SAN JOSE, Calif. – One week after the buttoned-down seriousness of the
Intel Developer Forum, another chip company, nVidia, kicked off its NVISION 08 conference with some flashy demos and lots of fun.
Whereas Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) CEO Paul Otellini was on vacation and left
the heavy lifting to Chairman Craig Barrett and other top executives, nVidia
(NASDAQ: NVDA) CEO Jen-Hsun Huang starting things off himself.
While Intel executives were seen in business attire or perhaps a company polo shirt,
Huang wore a plain t-shirt and jeans. IDF’s special guest was Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak, while NVISION featured Battlestar Galactica
actress Tricia Helfer who had no problem getting the attention of the overwhelmingly male audience.
The conference is primarily being carried by nVidia and its naming
convention matches that of the company, but Huang made it clear this was
meant to be a broader conference. “We’ve never had a conference dedicated to
visual computing. We’re going to change that this week,” he said from the
stage.
Later, in a post-keynote conference with reporters, he said the company
“wanted to define the industry as Cisco defined the networking industry and
gave it a platform for many to be successful in it, so other companies can
say we are in the visual computing business.”
As such, nVidia made no product announcements – despite rampant rumor at
IDF last week that it would be introducing its own x86 part – because the
company felt the conference wasn’t the place for its own news. “We had to do
the heavy lifting this time. Next year more will be here,” said Huang.
Next time: Intel and AMD?
Possibly even Intel and AMD (NYSE: AMD), which he said were invited and
he wanted to have them there, but the two firms, as much rivals as business
partners, didn’t want to contribute funding. “A lot of people are taking a
‘let’s see if you can pull it off’ approach. Next year they are going to
want to be part of it,” said Huang.
For a first show, NVISION 08 had the appearance of a more established event. More than 300 companies are
showing off products or sponsoring the show, or both. The key message that
nVidia wants to deliver on behalf of the visual computing ecosystem is how
large it is, Huang said.
“When you think about graphics, a lot of people
think nVidia makes graphics chips for games. We love to do that, but it
really is only the tip of the iceberg of what we do for a living, which is
solving some of the world’s most complex visual computing challenges,” he
said during the keynote.
Next page: Not just nVidia’s show
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Not just nVidia’s show
Huang had several guests during the keynote to discuss their own visual
computing plans. First up was Peter Stevenson, chief operating officer of
RTT, which does automobile design software. Stevenson showed off a virtual prototype
of an upcoming Lamborghini. Only 20 units of this 1.5 million Euro car will
be built and all were sold just by showing the car off in a real time visual
representation of the car that allowed you to move around the car, both
inside and outside.
Taehoon Kim, president and founder of Nurien Software from Korea,
demonstrated a Second Life-type virtual world, which featured a flat panel
TV on the wall playing a music video while an avatar of Huang break danced in
the living room of his virtual house. “This is going to be the next
Facebook,” Huang predicted at the end of the demonstration.
This was followed by SportVision, provided some visuals during the
Olympics. Marv White, chief technology officer of the company, showed off
things like the on-field movement of football players or the arc of the ball
during a pass. It also showed air dynamics of NASCAR cars racing around a
track, which looked a little cartoony.
Microsoft was there to show off Photosynth,
just launched last week, and how it redraws on the fly. A 3D demo took
place, showing how regular videogames can be given the illusion of depth,
with the right glasses.
But the most impressive guest, aside from Helfer, was Perceptive Pixel. Founder Jeff Han showed off a 100-inch multitouch TV that took input
from all 10 fingers at once to draw, reshape, resize and manipulate. “The
graphics have always been there but we didn’t have the ability to handle a
high bandwidth input device like multitouch before,” said Han.
The demo drew a string of “oohs” from the audience as Han drew a circle
and a menu came up. No more having to click in the lower left of the screen,
Han joked, which the audience appreciated. As fast as he could touch the
giant screen, maps came up similar to Google Earth but with an instant load
and response to input.
Facing up to problems
It wasn’t all pleasantries for nVidia. During the press conference, Huang
was asked about notebook GPU failures.
He countered that nVidia stepped up and admitted to the problem immediately.
“We know of failures with our chips. Most notebooks are fine, but if you
have this problem, you either let the consumer work it out with the OEM, or
I go to the OEM and say let’s just go solve it. We chose to solve it,” he
said.
Still, a group called “Unite Here” had to crash the party, handing out
fliers with large text that said “Find the flawed chip. and you could get
the nVidia fail!” Given this was an audience of nVidia fans and consumers,
they might find their reception less than welcoming.
NVISION 08 runs through
Wednesday in San Jose at the Convention Center and surrounding buildings.
