NVIDIA trumpets the death of the CPU

Published on July 5, 2008 By silolauncher In PC Gaming

The recent conflict between Intel and Nvidia moved from the market to the personal arena, where the two competitors are throwing offenses at will. The latest hit comes from one of Nvidia's vice-presidents, in a private e-mail message claiming that the CPU is dead and has long since run out of steam.

The private mail message was intercepted by tech website Inquirer, and holds Roy Tayler's opinions regarding Intel's central processors. The letter is dated April 10, but the final recipient is currently unknown.

"Basically the CPU is dead. Yes, that processor you see advertised everywhere from Intel. It’s run out of steam. The fact is that it no longer makes anything run faster. You don’t need a fast one anymore. This is why AMD is in trouble and it’s why Intel are panicking," Tayler claimed in the message.

"They are panicking so much that they have started attacking us. This is because you do still [need] one chip to get faster and faster – the GPU. That GeForce chip. Yes honestly. No I am not making this up. You are my friends and so I am not selling you. This s*** is just interesting as hell," he continued.

However, Nvidia claims that the above message does not reflect any official stance whatsoever. According to the company’s spokesman Brian Burke, the message is not a public statement and "the views in Roy Tayler's e-mail do not mirror the views of Nvidia."

It might be true that the e-mail message reflects Tayler's own opinions, yet, the company stated a while ago that "you need nothing beyond the most basic CPU," in order to get things done. This means that Nvidia thinks that the CPU might not be dead yet, but it's just one step closer to its grave.

Intel, of course, completely disagrees with Nvidia's allegations. It couldn't be otherwise, given the fact that the company is at the moment the biggest CPU manufacturer in the world and its CPU business accounts for the lion's share of the revenue.

"We believe that both a great CPU and great graphics are important in a PC. Any PC purchase - including the capability level of components inside it - is a decision that each user must make based on what they will be doing with that PC," said Intel spokesperson Dan Snyder

This was taken from Softpedia.com

Comments (Page 1)

Zydor

on Jul 05, 2008

There's a shock. Talk about an exercise in pointless rhetoric.

GPU manufacturer rubbishes CPU manufacturer.

CPU manufacturer rubbishes GPU manufacturer.

Ego is the scurge of this Planet ....

Regards
Zy

WizzBang

on Jul 05, 2008

So what. We don't really know if that e-mail is real or fake. If it is real there isn't much anyone can do. I will keep buying pc's and pc games as long as they are there. I don't own a PS3 or an x-box, I just keep ungrading my pc until I can't upgrade anymore, then I will build or buy a new one.

I haven't read anything about PS4 or a new version of the x-box on the horizon, so, they might be as dead as the pc. We will just have to wait and see where this all goes.

MasonM

on Jul 05, 2008

Hmmm a guy at one company says some silly stuff to a guy in another company.

This is important...why?

Kaloonzu

on Jul 05, 2008

The day we don't need good CPUs is the day we can all start using the original Pentium. Oh yeah, that's a grand idea. In fact, I'm gonna try that when I build my next computer. YOU HEAR THAT, TAYLOR?! I'LL SEND YOU THE BENCHMARK LOGS!!! You need a good CPU and GPU working in tandem to get a good system off the ground. I like nVidia GPUs. I like Intel CPUs. They are the two biggest sellers of their prime products. Why trash each other? I don't think nVidia SLI technology will ever replace the Intel Core 2, or even the Pentium 4. This article just puts into light the problems with corporate America: the absolute desire to trash your allies to get some more publicity on your products, when you could just as easily set up an economic alliance. Stupid Corporate CEOs.

CobraA1

on Jul 06, 2008

I can foresee a merger of the CPU and GPU (multi-core processors with both GPU style and CPU style cores), but the GPU will definitely not totally replace the CPU.

The GPU will help a lot when you have a lot of data to crunch, but relatively few instructions.

If you have very little data to crunch and lots of instructions, however, the GPU will be slower than the CPU. Much, much slower.

For multimedia stuff it's great, but not for something like Microsoft Word.

elias001

on Jul 06, 2008

I use Maple 11, a math symbolic calculator, matlab and mathemtica. I can only say that my GPU will not help one bit with all three of these programs, hence, i need a good muti core cpu.

HouseRalan

on Jul 06, 2008

hee hee... the VP doesn't care what the CPU is so long as the GPU is nVidia and it's fast as hell. He's quite happy to have AMD and INTEL beating on each other; they'll put out faster CPU's. Just a nice way for nVidia to get a little press and some obscure VP to get a chance to apply for ATI

I rather miss the old days when if you wanted a bit more ram on your video card you could add standard memory modules to it. I'd tweak my GeForce 7950 GT 256mb up to 2GB.

Moosetek13

on Jul 06, 2008

For multimedia stuff it's great, but not for something like Microsoft Word.

MS Word?

Please, it is a word processor. It requires very little in either GPU or CPU.

GPU's are needed for intensive gaming or other real-time graphic needs.
CPU's are needed for intensive processing, like rendering with Lightwave or 3DS Max.

They are both needed in their respective fields. And neither can replace the other.

spiralblitz

on Jul 06, 2008

well he is right technically. A cpu is pretty weak alone. thats why a Gpu is needed right?

CreepyD

on Jul 06, 2008

I have an old AMD 4200 CPU which is way slower than most things sold today.
Yet because I have an NVidia gf8800, I can run the latest games in full detail and hae it run smooth..
The only reason you need a really hefty cpu is for pushing excel to it's limits (I mean 500k rows doing lots of calculations), running a full 3d package, or something like that.
Most people browse the web and don't play games.. You get ripped off by shops telling you you need the latest CPU to do this faster.. It makes no difference.

Most important things in a PC are the GPU (for gaming) and the Hard Disk (The main cause of PC slowdown).
You don't even need fast ram, just make sure you have enough (1gb at the moment or 2gb for gaming) - Quantity over quality.

CobraA1

on Jul 06, 2008

Please, it is a word processor. It requires very little in either GPU or CPU.

DirectX 9 has a limit of 65k for the number of instructions on each stream processor. Even word processors blew away that boundary a long time ago.

DirectX 10 removes that limit, but it's still expensive to use the GPU to just do some processing without a lot of data, due to the way stream processors work.

Perhaps a virtual machine or even just the OS itself is a better example. The point is not everything we do uses a lot of data with very few instructions.

CPU's are needed for intensive processing, like rendering with Lightwave or 3DS Max.

Actually, rendering is very easy to parallelize, and some parts of ray tracing can be done on a GPU. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing some real time single bounce ray tracing done in some games. We're practically to that point where it's possible with our shaders. In fact, I think a lot of today's shaders borrow from ray tracing techniques.

They are both needed in their respective fields. And neither can replace the other.

I would agree! That was the point I was trying to make:

"If you have very little data to crunch and lots of instructions, however, the GPU will be slower than the CPU. Much, much slower."

Most people browse the web and don't play games.. You get ripped off by shops telling you you need the latest CPU to do this faster.. It makes no difference.

I totally agree. Web browsing never takes much power in any way. I find it amusing that it's boasted about so much whenever some new computer is released.

You don't even need fast ram, just make sure you have enough (1gb at the moment or 2gb for gaming) - Quantity over quality.

Agreed. I find that more than anything else, having lots of RAM makes things a lot faster. I'd double your numbers for Vista, though.

LOLCHRIST

on Jul 06, 2008

One thing to bear in mind is that all the graphics card reviews now seem to focus on 1900x1200 and top performance GPUs. Lower (and more relevant for most people) resolutions mean that the CPU performance becomes a bigger factor.

Although I think for most gamers any modern dual core would be nice and they won't need any more for a while unless they want to play Supreme Commander.

Coelocanth

on Jul 06, 2008

I use Maple 11, a math symbolic calculator, matlab and mathemtica. I can only say that my GPU will not help one bit with all three of these programs, hence, i need a good muti core cpu.

WWW Link How about a supercomputer built using graphics cards?

Kitkun

on Jul 06, 2008

WWW Link How about a supercomputer built using graphics cards?

From the article:

For specific applications that can be massively parallelized GPUs are much faster than CPUs

Keywords are "For specific applications".

GoodGame

on Jul 06, 2008

Like saying the CPU is dead has got be more retarded than Nietzche.
What does his R&D section have a biological computer?

If anything the market might start leaning towards embedded, less general purpose CPUs over the plug and play types, but I seriously doubt that market will disappear even with an energy crunch. Like playing FPS is the only use for a CPU? Might as well get the next gen console instead.

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