VizWorld.com

 Jon Peddie has a new free analysis available of the GPU market, covering everything from old integrated units to new hybrid units.  In it he covers lots of historical data and makes some predictions, but I found the image above particularly interesting.

In it he proposes that the integrated space (currently dominated by Intel) will quickly disappear in the growth of Hybrid systems like Fusion & Sandy Bridge.  While this may not surprise many, combine this with the fact that so many of these systems go into servers or embedded designs, never actually using the graphics capability available.  The end result is that the discrete GPU, theorized by many to be dying, will actually be around for quite a while to come.

Read his paper for all the details.

An Analysis of the GPU Market – Jon Peddie Research Analyst Presentations.

Hardware gpu, jpr

Last week Microsoft made waves with claims that WebGL was an insecure and dangerous standard that could bring us a whole new level of web-based malware, exposing millions of systems to new threats.  I personally found their claims overblown, but Jon Peddie (as usual) has a great balanced writeup on the real story behind Microsoft’s claims based primarily on a report from Context Security which found two possible problems.  One problem is just a classic Denial of Service, that exposing the video card to the browser makes it easy for someone to simply hang the card.  The more interesting attack, IMO, is this cross-domain glitch:

Context demonstrated that a shader program could implement a loop that could be used to approximately reconstruct an image from another domain—a serious potential security hole. Khronos had previously debated on its open mailing list whether this was a real-world possibility and once the exploit was demonstrated by Context, Khronos worked swiftly with the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) to mandate the CORS spec (Cross Origin Resource Sharing) in both the HTML and WebGL specs to make sure servers have to explicitly allow access to media assets across domains.

So yes, as with any new technology there are a few glitches in the early version that will get ironed out with time and more-eyes.

via GraphicSpeak » WebGL: kill it before it grows?.

Hardware, Science jpr, khronos, microsoft, webgl

Yesterday JPR came out with some results of NVidia’s Discrete Market share, making note of their loss to AMD and Intel’s Sandy Bridge.  Several sites quickly jumped on to proclaim the death of NVidia, but some new data from Mercury Research shows this is just the usual ebb and flow of the market.

This loss of share partly reflects NV’s decision to exit the integrated chipset market, but it’s also an ominous sign of things to come. Sandy Bridge and Llano, once fully launched, will threaten NV’s price points at the low end of the market. Intel’s Ivy Bridge could mount a fresh challenge against NV’s low-end bastions by the end of the year, while AMD’s Llano is rumored to be significantly faster than Sandy Bridge’s GPU.

via JPR Figures Show Nvidia Losing Market Share – HotHardware.

Hardware jpr, nvidia

Jon Peddie’s latest AIB Report is out and reveals that the fourth-quarter ended down a bit lower than expected, shipping slightly fewer units than Q3.  NVidia showed some strong growth, shipping more units and growing their market share, while AMD took a beating in both respects.

Overall shipments of graphics AIBs for the year, 2010 came in lower than the recession year 2009 at 72.8 million units compared to 75.3 million for 2009 – a disappointing result given the enthusiastic start of the year. Shipments in Q4 2010 did not exceed Q3 as expected. Nvidia increased its shipments by 4.1% from Q3, while AMD declined -4.8% for the same period.

And in terms of market share, market leader Nvidia increased its share by 3.6% from Q3, while AMD’s market share declined -5.2% for the same period. On a year-to-year basis AMD increased its market share by 12.6% while Nvidia lost 6.2% of market share.
The AIB market is fueled at the high-end by the gamer, small in volume (~3m a year) but high in dollars (average spend for an AIB ~$300.) The volume comes from the mainstream. And GPU-compute is adding to sales on the high end. The workstation market is about the same size as the gamer, but much it is characterized by higher average selling prices (ASPs).

They attribute the lower figures to the growth of the IGP thanks to AMD Fusion and Intel’s Clarkstown, and the growth of laptops and tablets which can’t make use of addin cards.

I would love to see these figures revised to include AMD’s Fusion card, and see if that pushes AMD higher than NVidia.  I doubt it would (it’s too young), but would make for an interesting comparison to see all of AMD Graphics, all of NVidia Graphics, and all of Intel’s graphics.

Read more…

Hardware amd, jpr, nvidia

Jon Peddie has a great look at the future of computer graphics (complete with a pic of Dick Van Dyke & William Shatner crashing his luncheon, and my blue shirt poking out behind Shatner’s elbow), that really looks at what’s going to happen in the next few years.

The Semicans will give us the engines at ridiculously affordable prices which in turn will allow the Systematics to build boxes and displays that a new generation of Algorithmics will use to give us procedural AI simple UI tools for things like facial simulation and/or recognition, robotic control in a virtual rig or a hardwired machine, and natural language realtime translation conversations with peers and machine.

Someone should get Jon Peddie up on stage at SIGGRAPH sometime. I think he’ld do better than the disappointing “Future Directions of Graphics Research” panel.

via Leading edge, bleeding edge, or just edgy? – Comments – Publications.

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Analyst group Jon Peddie Research has just published a forecast for the computer graphics industry (one week before SIGGRAPH, even, what a coincidence) where they track the recent ‘bounce back’ from the last year’s recession.  They predict that the recent slowdown, combined with aging equipment, improved algorithms, and an insatiable thirst for faster better graphics will help to drive the industry to new record-breaking heights.

Today, software programs for making movies and computer games, designing products, and creating simulations are exploiting the features of today’s CG hardware. We’re seeing the results in amazing realism and real time capabilities for the next generation of films and designs, and the trend is accelerating.

The demand for programmers, artists, scientists, and designers has picked up again and firms are actively looking for people who can use and exploit these new programs and their associated hardware accelerators. The economic recession has caused a slow down but it’s going to look like a small bump in the road by 2013.

I do like that he ackowledges how Scientific visualization as an industry has largely stagnated in recent years, but is primed for a resurgence with new hardware and capabilities.  In my work, I’ve personally seen this as GPU’s are an easier sell to HPC users as they can dual-purpose them now as Visualization Accelerators and Compute Accelerators, and software-emulated rendering systems like Mesa are beginning to break down at extreme scales.  GPUs right now may be more of a panacea than a cure, but they do a great job alleviating the pain of rendering modern simulation results and look to be scaling such that better algorithms (like Ray Tracing) can benefit greatly from the acceleration as well.

via Jon Peddie Research Says the CG market will exceed $150 billion in 2013 – Comments – Press Releases.

Science jpr

A nice writeup from graphics analyst Jon Peddie covers the growing market of large-scale visualization (multiple-screens) and does a great job drilling down to the main reason why they’ve become so popular recently:

In the past, circa 1990, large-scale visualization systems were built by Evans and Sutherland, SGI, and various military contractors like General Electric, Lockheed, and Mechdyne. These systems sold for $100,000 to a few million dollars. The costs were due to installation, and low-volume state-of-the-art equipment such as high-resolution bright projectors, large powerful workstations, and custom software.

Today, it’s possible to replicate those expensive systems for under $20,000 (not including physical installation and modifications.) And that brings me to the thesis of this discussion – the amazing visualization capabilities offered today on the PC from AMD and Nvidia.

Systems like EyeFinity are really making this more attractive for users, and anyone who’s ever used multiple display can vouch for the amazing impact it can have on your workflow:  The extra screen real-estate makes multitasking and cross-program workflow a breeze.

However, I really loved this sentence later on.

I’ve been testing the systems in our lab using COTS simulation programs otherwise known as FPS games. I’ve run FPS simulation programs on a six monitor API system, and S3D FPS simulation programs on an Nvidia S3D surround system. In both cases, I was extremely satisfied with the performance and the only complaint was the size of the bezels.

I can just imagine a *wink wink* *nod nod* throws in there for good measure.

via The New Visualization – Comments – Blogs.

Hardware jpr

Dr Dobb’s Journal brings us news of a live webcast tomorrow at 2pm Central where Jon Peddie will be talking about the dynamics of the GPU market.  In the description, I found this paragraph particularly interesting:

GPU unit sales have long outstripped PC sales. The average PC has 1.4 GPUs, but that ratio will increase with heterogeneous compute, hybrid, and graphics scaling. The Integrated Processor+ Graphics-based processor will terminate the IGP market without doubt and impact midrange discrete GPU sales. But as good as they will be, they will always have limitations due to power, size, and price, while the need for more graphics, more displays, more compute, or hybrid operation will be satisfied by a discrete GPU.

A average of 1.4 GPU’s in the average PC?  So for every computer running a single integrated graphics chip, there’s a matching computer running SLI?  That doesn’t sound right to me, unless they’re counting ignored/forgotten GPU’s (desktops with a real NVidia card installed), or perhaps they are only considering PC’s in the last year?

via Dr Dobbs – Dynamics In the GPU Market.

Hardware conference, gpu, jpr

Jon Peddie has just published on his blog his info on what may be inside the new Apple iPad.  He covers what we already know (the 9.7″ IPS LCD screen, 4:3 Aspect Ratio, LED Backlights, etc) and then gets into what he believes the fabled Apple A4 Processor is.

We believe that design includes a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, and Imagination Technologies SGX 535 (see TechWatch vol.10 No.2, page 2) graphics core, and is being fabricated for Apple by Samsung.

The Cortex A9 is the same belief that BSN was passing around, but JPR has a much better track record than BSN on such details so I believe their SGX535 chipset theory much more.  The Graphics Chipset, the SGX535, is the PowerVR chipset that runs the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch.

via Apple’s iPad – The screen and what’s behind it « Jon G. Peddie’s Blog.

Hardware apple, ipad, jpr

Jon Peddie Research has published their year-end financial analysis of the major players in the PC Graphics industry, and found everything growing quite well: a 14% year-to-year growth.

Intel was the leader in Q4’09, elevated by Atom sales for netbooks, as well as strong growth in the desktop segment. AMD gained in the notebook integrated segment, but lost some market share in discrete in both the desktop and notebook segments due to constraints in 40nm supply. Nvidia picked up a little share overall. Nvidia’s increases came primarily in desktop discretes, while slipping in desktop and notebook integrated.

Also, this year saw a new category on the market: CPU-Integrated Graphics (CIG).  While there are only a few offerings to think of right now (Tegra? Larrabee didn’t make it), it’ll continue to grow in coming quarters.

image courtesy of ndevil

via Astounding year-to-year growth in PC graphics; Quarter-to-quarter also beats expectations – Comments – Press Releases.

Hardware 2009, financial, jpr