Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Why I am buying Nvidia's stock (Wes, do you agree?): Graphics processors are chewing up cycles faster than the flatlined PC CPU.  Usage equals demand.  Control of the interface is extremely important. The parallel architecture of graphics processors allow it to boost price performance at a 2 to 1 rate over PC CPUs.  A doubling rate of 6 vs. 18 months.  Nvidia's chips have twice the number of transistors the Pentium 4 has. There is going to be convergence between the graphics used to create movies and games.  This is going to be huge.  Imagine if the Star Wars game looked as good as the movie -- the sales would be huge. Nvidia will likely acquire AMD to add CPU functionality as a side feature of its chips (to move beyond their joint venture).  That means over time the price of a multimedia PC using an AMD/Nvidia combined chip could be 30% lower than an Intel powered model. Microsoft is likely to create a home server that is tightly integrated (following on the heals of the Xbox's second generation).  An AMD/Nvidia chip could be central to that new box.  It's also likely that the brand of the chip used will be subsumed into the general conumer electronics style marketing that this new home server will use.  That loss of branding will hurt Intel. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 5:49:53 PM    comment []

Wired: "For a perfect example of the changing dynamic between the GPU and CPU, look at the Xbox. It uses a special version of Nvidia's nForce chipset, built around a tricked-out GeForce3 to handle graphics and sound. Microsoft paid Nvidia more than it did Intel for its 733-MHz Pentium III. For Huang, it's a proof of concept." [lawrence's notebook] 5:45:36 PM    comment []

NYT.  The telecom industry continues to free-fall.  A glut off inexpensive and capacious bandwidth at the core of the Internet sits idle as the last mile providers (RBOCs and cable companies) choke off demand by refusing to deploy fiber to homes.  There doesn't seem to be a mechanism in our current system to get them to deploy the technology and pass on price improvements and improved bandwidth that the current 12 month doubling rate in price/performance of fiber is able to provide.   The current mechanism (voice services) for utilizing the available bandwidth is not growing.  Why?  At current prices, the market for voice services is inelastic.  This means that voice services are priced so low that further price reductions don't generate greater demand, rather, it results in a shrinking of the market.   [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 8:44:48 AM    comment []