GPU Shipments Drop Significantly

The drop during the Q4 holiday shopping season is also indicative of the low holiday spending seen in virtually all markets. JPR reports that Q4 2008 was the first quarter that shipments had decreased compared to Q3 since 2000. Growth from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008 was down 34.98%.Most of the GPU market focus is aimed at AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA, but smaller firms are still in the market. Matrox held 0.1% of the graphics market; SiS holds 1.1% of the market and VIA holds 1% of the market for GPUs.

President of JPR, Dr. Jon Peddie said in a statement, "The fourth quarter is usually a positive quarter for the computer industry. There has obviously been some inventory problems in the quarter as sales failed to live up to the optimistic expectations of the third quarter, 2008. Vendors were bracing for a slower than usual quarter due to economic factors, but performance this quarter was surprisingly low. Put simply, the market stalled in the fourth quarter. Due to the worldwide financial market meltdown, the U.S. housing market meltdown, layoffs, and media reports, the consumer has hunkered down to wait out the storm."

AMD Neo could ‘crush’ Atom says NVIDIA CEO

Huang discussed the Tegra platform - NVIDIA’s HD-capable mobile chipset - and its potential for devices with up to 10-inch displays. These, he suggests, are possible netbook killers, as they could offer a full keyboard and 2-3 days runtime from a single charge. He also expects to see $199 MIDs with full QWERTY keyboards, based on Tegra, that would be able to surf the internet for two days without rejuicing.

Netbooks using NVIDIA’s Ion platform - that couples an Intel Atom CPU with a NVIDIA GPU - have a target price of just $399, and will give customers the “full PC experience” rather than the “inferior” performance of current devices. That’s the opinion of NVIDIA’s plain-talking cofounder, president, and CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, who has been talking with LaptopMag about the proliferation of mobile devices and ultra-low voltage chipsets. According to Huang, today’s netbook is “a low-cost PC that doesn’t work that well” and that is in fact hurting the PC software industry due to its poor support for common applications.

Intel Details Upcoming New Processor Generations

Marking the next step in Intel's "tick-tock" product strategy and cadence to deliver a new process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year, Intel Corporation will begin producing its next-generation Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year. These new processors benefit from enhancements to the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture and also Intel's industry-leading 45nm Hi-k process technology with its hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.

Intel has more than 15 45nm Hi-k product designs in various stages of development, and will have two 45nm manufacturing fabs in production by the end of the year, with a total of four in production by the second half of 2008 that will deliver tens of millions of these processors. Below are many of the details of the Penryn processor family and a glimpse into some of the key features of Intel's future generation of processors, codenamed Nehalem.

Penryn Family Microarchitecture Innovations

A Range of Products-- Six Penryn family processors, including dual- and quad-core desktop processors and a dual-core mobile processor are all under the Intel Core processor brand name as well as new dual- and quad-core server processors under the Intel® Xeon® processor brand name. A processor for higher-end server multiprocessing systems is also under development. As previously noted, Intel already has a total of 15 45nm products scheduled.

Technical Marvel-- 45nm next-generation Intel® Core™2 quad-core processors will have 820 million transistors. Thanks to our high-k metal transistor invention, think of 820 million more power efficient light bulbs going on and off at light-speeds. The dual-core version has a die size of 107mm2, which is 25 percent smaller than Intel's current 65nm products - and quarter of the size of the average U.S. postage stamp - and operate at the same or lower power than Intel's current dual-core processors.

Deep Power Down for Energy Savings, Improved Battery Life-- The mobile Penryn processor has a new advanced power management state called Deep Power Down Technology that significantly reduces the power of the processor during idle periods such that internal transistor power leakage is no longer a factor. This helps extend battery life in laptops. This is a major advancement over previous generation industry-leading Intel mobile processors.

Intel Dynamic Acceleration Technology Enhanced Performance for Single Threaded Apps-- For the mobile Penryn processor, Intel has enhanced the Intel® Dynamic Acceleration Technology available in current Intel Core 2 processors. This feature uses the power headroom freed up when a core is made inactive to boost the performance of another still active core. Imagine a shower with two powerful water shower heads, when one shower head is turned off, the other has increased water pressure (performance).