tequila bomb

Intel just announced that it has identified a bug in the 6-series chipset, specifically in its SATA controller. Intel states that “In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives.”.

If you are waiting to upgrade your MacBook Pro, this will have an effect…

Have you noticed a lack of dual-core Sandy Bridge based notebooks on the market? Intel wanted to but couldn’t launch every last SNB SKU at the same time, so the dual-core notebooks got pushed out until mid-to-late February. Unfortunately, that was pre-bug. With this latest delay you shouldn’t expect dual-core SNB notebooks until a few weeks after their original launch date, at the earliest.

If we assume fixed chipsets are available in the last week of February, they can be put into systems the first week of March. Then expect at least a week of testing and validation if not more. Add another week to ramp up production and we’re looking at late March or early April for dual-core SNB notebooks. Those of you waiting on Apple’s updated MacBook Pros fall into this category. I’d say April is a safe bet if you’re waiting on an upgrade.

Intel is causing delays in Apple’s new Macintosh roll outs… again.

**Some tech sites are reporting that the “shock” deal made between Intel and NVIDIA yesterday signals that we will now see Intel cram NVIDIA graphics technology into their CPUs. I don’t read it that way, and neither does AnandTech. It’s really more about the insane state of the US patent system… and ARM.

The state of the United States patent system is such that it’s difficult if not impossible to design and build a high-tech product without infringing on someone’s patent. Snark about patent trolls aside, there are often only a handful of good methods to implement a given technology, and all of those methods are patented by someone. For these reasons there are a number of broad cross-licensing agreements in the GPU and CPU markets so that all the major manufacturers can design and build products without running afoul of another’s patent portfolio. AMD and Intel cross-license, AMD and NVIDIA cross-license, Intel and VIA cross-license, etc. Most of these cross-licensing agreements have the participants as peers, with each side getting access to the patents they need to make their agreements equal in value.

Switching subject for a moment, this is pretty much how all the various ongoing smart phone patent lawsuits will end up being settled, eventually.

The biggest (or at least, least ignorable) component of the settlement is a cash settlement between Intel and NVIDIA. Intel will be paying NVIDIA a total of 1.5 billion dollars as part of the terms of the settlement. This is larger than the EU fine ($1.45bil) and larger than AMD’s cash payout ($1.25bil).

The cash settlement goes hand-in-hand with the rest of the settlement, which settles the outstanding legal ambiguity about the previous Intel/NVIDIA chipset licensing agreement, along with establishing a new 6 year agreement between the companies that largely extends the previous chipset agreement.

The most notable bit here is that the chipset license agreement will now formally define that NVIDIA does not gain rights to DMI/QPI, which the agreement defines as being Intel processors with an on-chip/on-die memory controller. So while the company can continue to produce C2D chipsets, they will not be able to produce a Nehalem or Sandy Bridge chipset. This seems to be quite alright with NVIDIA, who claims they are done making chipsets – as far as we know they wound-down their chipset operations some time ago, and the GeForce 320M chipset (largely seen in Apple’s 13” and 11” notebooks) was the final chipset for the company.

Intel has one less competitor in the GPU business that they are trying to expand into, and are free from being sued by NVIDIA or AMD over patent infringement with their IGPs.

Coming back to patents again, NVIDIA now also has access to a limited number of Intel’s x86 patents. And whilst they are focussing on an ARM based processor in the future (Denver), it is very likely that they will fall foul of some of Intel’s CPU patents. So this deal is most likely aimed at clearing the way for NVIDIA when its CPUs may well start competing with Intel’s.

NVIDIA and Intel originally cross-licensed in 2004 so that Intel could build IGPs using NVIDIA patented technologies and methods. That agreement was set to expire this year, which would have been a massive problem for a company whose CPUs almost always include a GPU. Today’s agreement with NVIDIA renews and extends that original agreement: Intel continues to cross-license with NVIDIA, allowing them to produce IGPs that use/infringe on NVIDIA patents. To be clear we believe this is a continuation of existing practices, and not any kind of agreement to integrate actual NVIDIA GPUs in to future Intel CPUs as others have claimed elsewhere.

The rest of what Intel gets would appear to be gaining a market advantage through not having to give anything up. Intel doesn’t have to license x86 to NVIDIA, Intel doesn’t have to license DMI/QPI to NVIDIA, and if our reading is right Intel won’t have to face direct competition from NVIDIA using an x86-to-ARM emulator. This may not be an “exciting” outcome, but keep in mind that Intel already has some of the best gross margins in the chip industry, so to maintain status quo for the company is a big deal for them.

In summary…

NVIDIA is receiving 1.5 billion dollars, continued rights to make C2D chipsets, and unspecified patent protection for their ARM-based Project Denver CPU. Meanwhile Intel will continue to have access to NVIDIA’s graphics patents enabling them to produce IGPs, and some additional security in the x86 market by continuing to lock NVIDIA out of it. NVIDIA seems to have gotten the better end of the deal here, but Intel certainly got something out of the deal too.

The moral of the story is that Intel is still incredibly healthy as a company, but times are changing and the threat from the multitude of manufacturers out there producing faster and faster ARM based SoCs is something that Intel is rightly very wary of.

x86 is firmly in [Intel's] hands, but ARM and future generations of Atom are set to compete in the SoC market, and at the same time NVIDIA’s ARM-based Project Denver could upset the server market in a way not seen in years. Intel has their work cut out [for] them, and as we’ve seen should they falter there are plenty of other companies waiting to capitalize on the opportunity. Lawsuits, fines, and inquiries may sound scary, but the biggest threat to Intel remains all the other companies that want to take down the 800lb gorilla of the silicon world.

**Jon Stokes, over at Ars Technica, has now corrected his article… To be fair Jon is normally pretty much on the ball, but apparently he had a bad fever when he broke the story. Bless. We live and learn.

Correction: NVIDIA wrote in to tell us that our original headline was not accurate. An NVIDIA spokesperson said, “Licensing a technology is different than incorporating an entire processor. The settlement provides Intel with access to our IP and patents, such as Sandy Bridge which already uses NVIDIA technology. The license enables Intel to extend that model for the next 6 years.”

Also, I deleted the following text from the article: “On the Intel side, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsuan confirmed that Intel could use the licensing agreement to produce a Sandy Bridge successor with an on-die GPU based on NVIDIA technology.” It looks like NVIDIA’s stance is that there’s already NVIDIA IP in the Sandy Bridge IGP, because Sandy Bridge’s GPU infringes on NVIDIA patents. This wrinkle wasn’t at all clear from the announcement or the call—at least, it wasn’t clear to me.

[Intel Executive Vice President Dadi Perlmutter] basically said (and I paraphrase from memory here) that Microsoft has a long ways to go on the tablet software front, and that an ARM port will help them get there. And, by the time they get their tablet software sorted—a fresh, tablet-centric UI and much-needed power optimizations—Intel will be ready with an Atom-based chip that can compete directly with ARM in the milliwatt power draw range.

Right now, Atom is significantly more power-hungry (and more high-performance) than the ARM Cortex A8-caliber hardware that’s showing up in Android tablets. But Intel will continue to close that gap with each new process generation. So, by the time Moore’s Law delivers an Atom SoC with the same power profile as A8- and A9-based SoCs, Microsoft will either be ready with a tablet-worthy OS, or it will be further along than it would’ve been if it had been waiting for Intel to catch up.

Good point.

As always two great articles from AnandTech…

Spoiler : Sandy Bridge is a great new CPU, and is going to get a lot of buzz from Apple for its hardware-based transcoding engine; great for ripping movies to mobile devices (yawn).

Unfortunately I don’t see Apple sticking the top of the line 4/8 core versions in any of its laptops anytime soon though; they’re expensive! Expect one of the chips a little lower down the range.

Intel also still has a generation or two to go before it gets a handle on what makes great IGPs, and even in this generation their graphics drivers need work. I haven’t even mentioned Open CL yet; there’s a reason for that!

That’s not to say that Sandy Bridge’s IGP is not a much better IGP than they’ve produced before. It is. But that’s not difficult to achieve. Although their current offering is still only on a par with last gen. IGPs from AMD and NVIDIA. So we’ll still need discrete GPUs for some considerable time yet if we want anything approaching contemporary performance.

With Intel now using 32nm process technology on their IGP and 22nm coming in late 2011, we could actually begin seeing a doubling of IGP performance every ~18 months without increasing power requirements, and at some point we stop needing much more than that. Put it another way: Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 with 114M transistors is now providing about the same level of performance as the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, and you pretty much get that “free” with any non-Atom CPU going forward. Maybe the next consoles won’t even need to use anything beyond AMD/Intel’s current integrated solutions?

MacBook models with screen sizes of 13 inches and below are expected to switch to Sandy Bridge-only graphics, while higher-end MacBook Pros are expected to use graphics from Advanced Micro Devices, according to sources. Whether Nvidia will still be present in higher-end models is unclear.

Sandy Bridge is a watershed processor for Intel because, for the first time in a mainstream product, the graphics chip is grafted directly onto the main processor, boosting performance, while essentially providing the graphics function for free. And the step up in performance may be enough for Apple to rely on Intel’s graphics in some lower-end MacBooks.

Seems very unlikely to me. Intel has not got a good past history of delivering on GPU performance  promises.

Anyone remember how unpopular the GMA 950 IGPs from Intel were? I am not sure Apple want to go through that pain again. Their customers certainly don’t. Nor are they particularly happy with the current GPU restrictions imposed by Intel on much of Apple’s product line.

AMD is a likely shoe in for more components in future. And not necessarily just GPUs.

Apple’s plan for the future is most definitely to be as silicon agnostic as possible. It should be any manufacturers aim at this point in our industry’s history. For that reason I think Apple is likely to keep more manufacturers on tap, rather than less. Dropping NVIDIA means that they are less likely to be there in the future for Apple’s future needs.

Right now Intel are still being coy about how far they plan to go with OpenCL support. Without that any deal arrived at out of choice is simply not going to happen with Apple.

BARCELONA (Dow Jones)–Microchip designer ARM Holdings PLC (ARM.LN) has an “active technical dialogue” with Google Inc. (GOOG) that extends to Google TV, Chief Executive Warren East said Thursday.

East’s comments come after Dow Jones Newswires reported late Wednesday that ARM was in preliminary discussions with Google on a potential cooperation deal linked to Google TV, which lifted its stock.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecoms conference in Barcelona, East said: “It’s well known that all the Android phones that are out there at the moment are running on ARM, and so clearly Google are active users of ARM.

From  The WSJ.

This explains ARM‘s stock price jump over the last few days.

If I was Intel I would be very concerned about the future of Mobile, and more specifically my role in it.

This also perhaps explains why certain brand leading TVs with Google TV built in are put together in what looks more akin to prototype grating than something that rolled off a final unified production line.

Light Peak is now on track to appear in products in the first half of 2011–and likely earlier in the year than later, according to an industry source familiar with the progress of the technology. Light Peak is significantly faster than even USB 3.0, carrying data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously.

In this respect, Light Peak eclipses USB 3.0, which is not supported by Apple and is only supported sporadically by PC makers on certain models. The reason? Intel has yet to support USB 3.0 in the chipsets that accompany its processors.

Apple and Intel worked together on Light Peak during its early specification. Expect Macs with even less ports in the future, and more proprietary connectors, as Light Peak is designed to carry many different protocols at the same time.

Light Peak being on Apple’s near term plans is very clear when one considers Steve Jobs reply to an enquiry on near-term Mac USB 3.0 support…

We don’t see USB 3 taking off at this time. No support from Intel, for example.

Whether you like the concept of Light Peak or not. Or USB for that matter. (I like both, and see the advantages of both – just as I do with IGPs and their discrete counterparts.) It’s still a shame that Intel’s policy on pretty much anything that might threaten proprietary technology they are developing these days is to simply cripple its adoption in the marketplace at the expense of its customers.

Bad news: Nvidia has confirmed Intel’s stance on USB 3.0—no Intel chipsets will support the new standard until 2011. Short of Intel stating something different, USB 3.0 probably won’t hit mass consumption until then.

Nice!

Are we going to see Light Peak in devices before then?

On May 4, 2010, in Brussels, Intel demonstrated a laptop with a Light Peak connector (indicating that the technology had shrunk to small enough to fit inside such a device) and had the laptop send 2 distinct simultaneous HD video streams down the connection (indicating that at least some fraction of the software/firmware stacks and protocols are now functional). At the same demonstration, Intel maintained that it expected hardware manufacturing to begin around the end of 2010.

Currently most of the smartphones and tablets in the market are powered by an ARM-based microprocessor and thus app developers have to code apps to optimize the ARM architecture.

This should tell Intel something.

Intel’s tool will allow app developers to port these apps to devices running on its Atom processors. The tool helps the developers to spot the key changes they need to make to an Apple app to make it Intel-device compatible.

I’d be interested to see more details on this. In the end, if I was going to port something to another flavour of OS, or silicon, I would just do it myself. Most of us code in portable ways by default these days.

This strategy seems a bit desperate. Not as desperate as Microsoft paying people to develop for their hardware. But desperate nonetheless.

Intel would do far better if it simply got its silicon strategy back on track. It seems that they feel that buying companies and trying to absorb other IP is a better way forward for them at the moment.

Which makes me wonder how confident of their future silicon they are.

I still don’t get why they felt they needed to buy an anti-virus company. Although I have read all the arguments for why it is a good idea.

Meanwhile, Quanta has reportedly landed orders for 11.6-inch MacBooks from Apple. Shipments of 11.6-inch MacBooks are expected to top 400,000-500,000 units in 2010.

A lot of people are theorising that this is for a new MacBook Air.

Possible. But what CPU are they going to stick inside this revision?

A little bird told me months ago that as well as playing with different enclosure material, and touch sensitive screens for the Air, Apple has also been flirting with ARM based silicon.

I don’t see it happening for the Air in this upcoming refresh. It’s too early. But with Intel’s mobile silicon being so underwhelming on the GPU front, I am sure that ARM SoCs are something Apple are at least considering, moving forwards…

You only need to consider new GPU silicon like this, and this, to see how much trouble Intel is in this decade if it keeps up its obsession with home made integrated GPUs.