By Mike Magee: Monday 19 December 2005, 19:18
DURING 2005 TheInquirer.net has tracked every twist and turn of the tremendous graphic chip card battle that's still going on, just a few days before the year ends and Janus looks both ways again.
This is not an ancient battle, like the fight between AMD and Intel. The scrap between Chipzilla and Chimpzilla has gone on for years and years, and when they go back into the ring as they still do for Round 432, you'd be forgiven for thinking that old bruisers like these two chip companies would spend their time better advertising steak grills on QVC rather than attempting to beat the living daylights out of each other.
The situation with ATI and Nvidia is quite, quite different. First of all, both these firms don't manufacture chips themselves - they are fabless chip companies, they're very young chip companies compared to the old bruisers, and that means they've far more will to win than their elders and betters. Who should really be sitting as spectators, placing bets.
It's aggression pure and simple and the way both ATI and Nvidia fight is almost as if you threw two Scottish wildcats into a bag and tried to domesticate them.
Nothing better illustrated this than last week, when INQ hack Fuad Abazovic gained sight of some graphic chip share numbers from Mercury Research. We attempted to act like a referee when Nvidia and ATI started scrapping over this, but we can tell you that none of us here at the INQ escaped without a few scratches from the wildcats. Luckily we were wearing thick thick gloves.
Of course, while Nvidia and ATI scrap away, Intel and AMD take the semi-professional role of promoters of the fight. There's some truth to the observation that the graphics chip companies are ahead of both Intel and AMD in pure technology. Bob Colwell, Intel's ex-chief architect, once observed that the only thing limiting the graphics firms was the resolution of the eye. But nevertheless the eye and the brain are really one organ and also the eye is the mirror of the soul.
Some think that behind the scenes, AMD and Intel are like puppet masters, pulling the strings to make ATI and Nvidia engage in knee jerk reactions. But of course it's a little more complicated than that. Intel, for example, wants everything and the Mercury figures we've seen show it is a huge player in the graphics arena. It seems that the strategic Nvidia AMD partnership (SNAP) - which we first reported in the iNQ just a few years ago, is still in operation.
It could actually be that Intel is incredibly jealous of Nvidia and the ULI deal will probably aid that inherent Chipzilla paranoia. The exact nature of the relationships between ATI, Nvidia, Intel, and AMD continues to be most obscure because of legal agreements they've made. We think here at the INQ that it's entirely possible that Intel has everything to fear from Nvidia. Not just because it understands the fabless model and the channel rather perfectly, but also because it's one of the most aggressive players in the chip market. And if you pitted an old time boxer against a young blade, you might feel sympathy for the guy still slogging away at 40 years of age, but you'd probably put your money on the youngster. Will the fight end in a knockout? Just as well all four chip companies aren't in the boxing ring together - tag wrestling isn't allowed for boxing, is it? We guess the old souls at AMD and Intel regard ATI and Nvidia as striplings. But we think they'd better look to their laurels.
DURING 2005 TheInquirer.net has tracked every twist and turn of the tremendous graphic chip card battle that's still going on, just a few days before the year ends and Janus looks both ways again.
This is not an ancient battle, like the fight between AMD and Intel. The scrap between Chipzilla and Chimpzilla has gone on for years and years, and when they go back into the ring as they still do for Round 432, you'd be forgiven for thinking that old bruisers like these two chip companies would spend their time better advertising steak grills on QVC rather than attempting to beat the living daylights out of each other.
The situation with ATI and Nvidia is quite, quite different. First of all, both these firms don't manufacture chips themselves - they are fabless chip companies, they're very young chip companies compared to the old bruisers, and that means they've far more will to win than their elders and betters. Who should really be sitting as spectators, placing bets.
It's aggression pure and simple and the way both ATI and Nvidia fight is almost as if you threw two Scottish wildcats into a bag and tried to domesticate them.
Nothing better illustrated this than last week, when INQ hack Fuad Abazovic gained sight of some graphic chip share numbers from Mercury Research. We attempted to act like a referee when Nvidia and ATI started scrapping over this, but we can tell you that none of us here at the INQ escaped without a few scratches from the wildcats. Luckily we were wearing thick thick gloves.
Of course, while Nvidia and ATI scrap away, Intel and AMD take the semi-professional role of promoters of the fight. There's some truth to the observation that the graphics chip companies are ahead of both Intel and AMD in pure technology. Bob Colwell, Intel's ex-chief architect, once observed that the only thing limiting the graphics firms was the resolution of the eye. But nevertheless the eye and the brain are really one organ and also the eye is the mirror of the soul.
Some think that behind the scenes, AMD and Intel are like puppet masters, pulling the strings to make ATI and Nvidia engage in knee jerk reactions. But of course it's a little more complicated than that. Intel, for example, wants everything and the Mercury figures we've seen show it is a huge player in the graphics arena. It seems that the strategic Nvidia AMD partnership (SNAP) - which we first reported in the iNQ just a few years ago, is still in operation.
It could actually be that Intel is incredibly jealous of Nvidia and the ULI deal will probably aid that inherent Chipzilla paranoia. The exact nature of the relationships between ATI, Nvidia, Intel, and AMD continues to be most obscure because of legal agreements they've made. We think here at the INQ that it's entirely possible that Intel has everything to fear from Nvidia. Not just because it understands the fabless model and the channel rather perfectly, but also because it's one of the most aggressive players in the chip market. And if you pitted an old time boxer against a young blade, you might feel sympathy for the guy still slogging away at 40 years of age, but you'd probably put your money on the youngster. Will the fight end in a knockout? Just as well all four chip companies aren't in the boxing ring together - tag wrestling isn't allowed for boxing, is it? We guess the old souls at AMD and Intel regard ATI and Nvidia as striplings. But we think they'd better look to their laurels.