Chicago (IL) – Nvidia is simply holding on to what it has now, but without a CPU and without the ability to build a heterogeneous general purpose processor, times will only get tougher for Nvidia, Intel’s Paul Otellini said.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology conference in San Francisco, the chief executive told the audience that Nvidia will be facing increasing competition in the GPU field and its position will get weaker as GPU becomes part of the microprocessor.
From a The News article:
“ Nvidia believes that the so-called graphics processing units (GPUs) it makes are here to stay, but clearly has the jitters. It has an agreement with Taiwanese firm Via but it’s pretty unclear how much that will help Nvidia. Despite the economic downturn, Otellini appears to be pretty bullish about the chip giant’s future. A few weeks back, Intel announced a push on 32 nm process technology. He also told the conference that while Netbooks are a bright spot in the industry, it shouldn’t be considered to be a replacement for fully fledged microprocessors in notebooks.”
Of course, the world isn’t entirely black and white and Nvidia isn’t quite done yet. Intel’s success in the GPU arena will depend on how good the company’s Larrabee chip will be and whether it can rally support for it or not. At least for now, there is some doubt that the 2010-or-so Larrabee will be an instant hit, as firm’s such as Adobe are sitting still and are waiting for more information from Intel. Even if Larrabee would be the best graphics ship on the market when released, Intel would need several months and possibly years to catch up with Nvidia.
Larrabee-derived products will not make it into Intel’s first heterogeneous processors that will combine a CPU+GPU, so we will be seeing some delay in this space as well. However, Nvidia should take Otellini’s notes seriously as Intel is moving into the graphics space with much more capable graphics hardware in the future. And if his vision is right, Nvidia may not only have to deal with Intel, but with AMD and its ATI graphics division as well.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology conference in San Francisco, the chief executive told the audience that Nvidia will be facing increasing competition in the GPU field and its position will get weaker as GPU becomes part of the microprocessor.
From a The News article:
“ Nvidia believes that the so-called graphics processing units (GPUs) it makes are here to stay, but clearly has the jitters. It has an agreement with Taiwanese firm Via but it’s pretty unclear how much that will help Nvidia. Despite the economic downturn, Otellini appears to be pretty bullish about the chip giant’s future. A few weeks back, Intel announced a push on 32 nm process technology. He also told the conference that while Netbooks are a bright spot in the industry, it shouldn’t be considered to be a replacement for fully fledged microprocessors in notebooks.”
Of course, the world isn’t entirely black and white and Nvidia isn’t quite done yet. Intel’s success in the GPU arena will depend on how good the company’s Larrabee chip will be and whether it can rally support for it or not. At least for now, there is some doubt that the 2010-or-so Larrabee will be an instant hit, as firm’s such as Adobe are sitting still and are waiting for more information from Intel. Even if Larrabee would be the best graphics ship on the market when released, Intel would need several months and possibly years to catch up with Nvidia.
Larrabee-derived products will not make it into Intel’s first heterogeneous processors that will combine a CPU+GPU, so we will be seeing some delay in this space as well. However, Nvidia should take Otellini’s notes seriously as Intel is moving into the graphics space with much more capable graphics hardware in the future. And if his vision is right, Nvidia may not only have to deal with Intel, but with AMD and its ATI graphics division as well.