Hands-On: nVIDIA Press Event 2/26/01
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nVIDIA Press Event
February 26, 2001 By Brian Nakamoto February 27, 2001 As Macs Only! reported last week, Steve Jobs unveiled the GeForce3 at Macworld Expo in Tokyo. For everyone still in awe, I am happy to report that the relationship between Apple and nVIDIA appears nfinitely (sic) healthier than the relationship between Apple and ATI. nVIDIA used the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, CA, this week to officially announce the GeForce3 for all platforms. Here are highlights from nVIDIA's press event of particular interest to Mac users: Jen-Hsun Huang, President and CEO of nVIDIA, opened the press conference with nVIDIA's vision that 3D graphics will be on all platforms everywhere. During the GeForce3 announcement, he mentioned that Steve Jobs called the GeForce3 "a real revolution in graphics." Mr. Huang went on to recap Steve's Luxo Jr. demo and reiterated that it was manipulated in real-time, 270,000 times faster than the Cray supercomputers that originally rendered the production. Mr. Huang then introduced Tony Tomasi, nVIDIA Director of Product Management who presented The Graphics Problem: How do you render 1.3 million pixels with a palette of 2^32 colors in 1/60th of a second? Answer: Break Moore's Law and double the performance of your GPU every 6 months! The GeForce3 with nfiniteFX Engine is the first fully programmable GPU. It's totally accessible by OpenGL, the cross platform standard for 3D supported by Apple. In a nice touch, Mr. Tomasi mentioned Apple as a platform that supports OpenGL. The GeForce3 is also fully accessible by DirectX 8, Microsoft's 3D standard for Windows and Xbox. nVIDIA is "the heart and soul of [Microsoft's] Xbox." The graphics technology of the GeForce3 power the Xbox which will be a serious competitor for Sony's Playstation 2 when it's released this Fall. In addition to games, the GeForce3 has significant ramifications for auto, medical, military and Hollywood applications. nVIDIA has been working with companies in those industries that are extremely interested in the GeForce3. Apple's logo was featured on the GeForce3 Launch Partners slide and Mr. Tomasi paused to point out that nVIDIA was excited to have Apple as a partner. Mr. Huang estimated that the GeForce3 would be priced as the GeForce2 MX is today in 2 years. The GeForce3 has the fastest ramp up in nVIDIA's history. nVIDIA offered jobs to 100 3dfx engineers after their acquisition but the GeForce3 project had already been completed before then. Mr. Huang suggested that NV30, the codename for nVIDIA's next generation GPU, will benefit from the acquisition come next year. The GeForce3 uses less power than its predecessor due to its advanced manufacturing process. There is no need for an external power supply. nVIDIA had been working with Apple for over a year to bring industrial quality OpenGL to the Mac. Apple's audience appeal to nVIDIA. Mr. Huang mentioned Maya and gaming (e.g. Doom 3) as an example. Mr. Huang described nVIDIA's aggressive development on 4 tracks: 1. GPU's nVIDIA is running on Intel and Linux 64-bit architectures in-house. Post Press Conference Apple provided nVIDIA with a G4, Cinema Display and Harman Kardon speaker system to demonstrate an OpenGL demo that was running on Mac OS 9. id Software's Quake 3 and Quake Team Arena were also demonstrated. Quake 3 ran at its highest quality settings and maximum resolution at over 70 frames per second! Be one of 1500 to get a free Mac OS X black leather jacket right here...
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