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Jon Peddie Research
Professional GraphicsCGW Webinar
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Evolution of Professional GraphicsYesterday’s Landscape
Pro graphics distinguished from consumer/corporate graphics by most every metric– Vendor, chips, boards, bus, memory, video I/O, OS,
middleware/APIs, usage, performance, price
Excusive domain of Traditional Proprietary Workstation (TPW) vendors– Sgi, Sun, HP, DEC and IBM drove the innovation
– Proprietary UNIX/VMS were the only OSes
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Evolution of Professional GraphicsToday’s Landscape
Hardware migration from “in-house” to IHV– IHVs are vertical: chips and AIBs– TPW vendors no longer build graphics chips
• Enable IHV hardware with drivers for proprietary Unix • A few unique high-end board configurations
Gaming is driving innovation– E.g. programmable shaders, floating-point precision– Even $1K+ multi-board monsters: Alienware and Nvidia’s
SLI Much harder to distinguish from consumer AIBs
– Cost premium has dropped considerably
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Graphics Hardware DifferentiationProfessional vs. Consumer
Brand Reliability
– ISV certification
Customer support Breadth of driver support
– OpenGL ICDs
– 64-bit Linux and Windows drivers
Performance and price can be a low priority– Legacy requirements can sustain lagging hardware
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Graphics Hardware DifferentiationProfessional vs. Consumer
Remaining GPU differences artificial and/or minor– (Virtually) no difference in “raw” die– Nvidia and ATI lead with same GPU/VPUs from consumer line
• relatively minor driver, package and or board-exposed features
Board-level differences significant at high-end only– Value varies by application– Physical memory
• DCC and vis-sim have never-ending appetite for textures
– Display support optimized for pro applications• Framelock, genlock, interface type (e.g. SDI)• Number and datarate of video interfaces• Ultra-high resolution (e.g. dual dual-link for up to 9 Mpixel displays)
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
2003 Professional Graphics Hardware Market
Nearly 2.1 million professional graphics AIBs sold
Almost $1B in revenue Legacy “in-house” graphics from TPW vendors
small but significant– Only 5% of units shipped, but 16% of revenue
– Incremental opportunity for IHVs
Units are in the low-end, but revenue is in the mid-range
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
JPR Pro Graphics AIB Classes
ClassASP Range
min max
2D $400
Entry-3D $350
Mid-range $350 $950
High-end $950 $1,500
Ultra High-end $1,500
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Vendor Profile 5% (units) and 11% (revenue) share in 2003
– but 26% and 44% unit share in high and ultra-high Pro Gfx flagship: Realizm What sets Realizm apart
– Exclusive focus on professional apps– Chip-level scalability– 16-bit FP format in frame buffer– Virtual, paged video memory
Where 3DLabs is going– Fighting hard to keep high-end dominance
• Largest physical memory, Multi-chip AIBs, Genlock / framelock– Realizm trickle-down to mid-range and low-end?
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Vendor Profile 17% (units) and 15% (revenue) share in 2003
– Unbranded presence in “2D” applications
Pro graphics flagship: Fire GL 7100 What sets Fire GL apart
– A strong mid-range focus (31%)– Subjective edge in quality and quality/performance– Perf/W has won mobile and embedded sockets
• ATI dominant in mobile workstations (67%)
Where ATI is going– Best positioned to ride growth in mobile workstation– Can it (should it) ignore high end of market?
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Vendor Profile JPR estimates* 9% (units) and 11% (revenue) share in 2003
– But ~17% in “2D” segment
Slanted heavily toward direct sales Not directly targeting “power renderers”
– Appeal on basis of image quality and specific, niche features
Where is Matrox going?– Road ahead looks difficult in keeping pace on GPUs
• Last major introduction, Parhelia, was out in May 2002• Move to programmable shaders and floating-point requires overhaul
– Some key competitive advantages going away• More “2D” competition from Nvidia, ATI and maybe soon IGPs• Fewer areas of differentiation, e.g. super-high res (9 Mpixel)
– OEM presence declining– Continued focus on custom-fit solutions for large customers
* Matrox is private and does not disclose financials
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Vendor Profile 67% (units) and 47% (revenue) share in 2003 Pro gfx flagship: Quadro FX 4000 (NV40 GPU) What sets Nvidia apart
– Breadth of offerings, entry to ultra-high end– Shader Model 3.0 vs. 2.0– SLI: Board level scalablity– Custom offerings for DCC, vis-sim
Where Nvidia is going– Trying to take share in existing segments
• From 3Dlabs in the high/ultra-high end– Think margin, not units– Sales synergy
• From ATI in the mobile space (MXM and Axiom)
– Getting GPUs into new segments, like render farms
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Pro Graphics Technology Trends Final stage of migration to fully programmable architecture
– Richer, “cleaner” programming: large code, predication, branching– Changing how graphics hardware vendors will compete
Leveraging parallelism– Today’s flagship GPUs: 6 vertex and 16 pixel pipelines (ATI/Nvidia)– Chip-level (3DLabs) and Board-level (Nvidia) scalability
Continuing to “annex” upstream processing– Physics, kinematics, simulation, animation, tessellation
Vehicle for general purpose computing (GPGPU), – Why Intel’s biggest threat may someday be not AMD but Nvidia
Floating-point precision GDDR3 memory
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
PCI Express for Graphics Serial, point-to-point, packets
– More a network interconnect than a traditional I/O bus
Variable number of “lanes”– Graphics design center: 16-lane
More bandwidth, but remember:– Directionally constrained: 4GB/s up,
4GB/s down– In-band command, control and
packet overhead reduces bw Just in time to carry the load
– Most apps on most hardware today not constrained by AGP 8X
– Some may be … it all depends• HD video editing• Hybrid CPU/GPU render for DCC
Src: PCI-SIG
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
PCI Express Graphics AIBs Form factor derived from PCI Power budgets
– 10W: ×1 cards (<= 6.6” length)– 25W: ×1 cards (> 7.0” length), ×4 cards, ×8 cards, ×16 low-profile graphics
and ×16 server I/O– 75W: full-height graphics cards– High-end Graphics Spec will allow auxiliary power for up to 150W
Src: PCI-SIG
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
PCI Express Connectors “Up-plugging” allowed OEMs encouraged to
support wider connectors– Link width not determined by
connector or interface, negotiated at config time
– More end-user flexibility
– Allows dual high-bw (≥ AGP 8X) graphics AIBs Src: PCI-SIG
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
GPU Interfaces to PCI ExpressTo bridge or not to bridge
Initial plans spurred some mud-slinging– ATI planned all native PCIe interfaces– Nvidia indicated plans to bridge with on-board HSI (“AGP 16X”)– 3DLabs’ Realizm depends on configuration
In the end, it will most likely be a non-issue– Speedup of full-speed PCIe interface is exception and debatable– ATI will likely bridge back to AGP– HSI does not preclude native PCIe – NV45 is out already– 3DLabs likely to fill in low-end PCIe offerings, too
Dell should ship Nvidia and ATI PCIe AIBs July, 3DLabs later this quarter
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Pro Graphics Market Trend Forecast Strong growth in Mobile Workstations Final phase in transition to all-IHV graphics AIBs configured for specific applications
– Genlock and SDI for DCC studio apps
– Framelock for vis-sim and wall-display applications
IGPs for pro graphics? Never say never.– What about Grantsdale for “2D workstation” apps?
– Why Nvidia/ATI/3DLabs’s biggest competitor may someday be Intel
GPUs to final frame rendering?
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Nvidia’s Application-specific AIB Configurations
Nvidia Quadro FX 3000G I/O Nvidia Quadro FX 4000 SDI I/O
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
GPUs in the Render Farm? Graphics hardware is absent in the render farm ISVs/IHVs looking to final-frame speedup as well
– Enablers• Primary: advent of programmable hardware shaders with compilers• Secondary: FP color precision, more flexible programming (larger
code, predication, branching)– Nvidia Gelato, Mental Images’ Mental Ray 3.3
Vendors would welcome 10K’s of incremental professional GPUs
Not a slam-dunk– Global illumination, raycasting techniques (e.g raytracing
and volume rendering) don’t map very well (at least not yet) to GPUs
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Technology ForecastImpact of Longhorn
Image quality– Gamma, sRGB, 32-bit FP, Text enhancements
Virtualization to support Avalon, “Presentation Manager”– Virtual memory, mostly under OS/driver interaction– GPU: “Hyper Threading”-like context management
Pixel rates will be especially stressed– Lots of temporary textures, surfaces to be warped, composited, blended
Dual, cascaded vertex shaders Moving to (optional) programmable hardware tessellation Security & stability
– simpler drivers, hang prevention OpenGL ICDs should be upgraded for Longhorn (but not
required)
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Windows Graphics FoundationLonghorn and Beyond
Src: Microsoft, WinHEC 2004
Jon Peddie Research
Backup Slides
Jon Peddie ResearchJon Peddie Research
Hardware Differentiation vs. Consumer Disappearing
Historical Differentiator Future differentiator?
OpenGL vs. DirectX Minor, esp. with OGL2
Anti-aliased points / lines No. Can be rendered with shaded polygons; even enhanced (e.g. miter)
Rendering performance Very little… performance driven by games
Color fidelity Very little … internal FP32, stored as FP16 (display?); attention to sRGB and gamma becoming pervasive
Antialiasing Very little, ># samples at high end
(highest end is software)
Display resolution Yes, at the high end with 9 MPix
2nd order rendering features:
e.g. two-sided lighting, user clip planes
Very little … implemented with shader
Multi-display Little … even IGP’s going dual-display
Genlock, Framelock Yes, at high end
Multi-chip implementations Yes, at high end
Overlay planes Yes, but trivial to implement
Stereo Yes, but relatively easy to implement