381–390 of 638 posts
Nvidia's stake in Intel could have terrible consequences. First, it is in Nvidia's interest to kill Intel's Arc graphics, and that would be very bad because it is the only thing brighing GPU prices down for consumers. Second, the death of Intel graphics / Arc would be extremely bad for Linux, because Intel's approach to GPU drivers is the best for compatibility, wheras Nvidia is actively hostile to drivers on Linux.…
If only antitrust laws would exist
The reason why Nvidia is buying now does not have to do anything with Arc or GPU competition. There are mainly two reasons. 1) This year, Intel, TSMC, and Samsung announced their latest factories' yields. Intel was the earliest, with 18A, while Samsung was the most recent. TSMC yieled above 60%, Intel below 60%, and Samsung around 50% (but Samsung's tech is basically a generation ahead and technically more precise),…
I am curious where you get your information about Samsung being more “precise”. I was recently looking into 2nm myself, and based on wikipedia article on 2nm, TSMC 2nm is about 50% more dense than the samsung and intel equivalent. They aren’t remotely the same thing. Samsung 2nm and Intel 18A are about as dense as TSMC 3nm, that’s been in production for years.
I did the math on TSMC N2 vs Intel 18A, and the former is 30% denser according to TSMC
Nvidia's stake in Intel could have terrible consequences. First, it is in Nvidia's interest to kill Intel's Arc graphics, and that would be very bad because it is the only thing brighing GPU prices down for consumers. Second, the death of Intel graphics / Arc would be extremely bad for Linux, because Intel's approach to GPU drivers is the best for compatibility, wheras Nvidia is actively hostile to drivers on Linux.…
Nvidia is contributing to Nova, the new Nvidia driver for GSP based hardware.
https://rust-for-linux.com/nova-gpu-driver
Alexandre Courbot, an Nvidia dev, is comaintainer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily true. This might be a Microsoft funding a bankrupt Apple kind of moment. American competition isn't a zero sum, and it's in Nvidias' best interest to keep the market healthy.
> American competition isn't a zero sum, and it's in Nvidias' best interest to keep the market healthy. Looking at Google's recent antitrust settlement, I'm not sure this is true at present.
So yes. That's how American competition works.
It isn't a zero sum game. We try to create a market environment that is competitive and dynamic.
Monopolies are threat to both the company and a free open dynamic market. If Nvidia feels it could face an antitrust suit, which is reasonable, it is in its best interest to fund the future of Intel.
That's American capitalism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently it is 5% ownership. Does that give them enough leverage to tank Intel’s iGPUs? That would seem weird to be. Intel’s iGPUs are an incredibly good solution for their (non-glamorous) niche. Intel’s dGPUs might be in a risky spot, though. (So… what’s new?) Messing up Intel’s iGPUs would be a huge practical loss for, like, everyday desktop Linux folks. Tossing out their dGPUs, I don’t know if it is such a huge…
Intel's iGPUs don't seem very at risk because the market for low-power GPUs isn't very profitable to begin with. As long as Nvidia is able to sell basically any chip they want, why waste engineering hours and fab time on low-margin chips? The GT 1030 (Pascal) never got a successor, so that line is as good as dead. Even before the Pascal GTs, most of the GT 7xx cards, which you would assume were Maxwell or Kepler from…
I saw this move more as setting up a worthy competitor to Snapdragon X Elite, and it could also probably crush AMD APUs if these RTX things are powerful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US government isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) profit-motivated anyway, so it isn’t obvious what their incentives are WRT Intel’s stock.
They want a source of chips for the wars they want to conduct that is not either controlled by the party they want to go war with, or way way closer to the party they want to go to war with than they are. Buying a chunk of Intel is a way of making sure they do the things the government wants that will lead to that outcome. Or at least so the theory goes; I've got my own cynicism on this matter and wouldn't dream of t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently it is 5% ownership. Does that give them enough leverage to tank Intel’s iGPUs? That would seem weird to be. Intel’s iGPUs are an incredibly good solution for their (non-glamorous) niche. Intel’s dGPUs might be in a risky spot, though. (So… what’s new?) Messing up Intel’s iGPUs would be a huge practical loss for, like, everyday desktop Linux folks. Tossing out their dGPUs, I don’t know if it is such a huge…
Intel's iGPUs don't seem very at risk because the market for low-power GPUs isn't very profitable to begin with. As long as Nvidia is able to sell basically any chip they want, why waste engineering hours and fab time on low-margin chips? The GT 1030 (Pascal) never got a successor, so that line is as good as dead. Even before the Pascal GTs, most of the GT 7xx cards, which you would assume were Maxwell or Kepler from…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> American competition isn't a zero sum, and it's in Nvidias' best interest to keep the market healthy. Looking at Google's recent antitrust settlement, I'm not sure this is true at present.
Nvidia's options are fund your competition to keep the market dynamic, or let the government do it by breaking you a part. So yes. That's how American competition works. It isn't a zero sum game. We try to create a market environment that is competitive and dynamic. Monopolies are threat to both the company and a free open dynamic market. If Nvidia feels it could face an antitrust suit, which is reasonable, it is in…
Looking at Google's recent antitrust settlement, I'm not sure this is true at present.
Nvidia's stake in Intel could have terrible consequences. First, it is in Nvidia's interest to kill Intel's Arc graphics, and that would be very bad because it is the only thing brighing GPU prices down for consumers. Second, the death of Intel graphics / Arc would be extremely bad for Linux, because Intel's approach to GPU drivers is the best for compatibility, wheras Nvidia is actively hostile to drivers on Linux.…
Microsoft’s investment in Apple was helpful for the world.
For instance, maybe if there were 4 strong vendors making the devices with diverse operating systems, native apps wouldn't have ever become important, and the Web platform would have gotten better sooner to fill that gap.
Or maybe it'd have ended up the same or worse. But I just don't think Apple being this dominant has been good for the world.