂商以遏制Nvidia离子平台

为遏制PC厂商支持Nvidia Ion平台，英特尔已决定通过降低优惠折扣来打击使用Ion平台的PC厂商。
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据悉，除了华硕、微星、富士康、和硕(Pegatron)和联想外，惠普和戴尔也将加入到Nvidia Ion阵营，并计划于今年第三季度推出采用Ion平台的上网本和一体机。

英特尔当然不会坐视不理，有消息称，对于正考虑使用Ion平台的PC厂商，英特尔已开始调低他们的价格优惠折扣。而且，英特尔将严格执行水货流出规范，希望遏制Ion平台迅速壮大。

周一，Nvidia CEO黄仁勋(Jen-Hsun Huang)刚刚炮轰英特尔，称与英特尔移动处理器相比，Nvidia Ion显卡+Atom处理器组合成本更低，性能更强大。

黄仁勋称，Nvidia Ion显卡+Atom处理器的成本只有75美元，而英特尔酷睿2单核SU3500处理器和集成显卡芯片组的成本超过100美元。

除了成本低外，在3D显示基准和自动解码视频方面，基于Atom和Ion组合的计算机性能要高于基于英特尔移动处理器的计算机。

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文章出处：赛迪网
作者：友亚

Nvidia Touts Tegra Platform for High-Definition MIDs

Nvidia says its Tegra platform is ready for prime time...and partners unveiled 12 Tegra-powered mobile Internet netbooks and tablets.
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Graphics developer Nvidia is looking to rachet up competition with Intel in the mobile computing and media market, and today at Computex unveiled a 12 new high-definition-capable netbooks and tablets based on its Tegra system-on-a-chip platform. With these devices, Nvidia is hoping to appropriate the term MID—for Mobile Internet Device—and turn it into something larger—and more media-friendly—than the too-big-to-be-a-smartphone, too-small-to-be-useful devices that spawned the acronym a few years ago. As one might expect from a graphics developer, Nvidia's Tegra is designed to give high-powered graphic performance—including high definition video capability and hardware acceleration for Adobe Flas content—along with low-power operation designed to keep battery-dependent devices running for hours on end.

"The mobile computing revolution has arrived," said Nvidia's mobile business general manager Michael Rayfield, in a statement. "These new Tegra-based products combine excellent Internet and media capabilities, always-on operation, and wireless connectivity for the un-tethered Internet experience consumers have been craving."

Nvidia's Tegra platform combines a CPU, HD video processor, and a low-power Nvidia GPU, and the company claims they achieve up to five times the power efficiency of existing products,. In fact, Nvidia says Tegra systems can play music for up to 25 days or push 1080p video for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge—and if saving power isn't your worry, the systems can play games at up to 46 frames per second. The systems will also be able to support Wi-Fi, 3G, and WiMax networking in order to delivery a truly mobile media experience.

One example of a Tegra-powered device is the Mobinnova élan, a netbook weighing les than two pounds with an 8.9-inch display, Wi-Fi and 3G networking, integrated Webcam, fanless operation, and 720p video support. Mobinnova is also showing its T8 tablet at Computex, which features a 10.1-inch touchscreen, HDMI and VGA video output, an integrated GPS. Although the companies note the systems can view Microsoft Office and Adobe documents, don't expect these systems to be running any flavor of Windows—at least not right out of the gate.

Neither Nvidia or its partners have announced when they expect Tegra-based systems to begin hitting consumer markets, but its a good bet at least some of the equipment makers want these products in retailers' hands before the end-of-year holiday buying season commences.

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BY Geoff Duncan
Source：DIGITAL TRENDS

Copyright © 2009 Digital Trends - All rights reserved.

Nvidia 40nm mobiles are DirectX 10.1

Nvidia is preparing to launch a new 40nm mobile generation and we hear that they might have a lot of design wins with this generation. Sources believe that ATI didn’t manage to deliver 40nm chips on time and that is why Nvidia won so many design wins.
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If you remember RV740 in mobile variation 40nm was out in March at Cebit, but so far we haven’t seen a single notebook shipping with it.

Nvidia’s 40nm notebook stuff is DirectX 10.1 and you can expect very good performance per watt, something that is very important for notebook users. Many Calpella notebooks will jump for Nvidia’s 40nm as Calpella has to have discrete graphics to work as its P55 mobile chipset doesn’t have any integrated graphics.

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BY Fuad Abazovic
Source：Fudzilla

Copyright Fudzilla 2007-2009, All rights reserved.

Nvidia Netbooks: Windows now, Android later

Nvidia has its own grand scheme for Netbooks, the tiny laptops that have gained wide acceptance running on software and hardware from Microsoft and Intel, respectively.
##CONTINUE##
At the giant Computex conference starting Tuesday in Taiwan, Nvidia will be showing hardware running on its Tegra processor and Windows CE, the version of Windows used most prominently to date in business-use handheld computers. And, down the road, Nvidia has high hopes for devices based on Google's Android.

Tegra is a system-on-a-chip that integrates a processor based on a design from U.K.-based ARM and Nvidia's GeForce graphics silicon, among other functions. The goal is to bring robust PC-like graphics to small devices such as Netbooks and handheld devices--the latter also referred to as mobile Internet devices.

In a break from Computex tradition, Nvidia will have phone companies in tow. "We're bringing the carriers in. I've got 100 people showing up from carriers at Computex," Michael Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile business unit, said in a phone interview Friday.

Tegra will be shown at the trade show in devices that manufacturers "are about ready to release into production," Rayfield said.

"The Internet is all about (Adobe) flash and HD (high-definition) now so we've built a platform that can do that," he said. "There are two operating systems we support. Microsoft Windows CE and, as it becomes more interesting for large screens, (Google) Android," Rayfield said.

"We do Android for smartphones and we're working to do hardware acceleration on Android as it goes to larger displays," Rayfield said. In February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nvidia announced that it is working with Google and the Open Handset Alliance to get its Tegra processor into phones based on Google's Android operating system.

Android will likely appear commercially in larger devices, such as Netbooks, by the middle of next year, Rayfield said. "Android, as it stands now, does not do hardware acceleration," he said, referring to graphics-based acceleration of video and other multimedia applications. "We've already got 720p acceleration on Android internally," he said. 720p is a lower-resolution standard for high-definition video.

Rayfield continued. "Android has got a roar ahead of it but I think it's three of four quarters from a large-screen device. And the market wants something interesting before that."

And what about the popular Netbooks running on Intel's Atom processor and Microsoft Windows XP (and later Windows 7)? Nvidia already has a platform for that called Ion that uses its 9400M graphics silicon made popular in Apple MacBooks.

So, for its tiny Tegra chip, Windows CE is the most viable operating system before Android arrives, according to Rayfield.

Unlike Netbooks and mobile Internet devices based on Windows and Intel processors, Nvidia's Tegra chip will not appear--at least not initially--in devices from PC makers like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, or Acer but from telecommunications companies, according to Rayfield.

"I believe these devices will be delivered by the (telecommunications) carriers," he said. And what do these kinds of customers want? "What they want to do is IM (instant messaging), they want to do lightweight productivity, they want to watch video, and they want to do it for days. And we will enable it."

Nvidia's Tegra-based circuit board integrates all the functionality needed for a Netbook or other small device

(Credit: Nvidia)

Carriers will decide what software the devices will have. "What will happen is that carriers will decide: I want Skype, I want YouTube, I want Firefox, I want this mail client," he said.

Rayfield continued. "The ODMs (original design manufacturers) will sell directly to the carriers. The OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are getting cut out of the deal. The carriers want to brand it themselves. They would prefer not to show a large OEM (e.g., PC maker) name, they would prefer to show T-Mobile or Vodafone or whoever the carrier might be," he said.

Large name-brand device markers will follow, however. "The OEMs will be fast followers. Once this thing gets big, a couple of million devices shipped, they'll go to the ODMs and they'll say, hey, let me do this."

And the price? "ODMs are building devices they'll sell for $99, they're Wi-Fi-based devices, they've that got WVGA displays. As you get to larger displays and larger displays and larger keyboards, it ranges between $100 and $200," Rayfield said. WVGA displays are typically the resolution (800x480) that is necessary to show most Web sites in full page-width.

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BY Brooke Crothers
Source：cnet

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive Inc.. All rights reserved.

Nvidia Tegra netbooks to debut with Windows CE

Nvidia will be showing off the first netbooks that run on the Tegra platform at the Computex show, which kicks off on Tuesday in Taiwan. The Tegra platform is different to ION in that it pairs an ARM-based processor with an Nvidia GeForce GPU (ION pairs an Intel Atom CPU with the Nvidia 9400M graphics).
##CONTINUE##
The lack of an x86 processor, means that Windows XP/Windows 7 is not an option. Instead, these netbooks will be running the Windows CE operating system. Nvidia says that at some point down the road, it hopes to use Google Android instead.

“The Internet is all about (Adobe) flash and HD (high-definition) now so we’ve built a platform that can do that,” Michael Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia’s mobile business unit told Cnet. “There are two operating systems we support. Microsoft Windows CE and, as it becomes more interesting for large screens, (Google) Android,” he said.

Rayfield expects the Android OS to appear in netbooks by the middle of next year. “Android has got a roar ahead of it but I think it’s three of four quarters from a large-screen device. And the market wants something interesting before that,” he said.

The first devices will not be shown off by some of the larger PC names, but by telecommunication carriers. “We’re bringing the carriers in. I’ve got 100 people showing up from carriers at Computex,” said Rayfield. The devices to be shown off at Computex will be those that “are about ready to release into production,” he said.

“The ODMs (original design manufacturers) will sell directly to the carriers. The OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are getting cut out of the deal. The carriers want to brand it themselves. They would prefer not to show a large OEM (e.g., PC maker) name, they would prefer to show T-Mobile or Vodafone or whoever the carrier might be,” he said.

In terms of price, smaller devices with WVGA displays (800 x 480 resolution) will sell for $99, whilst your typical netbook will sell for $100 to $200. We look forward to more detail on these Tegra netbooks to come out of Computex in the next few days.

-----------------------------
BY N/A
Source：Netbook Choice

Copyright © 2009 Netbook Choice.

Nvidia: 10 Minutes That Mattered

Sometimes technology matters less than you think.
##CONTINUE##
Business is often built or destroyed on disruption--some sudden innovation, insight or strategic move that changes the game for everyone. The same is often true in our lives, when an important conversation, a made or missed connection, even an intrusion of pure fate, redirects our thinking and actions for years afterward. While brief, these moments are critically important for who we are. Forbes is asking leaders in business and other fields about the disruptive "Ten Minutes That Mattered" in their lives and will share those stories here. Share your thoughts and own stories in the Reader Comments section below.

Jen-Hsun Huang
Co-Founder and Chief Executive, Nvidia

"I'm introverted. I don't really like being with people. You can tell an introvert versus an extrovert depending on how they relate to people: If go to a party, I'm not energized, I'm exhausted. I can't wait to leave. I shouldn't be leading a business--I even hate traveling.

"Probably in 1986, I read this paper in the Harvard Business Review. I was an engineer at LSI Logic, and I might have stayed an engineer there the rest of my life. Brian Halla (the CEO at National Semiconductor told me to read this paper though.

"It was about semiconductor architecture wars and why Intel's x86 chip was doomed. It was a revelation to me, because I'd only read technical papers before that. This was about strategy. That was strange for an engineer to read--that the fundamental engineering advantages of Sun's Sparc chip and the x86 weren't fundamental at all. They were nuances.

"The paper was wrong. It said Intel's technology was obsolete. I thought that missed the point, and their problems were something that the engineers could fix. That was really exciting too--what was fundamental for Intel was a trust in Moore's Law.

"I started reading more and more about the interaction of engineering and strategy. It became fundamental to my interest. As I read those papers, I realized how important it is that a company sees itself the right way. Technology hardly ever matters. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient. Tech makes small differences. But it is how companies see the world that makes the big difference.

"When I started Nvidia, there were a lot of graphics chip companies. The competition thought the game platform was stable. I thought we'd have to build a new product every six months and make the demand for graphics insatiable. The idea was to give designers a way to create an artistic level, make the games delightful, with their own personal stamp on it. That was a massive difference versus the competition.

"Passion matters more than anything. Reading that article triggered a passion I didn't even know I had about business and strategy. Real passion can overcome a lot of dislikes."

-----------------------------
BY Jen-Hsun Huang
Source：Forbes

2009 Forbes.com LLC™ All Rights Reserved.

Nvidia accuses Intel of unfair pricing

Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of graphics chip maker Nvidia, called Intel's chip pricing unfair but said his company will not seek antitrust action against the world's largest chip maker for now.
##CONTINUE##
Nvidia makes graphics chips that pair with Intel's low-powered Atom in lower-priced netbook computers. He said Intel sells an Atom chip by itself for $45, but sells a three-chip set for $25 to lure business away.

"That seems pretty unfair," he said. "We ought to be able to compete and serve that market."

Last week, the European Commission fined Intel $1.06 billion euros and ordered it to change its business practices for competing illegally against Advanced Micro Devices.

Intel brushed off Huang's suggestion.

"We compete fairly. We do not force bundles on any computer makers and customers can purchase Atom individually or as part of the bundle," said Bill Calder, a spokesman for Intel. "If you want to purchase the chip set, obviously there is better pricing."

For now, Huang plans no legal action.

"I hope it doesn't come down to that," he said, adding: "We have to do whatever we have to do when the time comes. We really hope this company (Intel) will compete on a fair basis."

-----------------------------
Reporting by David Lawsky; Editing by Edwin Chan and Tim Dobbyn
Source：Reuters

Physics will help Nvidia grow

Jensen gave Nvidia investors a nice speech on how PhysX will give the company an edge and help it fight its graphics competitors.
##CONTINUE##
PhysX is available for EA, THQ, Sega and 2K publishing as well as iPhone, and iPhone kind of came as surprise. You cannot play any serious games on an iPhone, but maybe with the new ones the gaming situation might get better. There might be some publishers that we failed to mention.

Some cool games are out, like Mirror's Edge and Sacred 2 and they do support PhysX. The newcomer is Terminator Salvation and should be out with the movie, in a few more days. The interesting part is that Terminator Salvation has a chance to be a good game, as eliminating terminators might be a tough and interesting task. Let’s hope Nvidia will get good PhysX inside.

AMD doesn’t have PhysX but they do support Intel’s Havok physics and it will be interesting to see how this fight goes on, as Intel and AMD are backing up Havok. So far, none of the sides impressed, as both PhysX and Havok accelerated by GPU failed to impress with game adoption rates. However, Nvidia did get more games with PhysX accelerated by GPU, but still not the major, really big and successful ones.

-----------------------------
BY Fuad Abazovic
Source：Fudzilla

Copyright Fudzilla 2009.

A look at the Nvidia GT300 architecture

THERE'S A LOT of fake news going around about the upcoming GPUish chip called the GT300. Let's clear some air on this Larrabee-lite architecture.
##CONTINUE##
First of all, almost everything you have heard about the two upcoming DX11 architectures is wrong. There is a single source making up news, and second rate sites are parroting it left and right. The R870 news is laughably inaccurate, and the GT300 info is quite curious too. Either ATI figured out a way to break the laws of physics with memory speed and Nvidia managed to almost double its transistor density - do the math on purported numbers, they aren't even in the ballpark - or someone is blatantly making up numbers.

That said, lets get on with what we know, and delve into the architectures a bit. The GT300 is going to lose, badly, in the GPU game, and we will go over why and how. First a little background science and math. There are three fabrication processes out there that ATI and Nvidia use, all from TSMC, 65nm, 55nm and 40nm.

They are each a 'half step' from the next, and 65nm to 40nm is a full step. If you do the math, the shrink from 65nm to 55nm ((55 * 55) / (65 *65) ~= 0.72) saves you about 1/4 the area, that is, 55nm is 0.72 of the area of 65nm for the same transistor count. 55nm shrunk to 40nm gives you 0.53 of the area, and 65nm shrunk to 40nm gives you 0.38 of the area. We will be using these later.

Second is the time it takes to do things. We will use the best case scenarios, with a hot lot from TSMC taking a mere six weeks, and the time from wafers in to boards out of an AIB being 12 weeks. Top it off with test and debug times of two weeks for first silicon and one week for each subsequent spin. To simplify rough calculations, all months will be assumed to have 4 weeks.

Okay, ATI stated that it will have DX11 GPUs on sale when Windows 7 launches, purportedly October 23, 2009. Since this was done in a financial conference call, SEC rules applying, you can be pretty sure ATI is serious about this. Nvidia on the other hand basically dodged the question, hard, in its conference call the other day.

At least you should know why Nvidia picked the farcical date of October 15 for its partners. Why farcical? Lets go over the numbers once again.

According to sources in Satan Clara, GT300 has not taped out yet, as of last week. It is still set for June, which means best case, June 1st. Add six weeks for first silicon, two more for initial debug, and you are at eight weeks, minimum. That means the go or no-go decision might be made as early as August 1st. If everything goes perfectly, and there is no second spin required, you would have to add 90 days to that, meaning November 1st, before you could see any boards.

So, if all the stars align, and everything goes perfectly, Nvidia could hit Q4 of 2009. But that won't happen.

Why not? There is a concept called risk when doing chips, and the GT300 is a high risk part. GT300 is the first chip of a new architecture, or so Nvidia claims. It is also going to be the first GDDR5 part, and moreover, it will be Nvidia's first 'big' chip on the 40nm process.

Nvidia chipmaking of late has been laughably bad. GT200 was slated for November of 2007 and came out in May or so in 2008, two quarters late. We are still waiting for the derivative parts. The shrink, GT206/GT200b is technically a no-brainer, but instead of arriving in August of 2008, it trickled out in January, 2009. The shrink of that to 40nm, the GT212/GT200c was flat out canceled, Nvidia couldn't do it.

The next largest 40nm part, the GT214 also failed, and it was redone as the GT215. The next smallest parts, the GT216 and GT218, very small chips, are hugely delayed, perhaps to finally show up in late June. Nvidia can't make a chip that is one-quarter of the purported size of the GT300 on the TSMC 40nm process. That is, make it at all, period - making it profitably is, well, a humorous concept for now.

GT300 is also the first DX11 part from the green team, and it didn't even have DX10.1 parts. Between the new process, larger size, bleeding-edge memory technology, dysfunctional design teams, new feature sets and fab partners trashed at every opportunity, you could hardly imagine ways to have more risk in a new chip design than Nvidia has with the GT300.

If everything goes perfectly and Nvidia puts out a GT300 with zero bugs, or easy fix minor bugs, then it could be out in November. Given that there is only one GPU that we have heard of that hit this milestone, a derivative part, not a new architecture, it is almost assuredly not going to happen. No OEM is going to bet their Windows 7 launch vehicles on Nvidia's track record. They remember the 9400, GT200, and well, everything else.

If there is only one respin, you are into 2010. If there is a second respin, then you might have a hard time hitting Q1 of 2010. Of late, we can't think of any Nvidia product that hasn't had at least two respins, be they simple optical shrinks or big chips.

Conversely, the ATI R870 is a low risk part. ATI has a functional 40nm part on the market with the RV740/HD4770, and has had GDDR5 on cards since last June. Heck, it basically developed GDDR5. The RV740 - again, a part already on the market - is rumored to be notably larger than either the GT216 or 218, and more or less the same size as the GT215 that Nvidia can't seem to make.

DX11 is a much funnier story. The DX10 feature list was quite long when it was first proposed. ATI dutifully worked with Microsoft to get it implemented, and did so with the HD2900. Nvidia stomped around like a petulant child and refused to support most of those features, and Microsoft stupidly capitulated and removed large tracts of DX10 functionality.

This had several effects, the most notable being that the now castrated DX10 was a pretty sad API, barely moving anything forward. It also meant that ATI spent a lot of silicon area implementing things that would never be used. DX10.1 put some of those back, but not the big ones.

DX11 is basically what DX10 was meant to be with a few minor additions. That means ATI has had a mostly DX11 compliant part since the HD2900. The R870/HD5870 effectively will be the fourth generation DX11 GPU from the red team. Remember the tessellator? Been there, done that since 80nm parts.

This is not to say that is will be easy for either side, TSMC has basically come out and said that its 40nm process basically is horrid, an assertion backed up by everyone that uses it. That said, both the GT300 and R870 are designed for the process, so they are stuck with it. If yields can't be made economically viable, you will be in a situation of older 55nm parts going head to head for all of 2010. Given Nvidia's total lack of cost competitiveness on that node, it would be more a question of them surviving the year.

That brings us to the main point, what is GT300? If you recall Jen-Hsun's mocking jabs about Laughabee, you might find it ironic that GT300 is basically a Larrabee clone. Sadly though, it doesn't have the process tech, software support, or architecture behind it to make it work, but then again, this isn't the first time that Nvidia's grand prognostications have landed on its head.

The basic structure of GT300 is the same as Larrabee. Nvidia is going to use general purpose 'shaders' to do compute tasks, and the things that any sane company would put into dedicated hardware are going to be done in software. Basically DX11 will be shader code on top of a generic CPU-like structure. Just like Larrabee, but from the look of it, Larrabee got the underlying hardware right.

Before you jump up and down, and before all the Nvidiots start drooling, this is a massive problem for Nvidia. The chip was conceived at a time when Nvidia thought GPU compute was actually going to bring it some money, and it was an exit strategy for the company when GPUs went away.

It didn't happen that way, partially because of buggy hardware, partially because of over-promising and under-delivering, and then came the deathblows from Larrabee and Fusion. Nvidia's grand ambitions were stuffed into the dirt, and rightly so.

Nvidia Investor Relations tells people that between five to ten per cent of the GT200 die area is dedicated to GPU compute tasks. The GT300 goes way farther here, but let's be charitable and call it 10 per cent. This puts Nvidia at a 10 per cent areal disadvantage to ATI on the DX11 front, and that is before you talk about anything else. Out of the gate in second place.

On 55nm, the ATI RV790 basically ties the GT200b in performance, but does it in about 60 per cent of the area, and that means less than 60 per cent of the cost. Please note, we are not taking board costs into account, and if you look at yield too, things get very ugly for Nvidia. Suffice it to say that architecturally, GT200 is a dog, a fat, bloated dog.

Rather than go lean and mean for GT300, possibly with a multi-die strategy like ATI, Nvidia is going for bigger and less areally efficient. They are giving up GPU performance to chase a market that doesn't exist, but was a nice fantasy three years ago. Also, remember that part about ATI's DX10 being the vast majority of the current DX11? ATI is not going to have to bloat its die size to get to DX11, but Nvidia will be forced to, one way or another. Step 1) Collect Underpants. Step 2) ??? Step 3) Profit!

On the shrink from 55nm to 40nm, you about double your transistor count, but due to current leakage, doing so will hit a power wall. Let's assume that both sides can double their transistor counts and stay within their power budgets though, that is the best case for Nvidia.

If AMD doubles its transistor count, it could almost double performance. If it does, Nvidia will have to as well. But, because Nvidia has to add in all the DX11 features, or additional shaders to essentially dedicate to them, its chips' areal efficiency will likely go down. Meanwhile, ATI has those features already in place, and it will shrink its chip sizes to a quarter of what they were in the 2900, or half of what they were in the R770.

Nvidia will gain some area back when it goes to GDDR5. Then the open question will be how wide the memory interface will have to be to support a hugely inefficient GPGPU strategy. That code has to be loaded, stored and flushed, taking bandwidth and memory.

In the end, what you will end up with is ATI that can double performance if it choses to double shader count, while Nvidia can double shader count, but it will lose a lot of real world performance if it does.

In the R870, if you compare the time it takes to render 1 Million triangles from 250K using the tesselator, it will take a bit longer than running those same 1 Million triangles through without the tesselator. Tesselation takes no shader time, so other than latency and bandwidth, there is essentially zero cost. If ATI implemented things right, and remember, this is generation four of the technology, things should be almost transparent.

Contrast that with the GT300 approach. There is no dedicated tesselator, and if you use that DX11 feature, it will take large amounts of shader time, used inefficiently as is the case with general purpose hardware. You will then need the same shaders again to render the triangles. 250K to 1 Million triangles on the GT300 should be notably slower than straight 1 Million triangles.

The same should hold true for all DX11 features, ATI has dedicated hardware where applicable, Nvidia has general purpose shaders roped into doing things far less efficiently. When you turn on DX11 features, the GT300 will take a performance nosedive, the R870 won't.

Worse yet, when the derivatives come out, the proportion of shaders needed to run DX11 will go up for Nvidia, but the dedicated hardware won't change for ATI. It is currently selling parts on the low end of the market that have all the "almost DX11" features, and is doing so profitably. Nvidia will have a situation on its hands in the low end that will make the DX10 performance of the 8600 and 8400 class parts look like drag racers.

In the end, Nvidia architecturally did just about everything wrong with this part. It is chasing a market that doesn't exist, and skewing its parts away from their core purpose, graphics, to fulfill that pipe dream. Meanwhile, ATI will offer you an x86 hybrid Fusion part if that is what you want to do, and Intel will have Larrabee in the same time frame.

GT300 is basically Larrabee done wrong for the wrong reasons. Amusingly though, it misses both of the attempted targets. R870 should pummel it in DX10/DX11 performance, but if you buy a $400-600 GPU for ripping DVDs to your Ipod, Nvidia has a card for you. Maybe. Yield problems notwithstanding.

GT300 will be quarters late, and without a miracle, miss back to school, the Windows 7 launch, and Christmas. It won't come close to R870 in graphics performance, and it will cost much more to make. This is not an architecture that will dig Nvidia out of its hole, but instead will dig it deeper. It made a Laughabee.

-----------------------------
BY Charlie Demerjian
Source：the INQUIRER

©Incisive Media Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RX, is a company registered in the United Kingdom with company registration number 04038503.

中电信牵手威盛破解CDMA产业链难题

为了进一步促进CDMA产业链的发展，解决产业链不够完善的困境，中国电信给自己拉来了另一个帮手——威盛集团。
##CONTINUE##
日前，中国电信宣布，将与威盛集团在技术合作、产品研发、产业促进等多个领域展开全方位合作，双方正式达成战略合作伙伴关系。

而这也让其他终端厂家看到了机会，深圳华禹公司总经理赵志新最近就一直忙着与中国电信相关部门沟通，希望能合作电子钱包（UFC）CDMA手机，此前，华禹公司只关注海外CDMA市场。

中国电信副总裁杨小伟表示，跟威盛的合作不会影响跟高通的关系，但引入竞争有利于促进CDMA终端性价比的提升。

电信天翼终端公司副总经理马道杰解释说，中国电信一直希望更多的企业加入CDMA产业链，今天这个合作就是对这些企业一个很好的吸引方式，因为这种芯片开发模式可以从某种意义上降低设计厂商和生产厂商的进入成本。

长久以来，与GSM有多家芯片供应商形成对比的是，CDMA领域最主要的芯片供应商只有高通一家，高通以专利授权的方式与CDMA设备商和终端商达成合作，因此，同档次的CDMA手机价格一般要高于GSM手机。有关CDMA专利费太高，因此阻碍产业链发展的指责不绝于耳。

威盛集团旗下的芯片企业威睿电通通过与高通达成专利授权协议，加上自主研发，也逐渐成为CDMA芯片的重要提供商之一。据威睿电通CEO张可对CBN记者介绍，目前威睿电通在CDMA终端的市场份额已经达到40%左右。

张可表示，高通作为CDMA的推动者，成本巨大，而威盛更多的是开发应用，而且威盛的整个运营机制基本都在中国，在中国的子公司几乎达到400家，通过国产化进一步形成了价格优势。

据他介绍，自从威盛与电信开始试探性合作以来，CDMA手机成本已经有了大幅度降低，从去年到现在，CDMA手机的最低价进一步从300元左右下降到了200元左右。

特别是随着中国电信推动CDMA终端销售的进一步社会化，越来越多的国内外厂家加入CDMA产业链，一些规模较小的国产手机企业对CDMA芯片价格比较敏感，这就进一步造就了威盛低价芯片的市场空间。

业内评价说，威盛将联发科模式进一步复制到了CDMA手机领域。台湾芯片企业联发科通过向众多手机企业提供基于GSM的手机整体解决方案，造就了中国“山寨机”市场的繁荣。

当天，威盛同时展示了与其合作的30多款CDMA终端产品。据马道杰介绍，在中国电信没有接手CDMA之前，CDMA的月销量为100多万部，现在已经增加到300多万部，市场份额也由当初的3%增加到现在的20%。

威盛集团董事长王雪红表示，除了CDMA手机芯片之外，威盛在3G手机和3G上网本方面也存在巨大的合作空间。马道杰表示，中国电信的上网本在CPU上选择了英特尔和威盛两家，芯片模块上是高通和威盛两家。

“预计今年将新增3500万CDMA用户，到明年CDMA用户将超过1亿。”杨小伟表示，目前全国120个城市已经开始推广CDMA 3G业务，7月将覆盖全国300个城市。

“这意味着至少有7000万台以上CDMA终端市场，而目前国内CDMA终端才100多款，相反GSM的终端却有几千款。”刚做出CMDA样机的深圳森密公司总经理许富民指出，正在成长的CDMA市场比成熟的GSM市场可挖掘的潜力明显大很多，而这也显然刺激了深圳中小终端厂家的神经。目前在深圳已经有30多家终端厂家加入CDMA阵营，“可能还有近百家终端厂家正准备介入”。据悉，深圳森密在2月才介入CDMA产品研发，并挖来一批熟悉电信渠道的销售团队和CMDA研发团队，目前正在通过泰尔实验室测试工。

显然，这也是中国电信希望看到的情景。杨小伟指出，移动终端是否丰富直接决定CDMA业务的发展速度。为了规范资质参差不齐的中小终端厂家，中国电信还特意内定了一套CDMA终端检测标准。

许富民指出，目前中国电信的优惠政策就是话费补贴，但未来中国电信会增加很多互联网融合业务，这些对终端用户形成很强的黏性。

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文章出处：第一财经日报
作者：马晓芳 孙燕飚

Nvidia posts $200 million loss, takes 69% of GPU market

Nvidia has for long enjoyed a spot as the superstar of gaming graphics, besting ATI again and again. That trend continued even past the acquisition of ATI by AMD, and didn't reverse until the latter HD Radeons were available. Since then, the fight between both graphics giants has been on much more equal footing. This has hurt Nvidia, along with many other setbacks in the past year, which all have contributed to the company posting a net loss of $201.3 million, or $0.37 per share, for the first quarter of fiscal 2010.
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It isn't all bad for the company, which accompanied the financial downer with news that revenue has grown 38 percent from the previous quarter. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang mentioned they are decreasing inventory dramatically, with hardware being sold after it is manufactured nearly twice as fast as before. They also took the time to announce the milestones they reached over the previous year, such as the introduction of the Ion platform, CUDA and the upcoming Tegra 600 SoC.

Despite losing a good chunk of cash, it seems they have still managed to best AMD when it comes to desktop GPU share, claiming a 69% piece of the market up from 63% the prior quarter. This doesn't include integrated GPUs, where Intel reigns supreme. Still, is Nvidia feeling pressure from the vendors they have spurned? Is the bickering with Intel affecting their business? Nvidia is making good moves in expanding their hardware lineup, but has very stiff competition in every arena they compete in.

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BY Justin Mann
Source：TechSpot.com

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Nvidia looks to mobile chips for growth

Graphics hardware vendor Nvidia saw its revenue drop during the first quarter of 2010 but is pinning its hopes on mobile devices for growth during the recession.
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Revenue was US$664.2 million for the first quarter ended April 26, a 42 percent drop from $1.2 billion during the first quarter of fiscal 2009. However, revenue exceeded the consensus forecast of $562 million from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

The company also recorded a loss of $201 million, or $0.37 per share, compared with a profit of $176.8 million a year earlier. The loss included charges of $140.2 million related to the purchase of employee stock options.

Nvidia is trying to push into new markets as it looks for ways to get through the recession, said Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's CEO, during a conference call to discuss the financial results. Nvidia, traditionally known as a graphics card vendor, is set to supply CPUs and graphics chips for smartphones and netbooks in the upcoming fiscal quarters.

Nvidia will deliver CPUs for smartphones with its Tegra low-power processors, which bundle Arm-based processor cores with GeForce graphics cores on a single chip. Tegra should put Nvidia in direct competition with Intel, which offers low-power Atom processors for smartphones. The company has about 500 people dedicated to developing Tegra chips, Huang said.

Nvidia also hopes to dip into the burgeoning netbook market with its Ion platform, a package of chips that brings high-definition graphics to low-cost PCs. During the first quarter, the Ion platform was implemented by Acer in the AspireRevo nettop, a small desktop the size of a hardcover book. Nvidia hopes to put Ion in netbooks as well, though no products built around the platform have been announced yet. The Ion platform pairs Nvidia's GeForce 9400M GPU with Intel's Atom CPU.

Ion could be Nvidia's fastest-growing business as the low-end PC market quickly grows, Huang said.

About 10 million netbooks shipped in 2008, and that number is expected to rise to 22 million in 2009, according to IDC. The netbook category is the only bright spot in an otherwise slumping PC industry, which has seen shipments of mainstream laptops and desktops fall, IDC has said.

The mobile space may be alluring in the short term, but Huang doesn't want Nvidia to lose its focus as a graphics-centric company.

"The [graphics processing unit] is ever more central to our computing experience. There is a rapidly growing number of applications that rely on the GPU, and the industry is gearing up to launch the next-generation operating systems that adopt GPU computing," Huang said in a statement.

Nvidia is designing GPUs to boost PC performance in upcoming operating systems, including Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Microsoft's Windows 7. The operating systems will include features to unload specific multimedia tasks, such as video editing, to graphics chips, while keeping CPUs free to execute generic computing tasks such as word processing.

Nvidia took some cost-cutting measures during the first quarter, including a revision of its compensation plan to cancel performance-related compensation of top executives for fiscal 2010.

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BY Agam Shah
Source：IDG News Service

Reprinted with permission from IDG News Service. Story copyright 2009 IDG News Service Inc. All rights reserved.