NVIDIA VP joins the smack-talk fun, says the Intel CPU is "dead"
By Nilay Patel 
posted April 25th 2008 5:51PM
posted April 25th 2008 5:51PM
Alright, we're loving this new hyper-aggressive, sorta-nasty version of NVIDIA. Not only has CEO Jen Hsun-Huang promised to "open a can of whoop-ass" on Intel, the company has been touting its new sub-$45 integrated platform as far superior to Celeron-based systems, and now we've got VP of Content Relations Roy Taylor sending out emails saying that "a war has started" and pronouncing the Intel CPU "dead." Roy says Intel is "panicking" because CPUs have "run out of steam," and that they "no longer make anything run faster." According to Roy -- whose nickname is "Big Pipe," no joke -- the only thing that needs to get faster is the GPU, and NVIDIA's going to make it happen. That's some brash talk, all around -- let's hope NVIDIA's ready when Intel brings Nehalem out to play. Check out the whole email at the read link.[Via TGDaily]
The Cell is really poor for performing a large share of regular computing tasks and is best suited for render and/or server farms, not home computers. It's also, from everything I've seen, inordinately expensive and has a low success rate in being created, but don't let your fanboy cataracts let you see anything based in reality.
P.S. Processors aren't just processors, or else we wouldn't differentiate between floating-point and fixed-point, x64, x86, PPC, SPARC, etc. Eventually we'll reach a point where software emulation of video hardware can be done on the CPU, but there's a difference between that and native CPU video support.
Can someone explain why nVidia and Intel are competing? I thought they were focused on two separate and distinct markets (one being the graphics arena and the other being the computer processor).
NVIDIA is just butthurt that AMD bought ATI and are going to do a fusion platform processor.
Engadget, when nVidia's platform is released, and is nothing like what nVidia promised, please refer to these publicity stunts and give the company a smack down.
Brash words indeed:
Well at least every chip generations that come out of Intel is somewhat faster than the older one, with more cache, smaller die, more SSE extensions and more cores.
So what have nvidia the king of rehashers done? From what I can see - pretty much nothing - what faster GPU have they created which is faster than the already 2 years old 8800GTX???
So It seems Intel CPU's, the past years have increased their processing ability, whereas the nvidia GPU's STILL are running approx the same speed as the GPU's they released 2 years ago.... nvidia are FUD masters... go fix your chipsets instead at least INTEL chipsets WORK!!!
This guy must never do any video encoding...because if he did he would never say CPU's dont make things faster and he would most certainly want faster CPU's then we have now. Unless of course nVidia is going to be releasing an in house encoder for us to use that runs on the GPU and does everything at light speed...but i highly doubt that so nVidia needs to think before they ramble.
CPU/GPU = meh. Gimme faster/larger system memory!
2 words, Amdahl's Law. Good luck with vectorizing everything Nvidia, there's a reason Cray went out of business.
Mr. Taylor makes some interesting points. What he is saying is that if you look at all of the computation done inside a typical computer, most of it is actually done by the GPU nowdays instead of the CPU. His argument is that if technology keeps progressing in this direction (and there is no reason why it should not) the CPU becomes less and less important over time.
Let me expand on that a bit. Why should we care how fast our CPU is when we buy a computer? If we are working with video (even if we are just watching it), if we play 3D games, if we do anything at all that involves putting pretty pictures on the screen, the GPU and motherboard chipset should be the the most important components in our computer, not the CPU. The CPU has barely gotten any faster over the past few years anyway. Sure there are multiple cores but the processing speed of a single core is stuck in the mud. How many CPU cores do we really need anyway? (In my case I need as many as I can get but unless you work with 3D software rendering or a few other CPU bound compute tasks you probably don't.)
On the other hand, the Intel Larrabee architecture looks very interesting and they are probably correct that ray tracing is the future of real time 3D... eventually. NVidia has left a lot unspoken. Like why is it they are so darn excited right now? I have my fingers crossed that NVidia's next generation GPU architecture looks like Larrabee on steroids. In fact in my wildest fantasy, NVidia's GPUs can run Intel compatible code directly making the CPU completely unnecessary. I would definately be interested in a computer that only contained a GPU and no CPU at all. Perhaps that's what NVidia is so excited about.
-Mark Granger (speaking for myself not my company).
"Basically the CPU is dead. Yes, that processor you see advertised everywhere from Intel. Its run out of steam."
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This guy's definition of dead is different to mine, even taken in his basic context. For something to be dead or close to it, I would expect to be able to buy a product that replaces it. I would expect the market to have at least started moving in this 'this dead, that alive' direction.
The fact is, most computers are sold with all-Intel solutions and the majority of the market couldn't care less about Nvidia's products. A relative niche cares about better graphics performance, and most of them are gamers and/or video enthusiasts, which are dwarfed in numbers by average users happy with Intel's products (and that of their competitors).
Simple facts. He might have a clue, he may have some points but he sure doesn't express it accurately or well.
I think I agree with you for the most part. It is very frustrating that he claims that the CPU is dead but then does not announce a GPU that can actually replace a CPU. I also agree that for many users (perhaps even most users) a GPU is a luxury not a necessity. I could also argue that for those users a faster CPU is also a luxury. Just how fast does a CPU have to be to run a web browser after all?
The thing about computers is that they just keep getting faster. As they do we seem to find uses for all those extra computations per second. These are "luxuries" such as Google Earth, HD Video editing, extremly realistic 3D games and so on. As computer technology progresses, people can do these things with less and less expensive computers. This is why it matters to everyone in the end whether the GPU will replace the CPU. Whatever technology is in the high end computer today will be in the low end computer in five years.
This GPU/CPU argument matters in other ways as well. The high end is where all the profit margins are. Those of us that love to play with bleeding edge technology fund gigantic corporations like Intel and NVidia. Those of us that like to invest in these companies have a great deal of interest in what technology is going to come next and from where.
Whatever. I'm perfectly happy with my "HIGH PERFORMANCE" integrated intel graphics.
Oh god I wish It was adequate enough to play FSX at a decent clip. ;~;
Atleast my processor roxxors, sorta. (1.46 ghz of DUAL CORE POWAH)
Where's this CPU-less computer he's talking about. I want one of those. Such a computer would really save on battery power.
Intel wants to do nvidias job, nvidia wants to do intels job.... oh my a headache. Meh, Intel is gonna get rocked in both categories. Have they seen nvidias work? A standard 2.8 GHZ isn't going to cut it anymore for consumers... not with Vista anyways.
"Today your PC plays video (its our chip that makes that work)"
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For the overwhelming majority of desktop and notebook systems it's Intel's integrated graphics solutions that makes that work.
"...you play games (its our chip that makes that work)"
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For the majority, Intel too, albeit not on the cutting edge, but for basic games suitable for a non-enthusiast, just fine.
"you rip movies (yup our chip again) – you get the picture?"
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Plain wrong. But thanks for trying.
I'm really not sure who he's speaking too. Someone is hurting somewhere and it's not Intel. The visual computing craptalk has really gotta stop. Sure there are more demanding needs, but for the overhelming majority, standard computers without higher-end graphics run fine.
I have yet to see one compelling non-games application for owning Nvidia hardware to the average user not into games. I'm afraid that's what we'll need if this visual computing BS is to actually mean anything to Joe.
They no longer make CPUs any faster because they no longer NEED to. When was the last time you needed more than 4.0GHz of power from your computer? If you have any answer to that but "never," you're either a liar, a gamer who should have switched to consoles by now, or are busy rendering the latest Pixar film.
People keep demanding faster processors, but at this point, they wouldn't even know what to do with all that extra clock speed if they had it. It's technological hubris on a grand scale.
Ok you must have never heard the phrase "You will never use 16k of ram"... well same goes for the CPU. What about people in Hollywood that have to piece by piece put a movie together? I've seen a lot of those computers crash because it had "too many" processes going at once and all they were running was software to make the movie. Computers have so many processes alone going in the background, we need mass storage and we need more speed all the time, its not a bad thing.
Have *you* heard the term "the law of diminishing returns?" Well, we're seeing it in full force with personal computers. These machines are getting so powerful that there isn't much they can't do. Advanced users will always find a way to use- or waste- that power, but for the average computer owner, there is no appreciable benefit to cranking up both the speed and the price of a PC.
It's easy to say something cheeky like, "Hey, remember when they said 640K was all you needed?" but that was 1985. This is 2008, and computer performance is greatly outpacing the demands of all but the most hardcore applications. Perhaps that will change with the next great paradigm shift, but the majority of computer users simply don't need Pixar-quality performance (and the price that comes with it) from their machines. And hey, maybe that next paradigm shift will be a trend toward lower priced systems... the popularity of the Asus EEE and its many clones certainly seems to suggest it.
I think the entire industry are hoping that if they build it, they will come. They in this case are applications that can take advantage of all the increased computer power. This has actually been the case for as long as I have been into computers (which is a very long time). Just when I think that there is no need for any more computer power, someone goes and invents a web browser. Suddenly moving pixels around the screen efficiently became pretty darn important almost overnight.
This is how it is today. We decide that we can browse the web just fine on our Core 2 Duo processors, so do we really need 80 cores? Then someone comes up with a fairly decent artificial intelligence simulation that can act as an excellent personal assistant/slave and overnight we will all be lining up at the Apple store to buy a shiny new superparallel computer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcYrPkFe2J0
There's no doubt new uses will be found for the power. I don't think anyone argues about this. But Windows and Mac both run on x86 processors. Nvidia hasn't got one.
While both AMD and Intel have themselves deep into CPU and GPU and plans to combine them on one die (and of course increase capabilities as time goes on), Nvidia has...a discrete product. Not to say they will fade away completely, but there is a high chance they may become less significant in the near future at least as far as PCs as we know them today go.
If we look at Intel and AMD's processors in the past 15 years or so, they've added multimedia extensions, gone faster on raw MHz/GHz as per usual, gained dual, triple and quad+ cores...and now look to be getting some graphics grunt on-die. While it can be argued nothing much was happening for a lot of those years, here we are now on the verge of some big changes.
Nvidia is a powerful company, don't get me wrong, but to claim Intel CPUs are dead is highly premature. But who knows what's in Nvidia's labs. It's just that now what's out of their labs is nothing to write home about, and all this fighting talk isn't in line with reality now or indeed in the following few years, IMO.
We should, of course, encourage this confrontation, as it will presumably be to our benefit. You can help out the rumour mill by talking about those awful things Intel said about Roy Taylor's mother, and How Roy is going to beat up Intel's CEO at recess. Come on everyone. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!
I don't think the CPU is dead, but it sure isn't producing anything all that impressive anymore. Until someone comes out with a new PC architecture that moves away from FSB's and IRQ's all the chipmakers are doing is making money off the masses... But there is no incentive for a nice huge corp monster to invest a ton of money into new R&D for ground up architecture when the 40 year old stuff is still making money... Capitalism at its best.
The laddy doth protest too much, methinks.
yipeeee, more corporate bs talk from people who make way too much. Honestly though, is every company going to say one of their competitors is dead this year?
I've got thermal covered pop-corn ready just in case.
Intel will win this. Although design is a large part of the battle, it's really won on pricing and delivery. Intel owns the factories and nobody comes close being able to make those kinds of investments.
Roy Taylor sounds much like the patent office dolt who, in the early 1990s, said everything that was ever going to be invented already has been invented.
When Easy Bake Oven came out I bet he was rolling in his grave.
*1900s, i meant
nvidia, you dont have to make your cards to support intel chipsets...then we 'll see how well your profits turn out...asshole.
Can I just point something out... GPU is a CPU that has been optimized for graphics processing. If NVidia takes their GPU and adapts it for the same jobs as a CPU then it becomes a CPU... it's basically the same thing with a different name. Seems like VP of NVidia should know something like that and not talk nonsense.
Sounds like "Buy me now pleaseeee" talk...
This sounds like economic BS talk to have Intel swallow them up.
Do it please Intel!!!
No one calls-out a the gorilla and survives.
AMD is the only survivor, and look at them now. Bruised up eye's, broken arm and a broken leg.