Software vs Hardware
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From: rohit.nadig on 25 Dec 2006 00:43 > Why burn an algorithm in the hardware when software can implement it with > virtually zero-overhead? What do you think Intel's ASP (Average Selling Price) is today? IMHO, whatever it is, It is dangerously lower than it was in 2000 (when they made about the same revenues $38 billion). 6 years later, they have grown back to the same revenues, but at much lower profit margins. Contrast this with nVidia's ASPs. nVidia's ASP has gone up, and Intel's ASP has gone down. Why is that? nVidia has added features to their chips versus Intel's perf improvements. You can google around to find the many many features they have added to their GPUs. ================================= http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/11/nvidia_launches.html Is the GPU average selling price going to go up relative to the CPU? Jen-Hsun: I don't know. The market will have to decide that. One observation I've made - the GPU has been the only one to increase consistently over 15 years. The GPU has an ASP of $17 when NVIDIA first started. The lowest price was $5. In the course of last 10 years, the ASP of the GPU has gone from low teens to low 30s. Don't know of any component in last 10 years gone up by factor of 3. Or up at all. =================================
From: David Kanter on 26 Dec 2006 01:46
> http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/11/nvidia_launches.html > > Is the GPU average selling price going to go up relative to the CPU? > > Jen-Hsun: I don't know. The market will have to decide that. One > observation I've made - the GPU has been the only one to increase > consistently over 15 years. The GPU has an ASP of $17 when NVIDIA first > started. The lowest price was $5. In the course of last 10 years, the > ASP of the GPU has gone from low teens to low 30s. Don't know of any > component in last 10 years gone up by factor of 3. Or up at all. > ================================= It's not clear to me that this is true. The ASP for discrete GPUs (such as NV products) may have gone up by a factor of three, but it's not clear that the ASP for all graphics has gone up. I recall having to buy video cards to handle 2D images, and buying separate 3D accelerators once upon a time. Contrast that to today: half of the PCs sold have integrated graphics which is 'nearly free'. I'm not sure the price delta between Intel chipsets with and without integrated graphics, but that certainly has to have put a damper on ASP increases. I'm pretty darn sure though that in 1996 I paid a hundred bucks for a graphics card that only did 2D. In contrast, I bet that the difference between an integrated graphics and non-integrated graphics chipset is pretty close to $5 or so. I just tried looking to find prices for Intel's 946GZ and PL chipsets (the latter has no integrated graphics, they are otherwise identical) online without much luck. Perhaps someone can find information on two chipsets that only differ in the presence of integrated graphics... The bottom line is that I'd be curious if the figures he's citing are inclusive of integrated graphics solution which are certainly the vast majority of the market. DK |