Taking graphics technology to Mars
Published: 26 Jan 2004 11:40 GMT
How has the market changed with the rise of the integrated chipset for low-end PCs?
The integrated chipset has captured about 50 percent of the market, and I think that it makes a lot of sense. If you think about corporate desktops alone, there is no fundamental reason why there needs to be a great deal of capability beyond basic 2D and very entry-level 3D graphics to support those applications, like surfing the Web, running Excel or PowerPoint -- whatever it happens to be. Most corporate applications don't require a lot of graphics-processing capability.
I think that two things are going to change that. One is Longhorn. Unless you have some capability in the GPU, you simply aren't going to get the benefit of the 3D interface there. The entire Mac OS X interface is based on a 3D application programming interface. That's why every single Macintosh ships with quite a formidable GPU. My sense is that the PC will move in that direction as well -- using the GPU to enhance the user interface -- to make it more delightful for any user.
The second thing is about bringing rich 3D applications to the desktop. It won't happen in every single company, but companies like Boeing or General Motors that are focused on industrial design -- they have hundreds of parts in their products and want to be able to share that information at the corporate level. That's going to require some level of 3D graphics that's related to computer-aided design applications. But for the time being, there's no fundamental reason for having a lot of graphics processing power on most corporate desktops.
With integrated chipsets accounting for more of the market, how has that changed the nature of Nvidia's relationship with Intel? In some respects, Intel's a competitor as much as a partner.
You could argue that Intel is our biggest competitor. But that's really a symptom of something else that's our biggest competitor.
Wherever a market doesn't require the added value, the GPU horsepower or the vibrancy and fidelity of graphics we deliver -- if that market has no application, and consumers have no need for that capability, those markets will very quickly gravitate toward lesser technologies. So the microprocessor becomes just good enough, and very low-end integrated graphics technology becomes good enough. So is Intel the competitor there, or is it the fact that the markets simply don't need our technology?
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