AfterDawn: Tech news

NVIDIA hosts PR site 'against' Intel

Written by James Delahunty @ 15 Mar 2010 8:33 User comments (8)

NVIDIA hosts PR site 'against' Intel NVIDIA is hosting a website that covers legal cases against Intel Corporation for anti-competitive practices. The site is clearly part of NVIDIA's PR campaign against Intel as the spat between both companies over rivaling technology continues to grow.
The site has extensive details from legal cases brought against Intel, including cases brought by the European Union, the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., New York State etc. and also aims to educate consumers about the base of the conflict; at least from the perspective of NVIDIA.

The site is an interesting browse and to its credit, is very informative and does its intended job quite well. Nevertheless, some of its content is amusing and reminds you that it is presented from a single side in this argument. Take, for example, the difference in how NVIDIA describes what a GPU is, and what a CPU is.

Q. What is a GPU?
"A. GPUs, or graphics processing units, are specialized processors first developed by NVIDIA in 1999. They were initially used to render three-dimensional graphics. In more recent years, GPUs have also been used for “general purpose” computing, which harnesses the computing power of the chip to perform certain functions traditionally handled by the CPU, often more efficiently than can be done by the CPU alone. General purpose GPUs are being used by scientists and engineers around the world to perform ground-breaking research in fields like medicine, biology and chemistry as well as for mainstream applications like streaming HD video and transcoding media files."

Q. What is a CPU?
"A. CPUs, or central processing units, are the part of the computer that carries out instructions from programs stored in the computer’s memory."

See the site: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nv_ftc.html

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8 user comments

115.3.2010 09:12

Certainly not good unless Intel REALLY has a chance at gaining gamer support since ATI is now owned by AMD. Supposedly, Intel even considered a hostile (if necessary) takeover of nVidia a while back. "Larrabee" is Intel's supposed answer to ATI/nVidia's GPU dominance, but even that has been found to be HIGHLY questionable...and Intel has had fairly low standards for graphics performance for YEARS. They seem to think decent performance at 640x480 is still sufficient.

215.3.2010 14:07

Ever since the merger of ATI and AMD I've worried that there would be a conflict of interest should a manufacturer want to use AMD slots and nVidia chipsets and their technology. I really hope not (and so far all has been well).

Intel at the very least has been open about their graphics cards specifications for a very long time, allowing fully-working open source drivers to be developed for Linux. As far as their GL extensions support it probably is lacking a little bit, but only because Intel would probably prefer to only support OFFICIAL extensions, not vendor-specific ones (although a lot of games (and the few big ones that get made with an OpenGL back-end; some Valve games) rely upon vendor-specific ones).

What this tells me is Nvidia is a little frightened of the idea of the merger between CPU and GPU, which I think is a good idea if done right. Intel and AMD are both very capable of making such a CPU/GPU soon, and if Nvidia has nothing to respond with, I don't think a loyal fanbase will even save them (I am pretty loyal fan). I did hear a rumour Nvidia was planning to make an x86 CPU a while ago. It appears that is the direction they need to go.

315.3.2010 15:07

ANTIC was the first GPU, made in the 70 for Atari Computers. Nvidia would like you to believe there where no GPU's prior to 1999.(talking about a boasting ego) i guess that's why i never really like Nvidia.

415.3.2010 17:13

@DXR88:
Ah, but carefully reading the first sentence in their answer reveals the truth. GPUs weren't "first developed" in 1999, but they were "first developed by NVIDIA" in 1999. I'm sure they worded it ambiguously like that on purpose though.

515.3.2010 23:18

Originally posted by xnonsuchx:
Certainly not good unless Intel REALLY has a chance at gaining gamer
What? lol.
I mean if you're just talking about the GPU market then yea I see where you are coming from. But if you are talking about the Processor market? Then Intel HAS more then enough support from gamers. I mean if you are a self respecting gamer and putting a couple grand into a rig, you're using Intel.
Beside, I really don't think Intel even gives a damn about the gaming market. Intel makes crazyyyy more money then AMD even dreams of making.

On another Processor note, You guys should look into the ARM processor, looks promising.

616.3.2010 02:42

ARM? As in the one used in cell phones?

716.3.2010 06:59

Indeed KSib.
Just like the cell phone processor.

They are going up against Atom processor. And they are soooooooooooo much better. I think they use like a 10th of the power a Atom does. Pretty impressive.

There is alot of talk about Google using a ARM processor for their netbook.

816.3.2010 17:33

SO i sorta misspoke. I meant the ARM architecture.

should look into the NVIDIA Tegra processor. Thats mainly what Looks promising.

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