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If tunes were human beings, that singer would be a serial killer
Nvidia CEO disses Intel chipsets
NVIDIA CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, is never at a loss for words. Discussing in a recent interview how cruddy he finds contemporary netbooks, Huang reckoned Intel's Atom could cripple the software industry and outlined why he thinks VIA's Nano platform is fantastic.
Huang sat down for a cozy chat with the folks at Laptopmag in which he subtly attempted to put his finger on what was wrong, overall, with netbooks. It didn't take him long. "A netbook is a low-cost PC that doesn't work that well", he noted.
Getting down to specifics, Jensen explained the problem lay in the fact the Atom platform created a base which effectively didn't run most modern applications. "It doesn't run anything well from Electronic Arts, it doesn't run anything well from Adobe, it doesn't run anything well from Microsoft" gushed the outspoken exec, going as far as to say he actually believed the Atom platform would damage the software industry eventually.
But no fear, according to Huang and his newly donned green cape, for the Ion is here! Or, at least, it's coming. The grand high Green Goblin said that in just a few months, it would be possible to build the Ion platform around Atom for, what he claims, will be a vastly improved PC experience.
"I think that this is the beginning of a new trend, and customers can get the full PC experience without spending much more than $399" noted Jensen, adding that Nvidia's GPU price range for the platform lay between $30 to $40 and would replace both the Northbridge and Southbridge chips in a notebook, bringing the cost down even further.
Never one for modesty or caution, Huang declared "the buzz around Ion is really high, almost every single OEM in the world is exploring it", he added that the incremental investment was so low; every OEM was designing around it.
"With Ion, we've brought Cuda, Open CL, and DirectX 11 all the way down to the most cost-effective platforms in the world" he continued.
Asked whether Intel might throw a spanner in the works by dissuading punters from buying an Atom processor with a non Intel chipset, or not validating the Ion, Huang replied he hoped this was not the case. "I think consumers would be really disappointed if they learned that Intel is sabotaging their ability to get access to breakthrough technologies" he wryly noted, adding the decision was ultimately down to OEMs.
"We're a technology component company, and Intel's a technology component company. It's weird for me to tell somebody the type of computers they can design" Huang continued, adding "I thought they [OEMs] were supposed to take all of these tech components and build amazing products from them by mixing and matching and differentiating".
When the discussion steered itself round to AMD's new Neo processor, Huang didn't miss a beat. "Atom by itself with Intel integrated graphics would get crushed by the Neo platform" he declared. But, teamed up with Nvidia's Ion, he reckons Atom would give Neo "a good run for its money".
AMD aren't the only ones snapping at Intel's heels, however, and Jensen commented that he felt VIA's Nano platform was "a fabulous processor" which, he claimed, might even be "architecturally one generation beyond Atom". Huang argued VIA's only real weakness was that they didn't possess the resources to build the GPU in a system which had to, at all costs, be competitive.
Nvidia did, however - and would - continue to support Nano with discrete graphics, according to Jen-Hsun who also noted that the next-generation Ion platform would support Nano too. "At that point we'll support Atoms, Celerons, Core 2 duos, Nanos.
We want to support as many processors as we can", Jen-Hsun emphasised. With the economy in the state it's in, and Nvidia's finances on shaky ground, we're sure we believe that last statement, anyway. µ
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Wow! Ion supports DX11! If only nV's Geforce line did.
Hey, maybe they could support DX10.1?
Perhaps in the next rebrand?
That guy doesn't have any modesty at ALL. "It doesn't run anything well from Electronic Arts, it doesn't run anything well from Adobe..." that's because it's not supposed to. It's supposed to be a processor for NETboooks. NET-books. for surfing the net, listening to the music and may be casual video viewing. that's how Intel defines netbooks. It's not Intel's fault that OEM's are putting atom in much highly priced systems, for which atom isn't made. quote from anandtech:
"I talked to Mooly about how the Atom processor wasn’t delivering enough performance for the netbooks that it’s in... To my surprise, Mooly said that the Atom delivered fine performance for netbooks. But it turned out that Mooly and I had very differing views on netbooks. Mooly’s view was that netbooks should be ultra affordable devices priced between $299 and $349. At those prices, Atom does deliver enough performance.
The reality of the situation however, is that manufacturers are shipping netbooks in the $500 - $900 range (way to go Sony) and outfitting them with 1.6GHz and even 1.33GHz Atom processors... it seems to me that manufacturers are capitalizing on the newness of netbooks by attempting to price them much higher than they should be." http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=3496&p=4
"A netbook is a low-cost PC that doesn't work that well"
You could say that about an Apple G4.
Efros
To everybody who has an Atom and thinks it's slow, I don't know what you're doing wrong. My Atom-based netbook is almost as fast as my full-size 1.8ghz Sempron laptop. The Sempron was a pretty solid processor 3-4 years ago, so I don't know what you guys are running today that's so much more sophisticated than 3-4 years ago?!
I have found that running a VM on the Atom is completely unacceptable, and that running floating-point intensive scientific code is slow to the point of being unacceptable, but really, how many people are doing this stuff with ANY of their computers today?
"so I don't know what you guys are running today that's so much more sophisticated than 3-4 years ago?!" Core 2 Duo's, like 4-5 times faster.
she looks hot
he is annoying, and yes some of his points are ridiculous, but some he is right. yep its a NETbook platform, but its also potentially a great HTPC platform. either solution isnt quite up to whats required of it, browsing online can be helped by better graphics - some flash for example is painfully slow on GMA 945. a HTPC needs to be able to run HD video IMO, and yet again intel's chipset fails to deliver without extra components, a discrete GPU. nvidia are doing atom a favour here by fixing a few graphics related problems with a faster IGP. i for one would seriously love a netbook that can play games from just a few years ago smoothly, even if it was just 1024 x 768. cmon, who wouldnt like a tiny pc games machine like that??
What a dumbass. Nvidia will soon be history if this clown is at the helm
That's rich! He says:
"I think consumers would be really disappointed if they learned that Intel is sabotaging their ability to get access to breakthrough technologies"
That arrogant twit denied SLI tech for years and now he cries foul? I hope Intel doesn't give him a phone number, let alone "breakthough technologies".
NVDA shareholders should put a muzzle on this dog, for their own good.
F**K him, 4870X2 here I come.
SPARKS
i hope hes kidding.so....i have to bring a monitor with me all the time? id have to say there is no real point in this sort of product.it has all the bells and whistles with a crappy processor and low ram.
That "clown" is the founder of NVIDIA, and has been "at the helm" since the very beginning.
He's a chip engineer himself, so he does actually know what he's talking about, though whether or not what he says is completely true or not only people in the industry (including him) would know.
"It doesn't run anything well from Electronic Arts, it doesn't run anything well from Adobe, it doesn't run anything well from Microsoft."
--- No need for them. My netbook runs Linux very well... :-)
Daniel, Belgium
That clown has been at the helm of nvidia, that's why we saw so many nvidia chips fail, then the company kept denying that there's a problem because of his arrogance and they ran into bigger problems when they tried to fix it. (see Charlie's electron microscopy article on the INQUIRER).
GMA 945 may not cut it, but Poulsbo does it great.
A screen I can read comfortably in the bright glare on the beach, it'll endure the sand and the salt water, the battery will last all day long and the night so I can show my new found friends in the pub my facebook or whatever. The tiny little speakers actually sound good and due to the special design they use the hollow space built into it to serve as a floation device(in case the boat sinks you can send an instant message for help) as a subwoofer.
Oh, and I really like the way they made the batteries cheap and hotswappable, and that the built in solar cells in the screen actually charges the battery when you use it in sunlight.
I mean, I'd love myself one of these even if Photoshop runs in slow motion, after all, it can play bluray discs using the wireless HDMI.
Intel is so slow at moving forward, Atom CPU is a step backward with its performance level. No one should buy anything less than Dual Core, hell some people even say Quad Core. But their pricing strategy with low end CPU is very bad in my opinion, with low price I mean 40$-80$ range.
At least not in the sense that it is being used today. They don't want to make a great netbook chipset because that would cannibalize the sales of the higher margin notebooks/laptops. Atom was meant to be a kind of "foot in the door" to get then into smart phone pdas, and other small handheld devices. Unfortunately as the economy tanked, manufacturers saw them as a way to increase their margins and prop-up low end notebook/netbook sales.
Let us not forget that even the slowest 'Netbook' runs circles around Pentium 3 or most Pentium 4 desktops of yesteryear.
It's not the hardware that got slower, its the software that bloated and gummed things up.
I'm not saying he's the best guy for the job, my point is that for somebody who's been running the company since the beginning, he must've done something right since they're still alive and well.
I've been using their GPUs and chipsets since I can remember, and I haven't had any issues whatsoever, so I'm pretty happy with them.
this nvidia founder is of course mouthing the propaganda war, the GPU vs CPU ballgame that they have been waging for so long yet has never ever succeeded simply because GPU has been slower to innovate and hit breakthrough technologies than CPU. both amd and intel have been funding serious research and development, it's the reason we have fast, power-efficient hardwares that are now waiting for the right software to exploit its true capabilities. even if all of the internet moves to video, the cpu is still the ultimate factor that determines performance. on his comment about intel atom, i think he is just jealous of its success. a public middle-school student in bangladesh has never heard of electronic arts, he's using a netbook for his first glimpse of the internet. the same is true for the hardened globe-trotter who is tired lugging around a 5-7 pound beast just to check emails and revise a few documents. grow up, dude!
Gaming Netbook - it's the next big thing, or it could be. 2.5GHz dual core, 2GB RAM, mid-range GPU for small screen 1024x800 resolution 10" screen.
If they built something like that for $400/£300 then it would be flying off the shelves all round the world. AND it could help increase game software sales.
Big game houses should get together, work out a common hardware spec and present it to the OEM's, Intel and AMD, oh and Nvidia too.
Has he not heard of S3 aka VIA's graphics department?
they're still active and pumping out an SKU or two a year.
and while they don't produce fantastic integrated graphics, their discrete ones are certainly fine and the 400/500 series ones don't have compatibility problems while performing better than the geforce 8400 parts. (yeah thats not a tall order to beat but even the lowest Chrome 430 GT beats the Geforce 8400GS soundly)