HP and Dell break out a list of defective NVIDIA GPUs in their respective notebooks
By Jason Mick - August 3, 2008
NVIDIA was recently forced to defend itself against allegations that it was preparing to exit the chipset business. In addition, the company reported weaker than expected earnings, thanks to a charge of $150M USD to $200M USD to cover "defective GPUs" on its mobile offerings. When this news broke many were curious -- which GPUs were affected and what exactly is the problem? Well the answer to the latter is relatively simple -- a number of NVIDIA mobile GPUs had extremely poor thermal tolerances thanks to defects. This leads to early chip death and faulty behaviors, such as artifacting, as chips start to fail.The answer to the first question -- how many -- is just now becoming clear. It appears appears that NVIDIA's mobile offerings are much harder hit than initial conservative estimates. Dell and HP, the two largest computer manufacturers have just released lists of what computers have defective chips. It turns out virtually all the NVIDIA mobile chips are defective. NVIDIA tried to brush off the issue stating that the issue was a "previous-generation" problem. However, it turns out that virtually all 8400M and 8600M chips are defective. These chips make up the bulk of NVIDIA's higher end graphics offerings. While NVIDIA started to roll out the first of its 9 series mobile chips, the 8 series represents the flagship line of its mobile offerings.The low to middle end chips are also virtually all defective. Among the defective lines are the GeForce Go 7000 and 6000 lines, as well as the Quadro NVS 135M and the Quadro FX 360M.
Read more here -->Link
Monday, August 4, 2008
AMD Fusion Details Leaked: 40/32 Nm, Dual-core CPU, RV800 Graphics
by Theo Valich August 4, 2008
AMD pushed Fusion as one of the main reasons to justify its acquisition of ATI. Since then, AMD’s finances have changed colors and are now deep in the red, the top management has changed, and Fusion still isn’t anything AMD wants to discuss in detail. But there are always "industry sources" and these sources have told us that Fusion is likely to be introduced as a half-node chip. It appears that AMD’s engineers in Dresden, Markham and Sunnyvale have been making lots of trips to little island of Formosa lately - the home of contract manufacturer TSMC, which will be producing Fusion CPUs. Our sources indicated that both companies are quite busy laying out the productions scenarios of AMD’s first CPU+GPU chip. The first Fusion processor is code-named Shrike, which will, if our sources are right, consist of a dual-core Phenom CPU and an ATI RV800 GPU core. This news is actually a big surprise, as Shrike was originally rumored to debut as a combination of a dual-core Kuma CPU and a RV710-based graphics unit. A few more quarters of development time gave AMD time to continue working on a low-end RV800-based core to be integrated with Fusion. RV800 chips will be DirectXDirectX 10.1 compliant and are expected to deliver a bit more than just a 55 nm-40 nm dieshrink.
Read more here -->Link
AMD pushed Fusion as one of the main reasons to justify its acquisition of ATI. Since then, AMD’s finances have changed colors and are now deep in the red, the top management has changed, and Fusion still isn’t anything AMD wants to discuss in detail. But there are always "industry sources" and these sources have told us that Fusion is likely to be introduced as a half-node chip. It appears that AMD’s engineers in Dresden, Markham and Sunnyvale have been making lots of trips to little island of Formosa lately - the home of contract manufacturer TSMC, which will be producing Fusion CPUs. Our sources indicated that both companies are quite busy laying out the productions scenarios of AMD’s first CPU+GPU chip. The first Fusion processor is code-named Shrike, which will, if our sources are right, consist of a dual-core Phenom CPU and an ATI RV800 GPU core. This news is actually a big surprise, as Shrike was originally rumored to debut as a combination of a dual-core Kuma CPU and a RV710-based graphics unit. A few more quarters of development time gave AMD time to continue working on a low-end RV800-based core to be integrated with Fusion. RV800 chips will be DirectXDirectX 10.1 compliant and are expected to deliver a bit more than just a 55 nm-40 nm dieshrink.
Read more here -->Link
Nvidia chipsets are history
Whithersoever the axe doth fall
By Charlie Demerjian: Sunday, 03 August 2008
THERE ARE A ton of 'rumors' floating around about Nvidia giving up the ghost on its ailing chipset division. Nvidia is desperately trying to deny it, but don't believe the spin, the division is deader than an Nvidia mobile GPU. Just over a week ago, Nvidia's maximum leader, Jen-Hsun Huang, held a meeting with Taiwanese mobo partners. He directly asked them if there was a reason why Nvidia should stay in the chipset business. You could hear the crickets chirp. In mainland China. No one came up with a reason, so the division was officially killed, and the teams will be rolled into GPU projects. Nvidia PR is having the proverbial hissy-fit, but ignore it, they do that a lot. The INQUIRER has talked to people who were at the meeting, and they confirmed the reports, and are dead convnced that Nvidia chipsets are a thing of the past.
Read more here -->Link
By Charlie Demerjian: Sunday, 03 August 2008
THERE ARE A ton of 'rumors' floating around about Nvidia giving up the ghost on its ailing chipset division. Nvidia is desperately trying to deny it, but don't believe the spin, the division is deader than an Nvidia mobile GPU. Just over a week ago, Nvidia's maximum leader, Jen-Hsun Huang, held a meeting with Taiwanese mobo partners. He directly asked them if there was a reason why Nvidia should stay in the chipset business. You could hear the crickets chirp. In mainland China. No one came up with a reason, so the division was officially killed, and the teams will be rolled into GPU projects. Nvidia PR is having the proverbial hissy-fit, but ignore it, they do that a lot. The INQUIRER has talked to people who were at the meeting, and they confirmed the reports, and are dead convnced that Nvidia chipsets are a thing of the past.
Read more here -->Link
Nano vs. Atom: VIA goes on the offensive
By Parm Mann 4th August, 2008
Back in March, Intel announced its low-power Atom processor for mobile devices and we've since seen an avalanche of Atom-based systems. Intel's competition, announced in May, came in the form of VIA's Nano processor. The successor to VIA's ageing C7 chips was said to offer four times the performance whilst keeping within the same power envelope. Back then, when asked about performance in comparison to Intel's chip, Glenn Henry, president of Centaur Technology, said: "The Nano is definitely faster, I said that originally and I'm very sure of that now." However, Intel's Atom has gone on to power just about every netbook known to man, whilst VIA's Nano seems to have been all but forgotten. In an effort to remind us all about the Atom-beating alternative, VIA has served up a video demonstration highlighting Atom's shortcomings.
Read more here-->Link
Back in March, Intel announced its low-power Atom processor for mobile devices and we've since seen an avalanche of Atom-based systems. Intel's competition, announced in May, came in the form of VIA's Nano processor. The successor to VIA's ageing C7 chips was said to offer four times the performance whilst keeping within the same power envelope. Back then, when asked about performance in comparison to Intel's chip, Glenn Henry, president of Centaur Technology, said: "The Nano is definitely faster, I said that originally and I'm very sure of that now." However, Intel's Atom has gone on to power just about every netbook known to man, whilst VIA's Nano seems to have been all but forgotten. In an effort to remind us all about the Atom-beating alternative, VIA has served up a video demonstration highlighting Atom's shortcomings.
Read more here-->Link
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)