nVidia and Intel

[thejamppa]

I always knew that nVidia and Intel's terms were not most warm but I never think this would go the level of kid's fight and bad mouthing...

Huang also attacked Intel's marketing machine. "Just because they have this enormous marketing budget. Just because they have platforms everywhere in the world. It doesn't make it right. To take on smaller companies. It's just not right."

This image of Intel as an unstoppable graphics juggernaut is what Huang takes issue with. What set him off initially was a comment from an Intel graphics and gaming technologist who said that consumers "probably won't need" discrete cards in the future. Nvidia's primary business is designing and supplying graphics chips for discrete graphics cards that go into PCs.

"We don't typically like to do this. It's just that we've been taking it and taking it and taking it. Every single frickin' day. Are you allowed to say that word? Every day all over the world. Enough is enough."

"This team [Nvidia] is like a Ferrari team. We know how to bring visual technology to life. We bring 20-30-40x the performance advantage and 27x the price/performance ratio". Even if Intel was able to deliver a 10-fold performance increase, the company would still not be able to reach catch up with Nvidia and AMD in the discrete space, Huang said.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36889/118/
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13924_1-991641 ... =cnetfd.mt


Oh... my... I mean... I am quite speechless actually. I never thought nVidia's CEO would go ego trip and assault Intel. I bet Hector Ruiz is laughing at the moment... Seeing Intel and nVidia bitch slapping each others...

But on serious side: This thing is extremely bad move by Huang. Not only nVidia has broken some basic guidelines of marketing ( by changing names, creating name mess for instance ) but that their CEO goes wild like this is very bad for the image of nVidia. Maybe Huang is bit stressed due nVidia's shares skydiving last weeks and economics making ominious evalutions of nVidia's money using...

[smilingcrow]

It might well be unsettling for Nvidia to see Intel moving into dedicated graphics again even though Intel’s IGPs are so lacklustre and their graphics driver development is farcical; they still haven’t released features for the G965 (I think) that were promised years ago.
AMD’s potential meltdown doesn’t exactly send a pleasant signal to Intel’s other competitors although Nvidia have a much larger advantage over Intel in graphics than AMD ever did in CPUs

[thejamppa]

Still, nVidia is so far doing pretty well. I just hope the executive part of the nVidia won't bring down the company after few very profetiable Quarters by becomming arrogant and not paying attention on the cost side or publics relations.

Whatever the reason is, I do not see behavior of nVidia's CEO or Marketing department well... We were taught in marketing about how much imago of the company means. And the worst mistakes you can make when you have good imago. So far nVidia has done some pretty bad mistakes IMHO. They had good imago and reputation during 8800-series.

The naming scheme wether its for free publicity damaged nVidia's imago. Releasing just slightly upgraded version of upgraded architechture as new series did that too. And nVidia's CEO goes into "verbal bitch-slap" contest with Intel is not good either.

nVidia has iron workmanship and good design atm. But it really doesn't help if marketing and executive section will screw up. I do hope that my fears will not come true and Mr. Huang will not sink the company.

[frostedflakes]

And the pocket protectors are off! Nerd fight!

I wouldn't put all the blame on Huang, sounds like Intel has been throwing plenty of punches as well. Maybe they're a bit more discrete about it, but I wouldn't say Intel's innocent either.

[DonQ]

And the pocket protectors are off! Nerd fight!

I wouldn't put all the blame on Huang, sounds like Intel has been throwing plenty of punches as well. Maybe they're a bit more discrete about it, but I wouldn't say Intel's innocent either.

One thing that may have induced this was (so I've read) Intel saying that they were going to be so good with upcoming graphics that people won't be buying separate video cards.

This kind of talk has serious potential to discourage potential investors. Yeah, I kinda can see how he would not be able to control himself.

[qviri]

Aww, you missed the fun parts.

Soundbites reported in Dailytech's article included "We're going to open a can of whoop ass", calling Intel's integrated offerings "a joke", as well as the internet's new favourite, "How much faster can you render the blue screen of death?"

[Wedge]

Whatever the reason is, I do not see behavior of nVidia's CEO or Marketing department well... We were taught in marketing about how much imago of the company means. And the worst mistakes you can make when you have good imago. So far nVidia has done some pretty bad mistakes IMHO. They had good imago and reputation during 8800-series.

Did you mean image? Or does imago have a slightly different connotation?

[Das_Saunamies]

"Imago" should just be Finnish interfering with English. The word exists in English as well, but has more to do with bugs and psychology than marketing.

I found the comments and a bit of lively rage thoroughly enjoyable - it's a refreshing change from all that smooth, calculated PR!

[jack_aubrey]

This image of Intel as an unstoppable graphics juggernaut is what Huang takes issue with. What set him off initially was a comment from an Intel graphics and gaming technologist who said that consumers "probably won't need" discrete cards in the future. Nvidia's primary business is designing and supplying graphics chips for discrete graphics cards that go into PCs.

"We don't typically like to do this. It's just that we've been taking it and taking it and taking it. Every single frickin' day. Are you allowed to say that word? Every day all over the world. Enough is enough."

"This team [Nvidia] is like a Ferrari team. We know how to bring visual technology to life. We bring 20-30-40x the performance advantage and 27x the price/performance ratio". Even if Intel was able to deliver a 10-fold performance increase, the company would still not be able to reach catch up with Nvidia and AMD in the discrete space, Huang said.

This is very reminiscent of things that SGI said during the emergence of consumer graphics companies like, er, NVIDIA (I worked at SGI 1997-2006, up until they got rid of the last graphics engineering activity). First it was "those are toys", then it was "their marketing claims are bogus", then it was "we provide capabilities they can't touch", then it was "we can't keep up, let's put ATI cards in our high-power servers and win by making scalable multi-GPU systems with great proprietary software", then it was "sales volume doesn't justify the engineering resources required to keep the ATI driver port up to date", finally it was "we're out of the graphics business" (followed by bankruptcy / reemergence as a mid-size vendor of Intel clusters with some legacy shared-memory systems, but that was after my time).

The proximate cause of the problem was that SGI was never culturally interested in or willing to pursue high-volume, low-margin markets, and they were eaten up from below in exactly the way described in The Innovator's Dilemma. Which, amusingly, was a widely read book at SGI when I joined - but the company could never apply those lessons to itself.

Something I've long felt about NVIDIA is that they got in some sense both the best and the worst of SGI - the engineers who jumped ship early were very smart, but they also tended to be exceptionally arrogant, convinced they could do no wrong, and hadn't learned from what SGI later went through. So I've been wondering for years if and when that would come back to bite NVIDIA in the same way it did SGI.

At the same time, NVIDIA has built itself into a position very similar to where SGI used to be - they can architect a computer system and graphics together in an integrated fashion. SGI tried to control its CPU destiny as well by buying MIPS, which didn't work out so well in the end.

So, who knows how it will come out. I will say that from my narrow perspective working with NVIDIA in industry standards groups, they are much, much more pleasant to deal with these days than 5-6 years ago - perhaps some of the GeForce FX-era debacles had a good chastening effect.

[Das_Saunamies]

Thanks for the insider insight Jack, good read.

[JazzJackRabbit]

Jack brings up good point. Intel wants to integrate GPU solutions into CPU. That might work, but of course you have to be realistic about performance. You cannot combine high end CPU and high end GPU into one small chip and hope it will work out in the end. Those solutions are going to be limited by heat dissipation. Any on-die GPU solution from intel will never beat high end nVidia offering. However, it might bring up competition at low end/mid end segment. In the immediate future it's a good thing that us consumers will benefit from as nVidia will be forced to bring out better mid range cards and lower prices. However, once again, as Jack has said, if nVidia is not careful that might be the end of them, as R&D of high end solutions that are only bought by a few is simply not profitable.

[thejamppa]

Considering that Ati/AMD is heavily hitting sub 200 $ markets. That is where the money is really. While ATI / AMD seems to be hitting more and more with their consumer and mainstream prodcuts, nVidia seems to hit more and more high end markets. nVidia has released just few Sub 200$ cards. It took drastic meathods to get 8800 GT sub 200 $.

Nvidia currently has Sub 200 $ cards:
8800 GT*
9600 GT*
8600 series
8500 series
8400 series (*)

Most of these are more than year old card. With nVidia naming, there are new 8400 GS and ol 8400 GS under same name in same markets. * = Less than a year old

Let's see what Ati has to offer:
HD 38x0*
HD 3650*
HD 34x0*
HD 2600x
HD 2400x

Its pretty intresting to see actually that Ati has really invested in Sub 200$ cards. with 55nm tech Ati gets edge against nVidia's 65 nm tech in pricing. When nVidia hits 55nm soon, Ati will hit 45nm.

nVidia I think should invest more in sub 200$ category. That after all is where money in GPU is made. Integrated and Sub 200$ cards.

[FartingBob]

Yea, its odd that since nvidia seems to beat ATI in most benchmarks/games at the same price point that they dont have many cheaper cards. They are getting better though, a year or 2 ago they were too busy releasing ultras and GTX's to even notice that the sub $200 market was basically limited to a few ATI choices or older generation cards.

[Cerb]

nVidia needs to work on ways of getting IGP better and better. Intel will not compete at the very top, but as more transistors are crammed in for less money, the difference is going to shrink.

Would you have recommended an office-style user get IGP in '03? Not if you say the quality and performance. Today, AMD or nVidia IGP are great, and can even play old games well. What about five years from now? Ten years?

I think Jack's SGI perspective is spot-on. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.

[seraphyn]

Intel is trying to push Nvidia out of the lower and mid end market, which is where the most money is made. On top of that Intel started with a bit of smacktalk about GPU's being obsolete.
Nvidia responds with some bad mouthing, nothing that wasn't to be expected though.

They just need to be carefull they don't pull a Sony..

[LG is noisy]

not logical at all

ATI = AMD

so...

Nvidia = Intel.

things should be like that. In fact, most of intel users own an nvidia card, while most AMD users go for ATI. ¿psichological issues? or maybe logical?

[nutball]

In fact, most of intel users own an nvidia card, while most AMD users go for ATI.

Proof please.

[Avalanche]

Well, for most of the last 18 months the best discrete cards have been Nvidia and the best CPUs have been Intel. Those make an obvious combination. I can't think of an argument for the ATI + AMD combo, although AMD is obviously trying to sell both using their hybrid graphics system.

[chapmani]

There is one interesting point in this "war of words" that I haven't seen discussed.

Up to now Nvidia has produced chipsets for both Intel and AMD processors. Does this tiff mean Nvidia will shy away from making new Intel chipsets?

Logically, ones already in development would be followed through to completion, but they might rethink building something in the future.

I suppose it all depends on how nasty this fight gets.

[Matija]

Have you missed this one?

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... -war-intel

[nutball]

There is one interesting point in this "war of words" that I haven't seen discussed.

Up to now Nvidia has produced chipsets for both Intel and AMD processors. Does this tiff mean Nvidia will shy away from making new Intel chipsets?

The same logic might dictate that NVIDIA would shy away from making chipsets for AMD, on the grounds that they own their arch-competitor ATI.

[Spare Tire]

Well, since intel will only be making IGP for intel, if nvidia wanted to cut the grass underneath intel's feet, they'll have to be making IGPs for intel too.