The company’s graphics solutions will be powering a range of new 3D and CAD applications useful to designers, engineers and digital content professionals. Industry leaders such as Autodesk, Adobe and Dassault Systemes will be on hand to highlight new tools and techniques that take advantage of Nvidia Professional graphics solutions.

Features and Events

There will be a range of interesting events taking place during the conference. These include:

• Nvidia-sponsored Autodesk Student Experience – Aug 7 , 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Held at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel
• Nvidia Tech Talks – Aug 8 , 9:00 am – 5:30 pm. Held in the West Building, Room 220.
• Nvidia Innovation Theater – held all three days Aug 9, 10 and 11 in the booth.
• Nvidia Sketch Match. Sponsored by Dell, contestants race the clock to compete against fellow illustrators, animators and designers for great prizes.
• NVArt Competition. Nvidia and the CGSociety put this on

Nvidia will also be demonstrating and giving away three new just-announced ThinkPad Tablets from Lenovo in the Nvidia booth during SIGGRAPH.

To learn more about Nvidia go to: www.nvidia.com

For the next two webinars register today for the first two webinars in this new program.

Details

Wednesday, June 15 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT, Dr. David Luebke, Director of Research at NVIDIA will present GPU Computing: Past, Present & Future.

Wednesday, July 13 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT, Dr. Rob Farber, published author and GPU Computing expert will present The Practical Reality of Heterogeneous Super Computing.

Chaos Group has recently introduced V-Ray 2.0 for Autodesk Maya. “We are very excited to release the latest version of V-Ray for Maya,” said Chaos Group CEO, Peter Mitev. “Speed increases are always something our users want to hear, and we are glad to deliver just that.”

The latest V-Ray 2.0 for Maya combines the power of the CPU and the GPU for full and interactive rendering within Maya. It will be a significant upgrade for many users. To learn more visit them online at: www.chaosgroup.com

In other Chaos News, the company is presenting V-Ray at the Bluefx Expo in Ravensbourne, UK.

ParaCloud Webinar Coming Up

Eyal Nir, an architect and IT specialist from Israel, will be presenting 3D Pattern Modeling with ParaCloud Modeler live, 11 May 2011, from 11:00 am PDT. (8:00 am EDT). You can sign up for this free webinar here.

This webinar on ParaCloud GEM is for architects, 3D artists and modelers using programs like SketchUp, Rhino and 3ds Max. To register go here.

(see our recent news article on ParaCloud GEM here.)

Nvidia GPU and NAB News

Nvidia has uploaded six new videos to the Nvidia Quadro section of their YouTube page. If you are a visual effects professional and didn’t get to go to NAB this year, there are some Nvidia videos you may want to check out, including especially for Mac users this video:

• Autodesk Smoke for Mac Demonstration at NAB 2011 — Autodesk demonstrates how the latest Nvidia Quadro Fermi GPUs accelerate the finishing processes on the Mac using Autodesk Smoke

To see the Mac version of the Nvidia Quadro 4000 card for Mac Pros go here.

Mac Pro users using the Nvidia Quadro 4000 GPU card started to report issues after advancing their OS to Mac OS X 10.6.7. Nvidia has responded with an update, version 256.01.00f03v7. You can download the updated driver here now:

Vectorworks BIM Webinar – April 5

Nemetschek Vectorworks will be hosting a webinar on 5 April 2010. Titled, Processes and Procedures for Effective Development of Building Information Modeling with Vectorworks Architect 2011, the event on the web takes place at 2pm EDT (6pm GMT).

The event is being led by Francois Levy, a registered architect, author, BIM consultant and university lecturer. Participants in the webinar will:

• realize the range of BIM tools available in Vectorworks Architect 2011
• learn a productive workflow for BIM in Vectorworks Architect 2011
• familiarize themselves with various model views to quickly produce presentation and construction documents
• understand the design, modeling and presentation power of parametric building design components
• apply BIM principles to their own work using Vectorworks Architect software

To register for this webinar go here.

modo News

The Third Guild has released free updates to its modo plugin or extensions for CADbuddy and Windo for modo 501 SP2. This is a free update for all existing customers. To learn more go here.

Graphisoft News

Graphisoft is conducting a survey from architectural and engineering professionals who are potentially involved in sustainable design and energy engineering. The data collection will help the company provide products that benefit its Building Information Modeling (BIM) software. To take the survey and participate please go here. There are three categories of users who would take this survey:

• architect with no specific training in sustainable design
• sustainable design expert – architect
• sustainable design expert – engineer

Please be sure to take the appropriate survey for your expertise.

A quick summary of the latest key elements of the CUDA 4.0 include:

• Nvidia GPUDirect 2.0 Technology — offers support for peer-to-peer communication between GPUs within a single server or workstation. This enables easier and faster multi-GPU programming and application performance
• Unified Virtual Addressing (UVA) — provides a single merged-memory address space for the main system memory and the GPU memories, enabling quicker and easier parallel programming
• Thrust C++ Template Performance Primitives Libraries — provides a collection of powerful open source C++ parallel algorithms and data structures that ease programming for C++ developers. With Thrust, routines such as parallel sorting are 5x to 100x faster

01 - Nvidia's CUDA website is showcasing CUDA 4.0's release.

The new Mac OS X support includes new features in CUDA-GDB. A release candidate for CUDA Toolkit 4.0 will be available free of  charge beginning March 4, 2011. You can enroll in the CUDA developer program here: www.nvidia.com/paralleldeveloper

To learn more about CUDA go here.

This year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded the Best Visual Effects category to five nominated films, for the upcoming Oscars. Studios involved in visual effects for all five nominations utilized Nvidia Quadro professional graphics solutions.

Studios involved included Double Negative (DNeg), ILM (Industrial Light & Magic), Scanline VFX, and Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI). A common thread among the work of most of these studios is the customization of proprietary software around Nvidia CUDA architecture for parallel computing. Stephen Trojansky, president of Scanline VFX LA said: “We are investing heavily into implementing various forms of GPU acceleration into our pipeline, and are starting to see speed improvements of more than 10 times as we integrate more of these components into our workflow.”

This year’s nominated films for visual effects are: Inception, Iron Man 2, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Alice and Wonderland and Hereafter.

Dosch 3D has new product called Freight Ships

Dosch Design has a new product featuring freight ships. The completely textured 3D models of various freight ships are compatible with nearly all 3D software programs because they ship in multiple file formats such as 3DS, 3dsmax, Lightwave, OBJ, Maya, VRML, Softimage and Cinema 4D.

01 - Dosch 3D Freigth Ships.

You can use these models in programs as diverse as Artlantis Studio to formZ to Vectorworks. The list of compatible programs is quite extensive and can found here on the product detail sheet. The CD-ROM is 149.USD and is Mac and Windows compatible.

John Gage to Keynote COFES 2011

Former Sun Microsystems chief researcher and creator of the phrase “The Network is the Computer” is to address the future of network-aided design at the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES) event, being held in Scottsdale, Arizona from 14-17 April, 2011.

John Gage was the many behind many of Sun’s most successful product developments. He left the company in 2008 to join Kleiner Perkins as a partner working on green technologies to help combat global warming. Among his current projects is a global initiative to enable all schools to connect to power and communication networks in the most energy-efficient manner, making use of innovative advanced control systems for lighting.

COFES is a leading annual event for BIM/CAD/CAE/PLM and related software technology industries. The invite-only event brings leading thinkers and practitioners from the community of users and vendors of software for design and engineering together so they can interact in intellectually vigorous conversations, without their sales and marketing hats on. To learn more visit: http://cofes.com

Earlier we covered the news about the brand new version of ArchiOffice, version 2010. This product looks impressive and readers interested in catching a view of this office and project management suite for architects can reserve a spot for an August 17, 2010 free live webinar.

Presented by Steven Burns, FAIA, the free webinar will review ArchiCAD 2010’s top features, out of more than 150 product improvements. Tops on this list are the new “Anytime, Anywhere” functionality where you can access critical information about your projects from anywhere you have an Internet connection. Also impressive is the “Zero Deployment” technology built in using JavaStart technology. With ArchiOffice 2010 there is no software to install on your workstations. Finally the webinar will cover the new Document Management technologies. The webinar starts at 12pm EST and is one hour long.

You can sign up here or call: 310-602-4010.

Pre-SIGGRAPH News

SIGGRAPH starts in a few days (July 27-29) and already companies are sharing some upcoming show news. Nvidia for example will be showing off a host of new Quadro solutions, including new developments with raytracing technology. There will also be an amazing display solution from Barco. Nvidia is in booth #725.

Khronos will be featuring some prize sessions at SIGGRAPH, including the OpenGL BOF with a special introduction by Jon Peddie titled: “Open Standards Bringing 3D Everywhere.” You can click here to learn more.

e-on software will have a brand new application at SIGGRAPH to announce. That application will work inside major DCC applications. They will also be showcasing the upcoming Vue 9 line of products. Lastly, e-on software has another brand new application for the architectural visualization market, new for them! This product should be very interesting to see.

This is shaping up to be a good show and Architosh looks forward to covering it.

AutoDesSys will be at the American Institute of Architects National Convention next month, June 10-12, in booth #2375. The company has recently updated Bonzai 3D to version 2.1 which includes an updated SketchUp 7 importer/exporter. Additionally, the famous developer of formZ has also introduced OpenClip technology for PowerCADD users who use formZ and Bonzai 3D. You can read that full report here.

Nvidia PhysX and CUDA News

The new Autodesk Softimage 2011 product includes the integration of two key Nvidia technologies: Nvidia PhysX and Nvidia CUDA. Recently Architosh reported on the first CUDA-based rendering GPU-driven ray tracer engine. CUDA is similar to OpenCL utilizing language that takes advantage of computational resources on graphics processing units (GPUs). The latest Softimage 2011 enables real-time simulations using Nvidia PhysX, a powerful physics application programming interface (API) or “engine” accelerated by Nvidia’s Quadro graphics cards.

T-Splines updated to version 2.3

T-Splines for Rhino 2.3 has been released this month. T-Splines for Rhino 2.3 features integration with two other products based on the Rhino platform, Grasshopper and Orca3D. Users of Grasshopper, a generative modeling program based on Rhino, can use free-form T-Spline shapes as the basis of Grasshopper-generated models. Similar integration with Orca3D, a marine architecture oriented plugin for Rhino means that naval architects can cut sections through T-Spline hulls.

“T-Splines is of the greatest value to the busiest designers, because it allows them to iterate more quickly between designs and converge on the desired shape,” said Matt Sederberg, CEO of T-Splines. To learn more visit them online here.

Bunkspeed SHOT will be the company’s new revolutionary, easy-to-use, real-time photo-realistic rendering application. Bunkspeed SHOT uses either the CPU, GPU or both to deliver ultra-fast real-time ray tracing in a “virtual digital camera” workflow.

“mental images is very pleased that Bunkspeed has chosen  iray as their official rendering technology,” says Randy Ochs, Vice President of Business Development and Sales, North America for mental images. “We are excited that iray will allow users of the new Bunspeed SHOT to create accurate, photorealistic 3D images by harnessing the power of the GPU and Nvidia’s CUDA architecture for unbelievably fast photorealism.

Bunkspeed SHOT will available in the second quarter of 2010 and will be made available as a free 30 day trial.

To read more about this announcement go here.

Nvidia will supposedly introduce three new Nvidia Quadro graphics cards at Autodesk University aimed at speeding up standard operations in programs like AutoCAD. The new Quadro FX 380 LP is aimed at the desktop while the Quadro FX 3800M and Quadro FX 2800M are aimed at mobile platforms.

The desktop solution is a low-profile card with 16 processing cores and 512MB of GDDR3 memory running on a 64-bit interface. You can read more here.

Next Apple Mac Pro Workstations to Be 6-12 Core Xeon Monsters

According to a Polish website called PCLab Intel’s upcoming new six-core Xeon microprocessors will be up to 50 percent faster than the previous generation four-core Xeons in parallel operations. And, get this, they will use 50 percent less power.

Intel’s code-named Gulftown” Xeons will be implemented on a new 32 nanometer fabrication process and will be the company’s first six-core processors. They will feature 12MB of L3 cache, and if paired with another chip as is typical of Apple for its high-end workstations the upcoming Mac Pros will feature up to 12 physical and 24 logical cores.

The next Mac Pros are rumored to be coming in the first quarter of 2010. Apple is also expected to have short-term exclusive use of the new i9 based Gulftown six-core Xeons and has enjoyed such exclusive access to leading edge Xeons for the past two generations with the Mac Pro. These new machines should make wonderful 3D CAD and 3D rendering machines! You can read some additional information here.

Parallels vs Fusion

For those who continue to follow the story on virtualization on the Mac there is a good indepth article comparing the two leading virtualization packages for the Mac over at the Inquirer. You can read it here.

OpenCL conformance tests are now available with new conformant products now shipping. Additionally, the OpenCL Working Group membership has expanded to 33 members in the areas of high-performance computing, gaming, middleware, system and silicon vendors. Participating at SC09, an international conference for high-performance computing, Khronos Group members will be highlighting the power and scalability of OpenCL.

OpenCL Products – Trademark Use and Conformance

Before a product can use the OpenCL trademark it must pass a conformance test suite by Khronos for OpenCL 1.0. This suite was released in May 2009 and a number of shipping products have successfully passed including products from AMD, Apple and Nvidia.

In the case of Apple its latest operating system, Snow Leopard, utilizes OpenCL. Apple created OpenCL and opened it up as an industry standard giving control of the standard to the Khronos Group.

“By enabling cross-platform development for heterogeneous architectures, OpenCL is helping to bring GPU compute capability to mainstream applications,” said Patricia Harrell, director of stream computing at AMD.

“Nvidia cares deeply about ensuring that OpenCL developers have the tools they need to easily develop and deploy mainstream applications on more than 150 million Nvidia OpenCL 1.0-capable GPUs,” said Sanford Russell, general manager, GPU Computing software at Nvidia.

The latest list of conforming products for OpenCL 1.0 support can be found here at this web page. So far most products are operating systems and GPUs.

OpenCL Expands Significantly But No Microsoft

With 33 key industry members OpenCL is well on its way to becoming an industry standard as significant as OpenGL–a graphics technology standardized across an array of industry segments and device platforms.

In the gaming industry key members include Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Nvidia and Apple. In terms of silicon systems makers they all the major vendors such as: AMD, ARM, Broadcom, Freescale, IBM, Intel, Nvidia, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments.

Key mobile phone makers are also behind OpenCL including: Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia (not to mention Apple). And the US government’s Los Alamos National Laboratory is also a key member.

IBM has released its own OpenCL Development Kit for Linux on Power on AlphaWorks. The company’s Power Architecture processors are used in workstations, servers, mainframe computers and supercomputers. Additionally, IBM is a partner with Sony in Cell processors and is exploring OpenCL on Cell and BE processors as well.

For more information about the Khronos Group’s efforts with OpenCL visit them here.

The review compares the GTX 285 against the AMD/ATI Radeon 4870 card which is a very fast GPU option for the Mac. Interestingly, the results of these Ars review tests indicate that the GTX 285 may be the card to get if you are very interested in running Windows games on a Mac Pro in a dual-boot situation but if you want the best performance today for professional OpenGL-based 3D Mac programs, the ATI Radeon 4870 is the card to beat. 

Some Brief Details

Ars ran several tests. One test, the OpenGL Extension Viewer test indicate that while the GTX 285 is faster at earlier OpenGL extensions, it poops out compared to the Radeon 4870 card when it reaches OpenGL 2.0 and OpenGL 2.1 — especially with an OpenGL test using GLSL 1.0. This becomes most apparent in the real world app tests for Mudbox 2009 on the Mac. 

For Cinema 4D users, the Radeon 4870 also bested the Nvidia GTX 285 card. But not but a great amount. 

With Maya 2009 the GTX performed slightly better than the Radeon 4870 and it was noteworthy to see that the Radeon 3870 (which is  a year old) really got whooped by the newer 4870 and the GTX 285. Ars says it is because these later cards are much faster at heavier scenes. 

Closing Comments

This Ars review was trying to see if the Nvidia GTX 285 for Mac, which has 1GB of video memory (twice that of the ATI Radeon 4870), would outperform the Radeon cards out there today. The short answer was it did not on the OpenGL-based pro 3D Mac software side. It was the card to get if you want to run Windows games on the Mac Pro under dual boot mode. 

However for professional Mac 3D users the GTX 285 holds no current advantages over the Radeon 4870 due to immature OpenGL drivers that appear to be holding the card back. The card is more future proof because it currently supports the OpenGL 3.0 specification and has lots of CUDA/OpenCL cores. It is also quieter so if noise is a concern for you this might be a factor. 

The review is good and has lots of details and good charts. Go here now to check out the details.

EVGA GTX 285 Mac Edition

GTX 285 Mac Edition is the highest performing graphics card for the Mac platform today, touts both EVGA and Nvidia. Featuring over 1 GB of DDR3 memory and 240 processing cores, this fully CUDA capable GPU card can drive two 30 inch displays at very high resolutions simultaneously.

This slots it in above ATI Radeon HD 4870 and the Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 for Mac. Although the latter has 1.5 GB of total memory and 192 parallel processing cores, the GTX 285 for Mac has 1 GB of memory, 240 processing cores and the widest memory interface (512 bit) we’ve seen on a Mac thus far. 

It outperforms in pure memory bandwidth delivering over 159 GB/ sec compared to 115 GB/ sec for the Radeon HD 4870 and 76.8 GB/ sec for the Quadro 4800. 

More Choices for Mac Pros

Interestingly, Apple does not offer this card yet as a BTO (build-to-order) option on its Apple Store online website. Neither does it offer the Nvidia Quadro 4800 workstation card. 

However it does offer all these cards as accessories to add to your Mac Pro. Listed below are the cards and prices at Apple as of this writing:

• EVGA GeForce GTX 285 — (theoretically the fastest) $449.USD
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 — (theoretically the next fastest) $349.USD
• Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 — (theoretically the next fastest) $1,799.USD
• Nvidia GeForce GT 120 — (default Mac Pro card) $149.USD

Quadro FX 4800 for Mac Pro

“Some of the world’s most challenging visual computing problems are solved on the Mac platform,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions, NVIDIA. “The Quadro FX 4800 provides the power and speed to meet these demanding requirements.”

To address the needs of the Mac user, the new Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac features a standard 3-pin stereo connector for true 3D stereoscopic imaging; critical to many core professional Mac applications. Designed, tested and built by Nvidia to meet the ultra-high standards of the Mac community, the Quadro FX 4800 GPU dynamically allocates compute, geometry, shading and pixel processing power. 

Performance Specs

The Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 for Mac Pro offers some stunning performance specifications. For starters it supports a massive 1.5GB of memory frame buffer (vRAM) and memory bandwidth of 76.8GB/sec to deliver high throughput for interactive visualization of large models; high performance of real time processing of large textures and frames; and the highest quality and resolution with full scene anti-aliasing (FSAA). 

Other key features include:

• Nvidia’s CUDA parallel architecture for Nvidia Quadro GPUs
• Dual Dual Link DVI and Stereo Connectors – outfitted with dedicated 3-pin min-din connector for stereo glasses support and up to two dual-link DVI digital connectors
• Apple Boot Camp Support – access to native Quadro GPU accelerated professional Windows 3D applications performance when running Windows via Boot Camp. 

To learn more visit here.

VolView 3.0 for Mac allows medical doctors and researchers 3D volume rendering capabilities with GPU hardware acceleration.

New in this release is a simplified user interface, quick-access toolbar, GPU acceleration under Nvidia graphics platforms, ability to load and display multiple datasets, and a new Bezier contour tool. To learn more visit them at: www.kitware.com

Nvidia Releases OpenGL 3.0 Drivers

Nvidia announced this week that they have released fully supported OpenGL 3.0 drivers for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux platforms on select GeForce and Quadro GPU solutions. 

The company stated: “Further demonstrating our leadership and commitment to OpenGL and the standardization process, these drivers enable software developers to take full advantage of all OpenGL 3.0 capabilities, accelerating their delivery of cutting-edge media platforms and applications. 

Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is expected to support OpenGL 3.0 for applications and many of Apple’s professional applications like Motion may push the limits of OpenGL 3.0 capabilities. New OpenGL 3.0 extensions include:

• WGL_create_context
• GLX_create_context
• ARB_draw_instanced
• ARB_geometry_shader4
• ARB_texture_buffer_object

Rhino News/Tutorials

“While the OpenCL spec is announced today, there are conformance tests that need to be developed and then final implementations will be released around Q2 next year.” These comments were made to AppleInsider from Manju Hedge, General Manager of CUDA at Nvidia. 

Snow Leopard’s Grand Central technologies allow developers to tune code to take advantage of parallelism across multi-core processors and GPUs. Both Grand Central and OpenCL are listed on Apple’s Snow Leopard webpage as key big features in the planned release. If Nvidia says final implementations of OpenCL are planned for Q2 of 2009 than Snow Leopard will not arrive early as some reports have indicated. Instead it may arrive around the time of Apple’s 2009 WWDC.

Apple’s OpenCL Embraced by Industry

Apple developed OpenCL and sponsored its adoption as an industry-open standard. OpenCL (Open Computing Language) greatly improves speed and responsiveness for a wide spectrum of applications in numerous market categories from gaming and entertainment to scientific and medical software. 

Proposed only six months ago, OpenCL was at the heart of Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system preview at its worldwide developer’s conference back in June of 2008. The draft specification became rapidly embraced by the tech world’s biggest names in semiconductors including: IBM, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM, Freescale, Ericsson, Broadcom, Texas Instruments and Samsung. 

Other key players endorsing their OpenCL include gaming software giants EA (Electronic Arts) and Activision Blizzard. Notably absent the from big list of companies embracing OpenCL is Microsoft. However, with both Intel and AMD, the two largest PC chip makers in the industry, supporting it there is a likelihood that Microsoft will eventually add support to OpenCL. 

Microsoft says it has its own proprietary parallel programming technologies in the works. This technology is slated to be apart of DirectX technologies going forward. It should be noted that Microsoft’s Windows-only DirectX technologies are highly adopted in the world of PC gaming but Microsoft has failed to drive OpenGL out of the professional CAD and 3D content creation industries where both UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X are widely deployed and critical for support. Microsoft’s own parallel computing technologies may face a similar fate.

Both OpenGL and OpenCL are managed by the Khronos Group. To learn more visit their site here.

Cheetah 3D has announced its 4th official Cheetah 3D modeling and rendering contest. The contest got underway on November 4th but runs through 23 November 2008. This time it is a Games Heroes modeling contest. 

Contestants are welcome to submit any type of game hero. If it is a soldier, a robot or a spaceship…that’s up to you. The prizes are very nice. First place winner will garner an Apple iPhone Basic + Unity Indie. A second place winner will earn Unity Indie and a final third place winner will earn a one-year subscription to 3D World magazine. For contest rules go here.

Dosch – Latest Releases

Dosch has released several new CD-ROMs for 3D content, including Dosch 3D: Concept Cars 2009, Dosch Viz-Images: DVI Complete 43 and Dosch Move Clips: Move-Clips Complete 10. Some of these products ship on a USB hard drive while others are on standard DVD or CD-ROM. 

Vectorworks Architecture Firm Shook Kelly Wins AIA North Carolina Award

Nemetschek North America has announced that Vectorworks-based and North Carolina architecture firm, Shook Kelly, has won AIA North Carolina, Firm of the Year award. Shook Kelly is both an architecture firm and a branding agency, a unique pairing of focuses and talents that the firm promotes as Perception Design. Shook Kelly has offices in Charlotte, North Carolina, Chicago and Los Angeles. 

In other Vectorworks news, localized version of Vectorworks 2009 are now available in European markets. 

Nvidia Redefines Pro-Graphics for Small Form Factors

Though not directly relevant to Mac-based CAD and 3D users, Nvidia has announced the launch of the Nvidia Quadro FX 470, which is the first integrated motherboard with professional Quadro GPU technology built right in. Built for both entry-level and small form factors, the new board comes in two flavors, the Quadro FX 470 and the FX 370. 

Nvidia Quadro FX 470/370 Integrated Graphics Boards

The new solutions are designed to get highend graphics in the hands of more users.  This approach is interesting for several reasons related to Apple. Such new technology may find its way into systems designed for highend iMacs or smaller form-factor Mac Pros in the future.

Intel’s Killing Games…

Alex quotes Mark Rein who famously stated: “Intel are killing games.”

Yes, Intel chips, hence the plural. Mark was referring to the fact that Intel’s Integrated Graphics are weak and cannot run games well at all (and pro apps for that matter). Yet they are, as Alex notes, hugely popular with notebook OEMs because they are cheap. With such large volumes of such machines in circulation it has forced developers of games to develop around them. That of course is bad. Developers are wasting precious development resources trying to make the best out a mass of “low-performers” while ignoring the capabilities of much higher performing (but more rare…and more costly!) mobile GPU architectures. 

Nvidia Saves Games…

In comes Nvidia. And with the new 9400M platform you get blazing performance over Intel’s Integrated Graphics — as demonstrated beautifully in Apple’s newest MacBooks.

So is Apple in love with Nvidia now? Is that why two Intel executives recently got scolded for bashing the iPhone at an Intel developer summit in Asia? First the uncertainty of the PA Semi acquisition and now the Nvidia 9400M. Both of those moves amply demonstrate that Jobs & Co. have no cronies in Cupertino. For them, it’s all business, all the time. And so…while it may not be love, it certainly isn’t getting any warmer between Apple and Intel. 

To read Alex’s complete post go here.

http://themacgamer.com/2008/10/23/apple-heart-nvidia/

The Standard has a good article here. Of all the companies it mentions that Apple should buy the one I would agree makes the best sense is Nvidia. The graphics chip maker could be bought six times over with Apple’s available cash. Once more, Nvidia has been delivering superb new GPU and related technologies for the past few years, its CUDA architecture is of particular note. With Nvidia in Apple’s hands the geniuses within its PA Semi acquisition and the geniuses within Nvidia could do magical things together. It’s truly exciting to think about!

But There’s More…

I’ve been writing about specific acquisitions this past year that make sense strategically for protecting and growing Apple’s “Creatives” market. Specifically I’ve put out the notion that Apple should possibly buy Nemetschek AG of Germany as a solid AEC industry play. I’ve also written about a Gehry Technolgies buy. Both are interesting for a variety of reasons. And both would excite the AEC (architecture/engineering/construction) market and its millions of users.

So in light of that it’s interesting to see somebody outside of the CAD press discuss the idea that Apple should buy Autodesk. But that is just what David Morgenstern of ZDNet did today. Yes…it seems Apple’s big cash numbers have gotten the speculation engines oh-running. I can hear them churning across the blogosphere. The CAD blogs and press will no doubt pick up on this. It is always interesting when the general press catches up to what some of us in the CAD press have been saying.

Personally I’m not sure buying Autodesk would be a brilliant move for Apple. They would pay a premium for some de-facto industry standard apps that are in truth fairly mediocre at best. In time such apps will die-out. On the other hand, Morgenstern is correct is stating that  Apple’s approach to its customers is similar to Apple’s. This was the point I was making earlier in the year.

Would an Apple-Autodesk or Apple-Nvidia acquisition make sense to you? Login and share you thoughts below.