July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Nvidia announced its Tegra 4 mobile processor tonight at a press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The new chip will be at the heart of a next generation of smartphones and tablets that will be as powerful as laptops and personal computers from just a short time ago.

Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, said the chip is the fastest processor in the world for use in tablets and smartphones. The chip has 72 graphics cores and four microprocessor cores. It can process 4G LTE wireless signals and load web pages fast, he said in a press conference at the Rain nightclub in the Palms hotel tonight.

The new Tegra 4-based tablet could load a web page in 27 seconds, compared with 50 seconds for a Google Nexus 10 tablet, which uses a Samsung 5250 chip.

“Tegra 4 is the fastest application processor in the world today,” Huang said.

It is faster than Apple’s A6X processor in the new iPad when it comes to loading web sites, Huang said.

The chip also enables cool photo processing, such as high-dynamic range, where images with both dark and light parts come out clearly. Huang, pictured in the middle, right, demonstrated just how much better pictures with dark subjects in the foreground and bright objects in the background could look.

Tegra 4 is also part of the Project Shield mobile game console that Nvidia introduced this evening.

In gamer talk, Nvidia says it is unveiling a new weapon of choice for gamers today. In English, that means a new graphics chip. Starting at $299, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti GPU (graphics processing unit) is a new midlevel graphics chip that can keep up with the latest high-end PC games.

The new chip, pictured within the add-on graphics card above, is based on the powerful Nvidia Kepler architecture that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company introduced in March with its high-end chip, the GeForce GTX 680.This new chip is the kind of gadget that will help the PC take back the throne of top gaming machine from the video game consoles.

When Nvidia launched that chip, it reclaimed the throne as the world’s fastest graphics chip, something only gamers or scientists at NASA could appreciate. The new chip will make its way to more of the mass-market, price-conscious gaming enthusiasts. As such, Nvidia says it will bring blazing-fast game graphics to a much wider market.

The chip is a sequel to the GTX 560 Ti (based on the previous-generation Fermi architecture) from 2011. The 660 Ti is 41 percent faster than the 560 Ti, and it is 58 percent faster than the GTX 470 chip from 2010. The 660 Ti falls below the GTX 670, GTX 680, and dual-GPU GTX 690 in the graphics hierarchy. As such, it is Nvidia’s most affordable high-end chip.

The GTX 660 Ti has support for DirectX 11 tessellation, TXAA, and PhysX technologies. That means it will play games faster, with smoother imagery and more realism. Using tessellation means that a character such as Max Payne from Max Payne 3 will have ears that look real, rather than blocky or jagged (as pictured). It can drive three displays from a single graphics card. James Wang, product manager, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the 660 Ti can keep up with rival cards that cost $50 more while consuming 25 percent less power.

Nvidia said that the 660 Ti will run Max Payne 3 at 44 frames per second, compared to a barely acceptable 29 frames per second on the GTX 470. The new Secret World game will run at 61 frames per second on the 660 Ti, compared to 31 frames per second on the GTX 470. The TXAA anti-aliasing technology means that buildings won’t shimmer when you move down a street in a realistic shooter game.

When you put two GTX 660 Ti cards paired together in a single machine, the performance beats rival Advanced Micro Devices’ chip by 21 percent. Those who buy a new GPU from a participating retailer or web site will get a voucher for a free copy of Gearbox Software’s Borderlands 2, which launches next month. Borderlands 2 runs at 78 frames per second on a 660 Ti, compared to 45 frames per second on a GTX 470. Nvidia says the 660 Ti is 20 percent to 30 percent faster at running games than the AMD Radeon HD 7870.

The 660 Ti is based on a 28-nanometer Kepler architecture (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter). It has 1,344 CUDA cores and consumes 150 watts of power.

Suppliers shipping cards with the new 660 Ti include ASL, ASUS, Colorful, ECS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, Jetway, Leadtek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, PNY, Sparkle, and Zotac.

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Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, made the announcement of the GeForce GTX 690 graphics card at the Nvidia Games Festival in Shanghai, where more than 6,000 gamers are attending the event.

The GTX 690 has two of Nvidia’s most powerful graphics chips based on the codenamed Kepler graphics architecture. The card has an exotic look with an exterior frame made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum. It has a fan housing made from thixomolded magnesium alloy, and it delivers high performance with lower power using a heavy-duty but efficient power supply.

The GTX 690 has 3,072 Nvidia CUDA cores, which can handle both graphics and non-graphics processing tasks. The card delivers close to double the frame rates of the Nvidia GTX 680, which has a single Kepler-based graphics chip. The single-card 690 is more power efficient and quieter than a system with two GTX 680 cards running in SLI configuration. Nvidia introduced the 680 last month.

The new GeForce GTX 690 card will be available in limited quantities on May 3 with wider availability on May 7. Add-in card partners include ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit, and Zotac.

The price is expected to be $999.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The machine runs with Intel’s powerful Sandy Bridge microprocessor. It also uses a discrete graphics chip from Nvidia under the name GeForce GT 640M. The graphics processing unit (GPU) is based on the upcoming Kepler architecture that Nvidia plans to reveal in the near future. The chip has 384 processor cores running at 625 megahertz.

Epic Games referred to the Kepler graphics chip when it showed a system running its “Samaritan” demo, a spectacular 3D graphics showcase animation, last week at the Game Developers Conference. Mark Rein, vice president at Epic Games, said the graphics card was so powerful that it could run the Samaritan demo with one card. A year ago, it took three Nvidia GeForce GT 580 graphics chips to run the Samaritan demo, which is designed to give people an idea of next-generation gaming.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Rory Read (pictured), chief executive of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD, was appointed the new boss of the company in August. In his first appearance before analysts, he said the company is now focused on where the market is going. AMD is a strategic company in the semiconductor industry, as it supplies an alternative to Intel for PC microprocessors. Now it is trying to reach beyond PCs to super-thin devices such as tablets.

“We have a huge opportunity in front of us,” Read said. “How the world is using processors is changing rapidly. This is about stepping out of the shadows and leading.”

In the past, AMD’s chips haven’t had the combination of low-power consumption and processing power. Instead, AMD created fast and brainy chips that could be used in everything from laptops to desktops and servers. But the chips ran too hot to be used in the tiny enclosures of tablet computers.

The first tablet chip coming this year is code-named Hondo. It will combine a microprocessor and graphics in the same chip in a solution that AMD calls an accelerated processing unit, or APU. The Hondo chip will be made with a 40-nanometer manufacturing process and will feature ultra-low-power consumption.

Read said that AMD is in the midst of rebuilding trust with customers and executing on its plan. Lisa Su, head of global products at AMD, said that Windows 8-based tablets will appear this year with AMD chips in them.

“We’re entering an inflection point in the market,” Read said. “We’ve got to see the opportunity in the market and execute on it. We have to build trust, change the architecture, and capture where the puck is going.”

AMD has been chasing Intel for a long time and now it faces competition from ARM-based rivals in tablets. But AMD is in a much healthier financial state than it has been in the past; the company has more than $2 billion in debt, but it generates more than $500 million in free cash flow,  so that it can continue to pay down that debt, said Thomas Seifert, chief financial officer.

AMD laid off 10 percent of its employees in the fall, but Read, who was previously the No. 2 executive at AMD customer Lenovo, said the company still has 10,000 employees, including 7,000 engineers. Those engineers will be key to ensuring that AMD does not get stuck between Intel at the high end of the market and the low-end ARM-based chips that are already entrenched in the smartphone and tablet market.

In the past, AMD focused on the PC, server, discrete graphics and the embedded (appliance) market.

“We’ve been in this model of an unhealthy duopoly (a reference to Intel) and we’ve been pulled along in the gravitational force,” he said.

AMD will also refresh the reset of its line-up with its code-named Brazos 2.0 chip with a faster TurboCore and universal serial bus 3.0 capability in a 40-nanometer solution. AMD will also launch Trinity, a second-generation APU built with a more-advanced 32-nanometer process. That will feature significant performance and power improvements. And AMD will also debut this year its Southern Islands stand-alone graphics chip, which has a next-generation graphics core and other cool features. It will be built with AMD’s most advanced 28-nanometer process.

Read and his team also revealed the company’s line-up for 2013. In 2013, AMD will launch Temash, a second-generation APU as a successor to the Hondo tablet chip. It will feature the new Jaguar processing core.

AMD is also creating Kabini, a chip for laptops with Jaguar cores and other low-power features. For the performance segment, it will launch Kaveri, a third-generation APU with Steamroller cores. And it will also launch in 2013 a new graphics chip, code-named Sea Islands.

The Trinity mobile chip coming this year will run at about 35 watts and have low-voltage capability at 17 watts to 25 watts. The chips will have two to four cores under the Piledriver code name and will feature a second-generation DX11 graphics core. Su said that thin low-power laptops will appear this year with Trinity chips. She said that Trinity-based products will be available in the market this summer.

For the desktop in 2012, AMD will launch Vishera, which will have four to eight Piledriver cores. It will also launch a version of Trinity for desktops.

In the mid-range mobile market, AMD will have its Brazos 2.0 chips with two Bobcat processor cores and DirectX 11 graphics. The same kind of chip will be used in desktops.

And for tablets, AMD will launch Hondo with one to two Bobcat cores. Hondo will run at 4.5 watts. In 2013, everything gets faster and better. Kaveri will have two to four Steamroller cores. Kabini will have two to four Jaguar cores. And Tamesh will have two Jaguar cores. All will also have next-generation graphics.

In servers, AMD will also have a series of chips ranging from four to 16 cores.

Chip-maker Nvidia showed that a tablet computer with its new Tegra 3 processor for mobile devices can run Windows 8.

Huang made the announcement at the company’s press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Tegra 3 uses the ARM architecture rather than the Intel-dominated x86 architecture, so it is interesting that the ARM-based Tegra 3 can now run Windows, which has been Intel-based for many years.

Microsoft announced last year that it would add ARM-based processors to the chips that can run Windows 8. Now the day is near when ARM-based vendors such as Nvidia will crack the hold that Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have had on PC chips.

“I can’t wait to ship it,” Huang said. “This is going to be a fantastic tablet year, with (Google’s) Ice Cream Sandwich and Windows 8.”

Nvidia, which is the largest stand-alone maker of PC graphics chips, spent most of its press conference showing how well rich applications can run on Nvidia-based tablets with Tegra 3 chips. Huang showed off the graphics features of Tegra 3, playing cool 3D games such as Wipeout HD and Shadowgun (a first-person shooter game) on an Nvidia-based tablet. Huang used one of the best pro gamers on the planet, Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendell to demonstrate the game on an Asustek Transformer Prime tablet-and-PC hybrid.

Huang sang the praises of Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Google Android operating system, which he said unites the fragmented pieces of Android. The Eee Pad Transformer Prime is available for sales today, running Ice Cream Sandwich.

Jerry Shen, chief executive of Asustek, said that his company had just announced a 7-inch Tegra 3-based tablet for $249. That’s a very low price for a tablet computer using a quad-core Tegra 3 chip. It has all-day battery life and can run cool games.

Huang also announced a surprise feature of Tegra 3 called DirectTouch. It means that Tegra’s fifth “ninja” processor can handle the processing of touchscreen inputs that are normally handled by microcontrollers. Huang said that the ninja processor is much faster than microcontrollers, and can triple the performance of touchscreen processing.

Huang closed with a note that the Tegra 3 will appear in “some of the world’s fastest cars,” including a Lamborhini model, in addition to cars being made by Audi. Audi evidently has more announcements about car electronics systems coming up.

Intellectual Ventures, the research company founded by Nathan Mhyrvold, created a “laser fence” to protect homes from malaria-bearing mosquitoes. It’s a great example of taking technologies that were invented for one purpose and adapting them for another.

The laser fence taps an Nvidia graphics chip to process the data coming in from a camera to identify a mosquito in real-time and then activate the laser to zap it.

“You have to recognize that it’s a mosquito, versus all of the other bugs that might be flying around, recognize that it’s a female mosquito, and then shoot it down. That recognition of trying to find that mosquito while it’s flying around is done on the GPU,” said Dan Vivoli, senior vice president of marketing at Nvidia in Santa Clara, Calif., in an interview with KGO-TV.

Malaria still kills a million people a year, mostly in Africa, where pesticides and bed nets are not extremely effective. The Intellectual Ventures researchers say they think that a mosquito zapper can be built for about $50. Incidentally, Intellectual Ventures has been blasted for being a “patent troll” because it is suing some tech companies. This is an example of how the company invents interesting technologies as well. The company would likely find a partner to mass-produce a laser fence.

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The Fusion chips represent AMD’s attempt to escape its underdog status in the multibillion-dollar microprocessor market, where Intel has roughly 80 percent of the market share. The company started working on Fusion in 2006 after it bought graphics chip maker ATI Technologies. The company made the announcement this week at CES, the tech extravaganza which traditionally sets the agenda for hot gadgets for the year.

It’s the culmination of the biggest bet that AMD has made in computer and chip design, said Rick Bergman, general manager of the AMD products group which designed the Fusion family of chips.

“As far back as 2005, we saw that the integration of the CPU (central processing unit) and the GPU (graphics processing unit) was inevitable,” Bergman (pictured right) said in an interview.

AMD took a while to get its chips out. Its first attempt to build a Fusion chip using 45-nanometer manufacturing technology turned out to be a false start. The team realized it would have to wait for 32-nanometer manufacturing (which is akin to making a drawing with a finer pencil) to cram all of the circuitry needed into a combo chip.

Now the need for the better 3D performance is pronounced. Desktops and laptops are being used for graphics-rich applications like never before, with features such as stereoscopic 3D, Blu-ray movies, rich 3D games, and 3D features in operating system user interfaces.

Many of the new computers will be available for sale this week, since AMD has been shipping its new Fusion microprocessors for weeks now. The chips are part of AMD’s code-named Brazos platform, which contains all of the chips needed to make the processing part of a computer. Brazos can use either the code-named Zacate or Ontario Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), which are the combo chips. Each Zacate or Ontario chip uses a brand new microprocessor core, code-named Bobcat.

The new chips range in performance, depending on whether they use one or two Bobcat cores, and they generate 9 watts to 18 watts, which is low enough to be used in most laptops. Laptops with the chips will cost $300 to $400 and desktops will likely cost around $700. The machines will have battery life of around 10 to 12 hours.

While Intel’s combo chips have moderate microprocessor performance coupled with weak graphics, AMD’s combo chips have strong graphics performance. AMD’s Fusion chips are thus being used in models that feature strong graphics performance. The APUs are made with a 40-nanometer manufacturing process by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The Zacate and Ontario chips — aimed at mobile users — are just the first of AMD’s Fusion family of combo chips. More chips based on the Llano code name will be out later in the first half of the year; those chips will target mainstream laptop and desktop users. AMD claims that its best Brazos platform will be able to run graphics 11 times faster than the Intel Atom 550, which was one of Intel’s mainstay low-cost mobile processors in 2010. The more important comparison will concern how much faster AMD’s Fusion chips are than Intel’s combo chip, code-named Sandy Bridge, which is also debuting at CES.

Over time, AMD will make Fusion chips that can be part of any computer, from netbooks and tablets to high-end desktops and laptops.

AMD is also announcing today its newest stand-alone mobile graphics chips, dubbed the AMD Radeon HD 6000M series of graphics chips for notebook computers. AMD has grabbed the No. 1 market share in notebook computers and it expects that to continue, as it has hundreds of design wins for its 6000M graphics chip, which can power multiple screens.

The 6000M is AMD’s second-generation DX11 mobile chip (referring to Microsoft’s most-advanced graphics standard) and it has already shipped more than 25 million DX11 chips to 10 major computer makers. The new version can handle 3D Blu-ray movies and other features. The fastest new mobile chip, the 6900M, is 37 percent faster than its predecessor. The chip has 40 percent faster tessellation, a graphics smoothing feature that Nvidia has proven it can do better in its chips. And the new chips use AMD’s EyeSpeed technology, which uses the graphics chip for non-graphics applications.

Most of the laptops with the new mobile graphics chip are shipping in the first quarter.

Was Fusion the right move for AMD?

“We can compare notes in a year,” Bergman said. “We expect it to grab market share. But to be No. 1 would be a heck of a goal.”

AMD created a promo video for Fusion below. The tough dude at the end is none other than Dirk Meyer, chief executive of AMD.

Code-named Sandy Bridge, the chip will figure prominently in the keynote speech of Intel chief executive Paul Otellini, who kicks off the Intel Developer Forum event in San Francisco on Monday.

The processor-graphics combo chip is available in prototypes now and will ship to customers in early 2011. It will target low-end desktop computers and laptops, and could cause a big headache for Nvidia, the maker of stand-alone graphics chips.

The Sandy Bridge chip is the latest attempt to put an end to the ongoing debate about whether graphics processing should be done with a much more powerful 3D graphics processing unit, or GPU, or if it can be handled better as part of a computer’s central processing unit, CPU, also known as the microprocessor.

Intel launched a combo chip last year that glued together two chips in a single package. But Nvidia laughed that chip off as brain-dead when it came to running the top 30 computer games. But this second-generation effort, Sandy Bridge, combines the two chips into one and poses a greater threat to Nvidia. Anand Lal Shimpi, a noted hardware reviewer at Anandtech, said he thinks entry-level GPUs will be unnecessary in the wake of Sandy Bridge’s introduction. (See Anandtech chart at right, which compares the performance of existing Intel-compatible integrated graphics chips, where a graphics chip is combined with a chip set).

“Is it enough to kill all discrete graphics? No,” Anandtech wrote. “But it’s good enough to really threaten the entry-level discrete market.”

One of the reasons Intel can do this is Moore’s Law, the notion formulated by former Intel chairman Gordon Moore that says chip performance doubles every couple of years. As it makes circuitry smaller, it can fit more electronics onto a chip, improving performance. By moving to a new generation of manufacturing technology, Intel can combine a capable microprocessor (with four cores, or processing brains) with a decent graphics component.

Intel’s Otellini said during the company’s recent earnings call that Intel was accelerating its investment in new 32-nanometer manufacturing technology because of strong demand from PC makers. Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices is preparing to launch its own hybrid chips, under the Fusion brand name, early next year.

Nvidia, meanwhile, continues to be a naysayer on the capabilities of hybrid chips and is skeptical of Intel’s (as yet unreleased) performance claims.

“They are launching a faster turbo-prop in a world that has moved on to jets,” said Ken Brown, an Nvidia spokesman.

You would expect that, since Nvidia doesn’t have its own microprocessor. But the company points out that Intel’s Sandy Bridge won’t be able to run DirectX 11, which is the graphics standard from Microsoft that governs whether developers can take advantage of certain cool graphics features. Nick Knupffer, spokesman for Intel, says that Intel is working on boosting its investment in driver technologies so that it will be able to run more games with better graphics.

“Integrated graphics and standalone graphics each have their place in the market in terms of performance and power consumption,” said Dean McCarron, analyst at Mercury Research. “Both graphics segments have coexisted for more than a decade, during which the capabilities of both segments have improved tremendously. It is highly unlikely either segment will displace the other, and increasingly we have seen active coexistence, particularly in the mobile market where computer makers are configuring notebooks to make use of both types of GPUs in the same platform.”

Sandy Bridge does have some features that aficionados will appreciate, such as the ability to display stereoscopic 3D Blu-ray videos and high-definition TV. It can support the Intel Wireless Display, which can display the image on your laptop on the big screen TV in your home. And it will have high-performance transcoding, or the ability to translate video from one format to another so that it can run on just about any device.

Intel recognizes that it isn’t going to kill off the market for $600 graphics cards that hardcore gamers want. But the market trends favor its direction, Knupffer said. By 2014, about 80 percent of the PCs shipped are expected to have hybrid chips, which Intel calls Processor Graphics, according to market researcher iSuppli.

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