The first keynote of NVIDIA's first NVISION was...disappointing. I'm sorry, I just couldn't get into it. Journalists lamented Craig Barrett's IDF keynote as being too touchy feely, but the issues he was talking about were honestly more important than Larrabee or CUDA.

The Jen-Hsun keynote on the other hand just wasn't very good in my opinion - there were a couple of good demos, the Photosynth and multi-touch demos were great but the rest was a total letdown. Thankfully, Jen-Hsun more than made up for it with the 30 minutes he spent with press after the keynote.

Why NVISION?

Jen-Hsun started off the Q&A session by answering why he wanted to create NVISION. I’m not sure I totally get the point of this show, everyone at NVIDIA tells me that it’s not intended for people like us, it’s more consumer focused. But then at the keynotes (which are totally consumer focused), the presenters are always talking about the audience being developers and scientists...which it totally isn’t.

Honestly, and I know NVIDIA would hate to hear this, the format needs to be more like IDF. Intel manages to have the perfect balance of interesting technology and demos that the uninformed could be entertained/informed by.

Jen-Hsun and the rest of NVIDIA view this as a convention for the Visual Computing Market that doesn’t have a show, the question is - does it need a show? And at this point I’m not sure I know the answer. But through a few meetings I was able to get some good information.

The Larrabee Question
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  • SoulSlave - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - link

    Well, they simply don't have to deliver linear performance increase. Anything above what SLI has to offer, at a reasonable price point would suffice, I mean, who would prefer to be straped to a single GPU manufacturer when you could have any combination of GPUs you want, delivering better performance?
  • biostud - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - link

    The only problem for nvidia regarding Lucid Hydra is the loss of a need for a nvidia chipset.

    For both AMD/ATi and nVidia Lucid Hydra still needs two videocards, and since this is the core business for both companies it doesn't matter that much if it's going to replace Crossfire and SLI.
  • rjc - Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - link

    As have an affected notebook, have been following the bad chips news stories, there is a reasonably informative article here:
    http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39045/135/">http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39045/135/

    If above holds i cant imagine the relationship between nvidia and notebook oems will be very good over the next 12 months. Whichs a pity for them as the notebook market seems to be growing quite well despite everything. I guess this is the idea behind the smartphones move - different business though volumes higher and margins tighter than on high end graphic cards.
  • whatthehey - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - link

    Strangely enough, all of the stories related to this inevitably seem to lead back to the Inquirer "reporting". You'll pardon me if I just can't take anything from Charlie Demerjian seriously. This is the same guy that hates NVIDIA and Intel, so I hardly expect his take on the situation to be reliable. There are certainly some problems with some of NVIDIA's chips, but nothing has indicated this extends much beyond a few select chips (8400M, 8600M and 8700M I think).

    What specific laptop do you have that has had problems, and what GPU does it use? I know I have a laptop with an 8800M GTX and I've had no problems whatsoever. (It's one of the Clevo units.)
  • rjc - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - link

    The article i linked claims from their sources the problem chips are the G84, G86 and G92. They couldn't confirm if the G94 also had problems.

    Again from the article nvidia has sold a total of 70 million of these chips. If say only 1%-2% need to be replaced then nvidia will be ok, say 10% or more would be kind of disastrous. As its early days people are trying to extrapolate from the current failures to get the eventual overall rate.

    Re shooting the messenger is a natural thing to want to do. I think psychologists call it "correspondence bias" where you assume the messenger has an agenda ie is evil and thus their message can be ignored.

    Personally my laptop is a asus with a 8600gt a v1s. It idles at over 60C, heavy workload can push it into the 70s ie the danger zone from the article, finally games send it into the mid 90s. According to notebook-review forums asus is getting regular returns on their g1s gaming laptop which has a 8600gt and trying to replace them on the quiet. I guess they want to try and avoid the bad publicity dell and hp recently got.
  • Frallan - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link

    Any1 heard about the C90s??

    Same chip - but other cooling however Im starting to get some very disturbing signs from mine.

    Also yes it it the Inq-well but that doesn't mean its wrong. Analog Just because you are paranoid it doesnt mean they are not coming for ya.

    ;0)

    /F
  • iwodo - Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - link

    ARM with Nvidia Graphics, aka the Tegra. And Desktop, x86 with VIA Nano.
    I am sure with some Restructuring Nvidia could surely sell x86 in some form. As long as it take control of VIA by other means without losing x86 license.

    Interconnect - there are already Hypertransport. Nvidia has the Chipset experience. And Dual Core Nano isn't exactly low performance either.

    If AMD could do it, why not Nvidia?
  • Griswold - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - link

    "As long as it take control of VIA by other means without losing x86 license."

    Voodoo. But since that doesnt exist, its not going to happen. Which answers your last question.
  • shin0bi272 - Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - link

    Nvidia seems to be too concerned with other things at the moment to do anything about Lucid's Hydra. I also dont think that the hydra engine cares what the instruction is it just passes it to the right video card and takes requests from the cards and passes them to the north bridge. Its like the Xor chip on a hardware raid5 card. It just sends what ever data is sent to it to the right card or reads from the different cards and sends those requests to the system. Its a traffic cop. Well thats how I see it anyway... whether or not it actually works remains to be seen.
  • computerfarmer - Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - link

    It is nice to hear new things and different takes on the subject.

    One thing I would like to see, is the promised review on the AMD 790gx/SB750.

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