NVIDIA Analyst Day: Jen-sun Goes to the Mat With Intel
by Derek Wilson on April 11, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Tackling the Market Share Myth
Largely, 2007 and 2008 have been big years for NVIDIA's growth. With the rock solid performance domination of G80 since the last quarter of 2006 - a situation that is largely unheard of in the usually very fast paced and aggressive graphics market - confidence in NVIDIA (or rather a lack of confidence in the competition) has helped bolster their position in the industry as a whole. AMD certainly still offers some good price/performance alternatives in the midrange, as they can compete in price with the added flexibility of their smaller GPU and fab process. But they don't have the high margin high end market or the mind share to match NVIDIA right now.
The market gains made by the NVIDIA juggernaut combine with some interesting insight into sales data have combined to show NVIDIA as the current king of the roost in terms of desktop graphics sales. For a long time, Intel had been able to claim that it shipped a higher volume of computer graphics hardware than anyone in the world. This is true due to the pervasiveness of Intel's integrated chipsets on the desktop and in mobile solutions. Intel does offer a good solution for people who are uninterested in graphics performance or quality. They offer a 2D solution that supports a minimal set of DirectX features but, as Jen-sun said, "is a joke" when compared to any real 3D hardware.
So what's different aside from the already clear gains NVIDIA has made in the market place? NVIDIA says that something called double attachment is much to blame for inaccuracy of the data spread by Intel and analysts. Jen-sun claims that a huge proportion of Intel motherboards with include integrated graphics have discrete graphics cards plugged into them. The idea is that Intel basically gives away their integrated hardware and there's no reason not to ship it in a system. But shipments say nothing to illustrate the actual usage of these parts.
As an example, Jen-sun made the point that if Intel integrates a tiny graphics core on to all their CPUs, they would be able to claim 100% market share of graphics running on Intel systems using their current logic. The problem is that if you give away crap it doesn't mean people will use it. To help determine double attachment, NVIDIA looked at a couple different metrics relating to CPU and GPU sales.
With total GPU shipments at 336 Million units and total CPU shipments hitting only 273 Million, double attachment can help explain why so many more GPUs were sold than CPUs: if CPU sales more closely represents the number of systems sold or built last year, there are a large number of computers with unused integrated graphics in them which count as two shipped GPUs. This overlap would mean that Intel's shipped graphics number greatly over inflate the market impact of their graphics products.
Of course, we can't ignore the fact that the average PC enthusiast will likely upgrade their graphics card before their CPU and that multi-GPU solutions do account for at least a few of those shipments. We can't discount all of these shipments as double attachment, but it seems at least plausible that NVIDIA's real market share is somewhere between 65% and 75% based on the numbers they showed us. This is definitely more impressive than what we see on the surface.
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Wiz33 - Wednesday, June 4, 2008 - link
Intel have no bargaining power in the gamer circle. Even if they withheld licensing for the next gen platform. Gamer will just stay with the current gen chipset for nVidia SLi. Since games are usually much more GPU bound than CPU.In my case, I'm a serious gamer (but FPS lite)). I just clocked over 40 hours on Mass Effect PC since installing it last Thursday evening. In my current setup with a E6750 and 8800GTS. I still have tons of upgrade path both in CPU and GPU without moving onto the next Intel platform.
sugs - Sunday, May 11, 2008 - link
As an IC designer, I can tell you right away that 3D graphics on the scale of the products that NVidia/ATI produce is not easy. Just look at the demise of Matrox, S3 and others.I think Intel is going to have problems getting the performance of their offerings to a competitive level in the near future but they do have alot of resources and it might be different 5 years down the line.
kenour - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
Dear Jen-sun,All Intel want is SLI on their chips (AS DO A LOT OF GAMERS)... so neck up you little arrogant prick and licence it to them! Don't come out with your little chest puffed our playing the tough guy! If you lease SLI technology to Intel so their highend chipsets will support SLI (Officially! Without having to use hacked drivers) for say $50US, and Intel SLI enabled all their X38/X48 boards, imagine the money that would come in. But you're too busy trying to hold on to the pathetic market share of your pathetic chipsets. There are so many gamers like me out there that would gladly purchase a second high end nvidia card and SLI them, but wont, because there is no way we would use an nvidia chipset... I would pay a $50US premium on a mobo to have SLI on an Intel chipset, and then I would buy another high end card. So put your pride aside and give them (AND US) what they want! More money for you, better gaming platform for us.
Lots of Love,
Kenour.
p.s. Yes I'm still pissed off about the rumour that SLI would be available on the X38 :P It was reported here and Tom's from memory, then retracted a week later... Was the happiest week of my life :P (well, in regards to the PC world).
ielmox - Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - link
I think nVidia is holding on to SLI as a marketing gimmick, because SLI doesn't make economic sense except for an extremely small market of wealthy and elitist gamers. I don't see any real value to SLI aside from the bragging rights of somewhat increased performance at a huge cost, and I think nVidia's strategy is guided by this knowledge.SLI uses a lot more power, generates much more heat, is buggier, harder to set up, and all this while offering diminishing returns compared with a dual or even single GPU card. In fact, unless you're SLI'ing the latest and greatest cards, you are better off with a non-SLI setup. Realistically, only a very tiny minority of gamers would ever go for an SLI set-up, so I'm guessing nVidia understands there is not much potential for financial gain.
SLI is a bit of a white elephant to most people.
gochichi - Monday, April 14, 2008 - link
The intel/nvidia combo is totally the "it" combo in computer gaming and has been for some time. AMD is working on "tidy-little-packages" with their new integrated graphics platform that can just about "game" right now, not in 2010.Nvidia, not Intel are the people that need to be working on an Intel platform equivalent in the integrated sector.
I am glad to be an Nvidia customer, I am also glad to see their not taking cheap-shots at AMD. They even came out kind of defending AMD which is understandable, both are smaller companies and both respect each other's products.
I can just picture it now: AMD laptops with synergy for $500 or less and no equivalent Intel solution due to a lack of cooperation with Nvidia.
perzy - Monday, April 14, 2008 - link
Well the thing is I think that Intel has no choice. The x86-cpu is DEAD . The heatwall keeps the frequenzy down (seen any 4 GHz chip's lately?)and well they cant keep adding another core forever. Intel is in dire PANIC, belive me. They must branch out and the GPU, PPU and maybe a little audioPU is the chips with any development years left in them.
And no there are no quantum or laser chips yet...
Come on, if a blond guy from Sweden like me can understand this why dont you spell it out for everybody?
Galvin - Monday, April 14, 2008 - link
Actually hitting 4gz for intel would be easy. hell a lot of people get those things to 4gz on air.So yeah they could do 4gz if they wanted to :)
perzy - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
So do you think that Intel is content and everything is going according to plan? We should be at 10 GHz now if according to that plan, and using the netburst architecture...The 3,8 GHz P4 was so hot that Intel had to ship it with high-expensive thermal paste. Otherwise it throttle constantly.
It's strange to me that everybody(hardware sites for example) seems to think this heat thing is a little snag, a bump in the road. It isen't !
'Oh lookey, not i get 2 cores for the price of one. How nice!'
The chipmakers are trying to hide the crises their in. (Stock prices..)
Why else do they buy GPU and PPU-makers?
Galvin - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
I dont think intel has a leg to stand on in the graphics market.The point i was making is if intel wants to sell core duo at 4GHZ its very doable since people can clock these to 4GHZ today on air cooling. Thats the only point I was making.
Galvin - Sunday, April 13, 2008 - link
I listened to the whole presentation.Nvidia has a whole computer on a chip. Didn't even know they had this. Was impressed, this will be nice for mobile devices. Have to wait and see where this goes.
Cuda known it for as long as anyone else. I cant wait till compressors for zip, Encoding, etc all become real time. Something no CPU will ever pull off.
We all know intel is weak in graphics, intel has tons of cash. I dont think Nvidia is going anywhere and they'll most likely get bigger in time.
Theres only 2 companies in the world that can make this kind of graphics technology AMD/Nvidia. To make claim that intel can just magically make a gpu to compete in a few years is crazy imo.