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Here we sit at the dawn of "The Age of Visual Computing" and Intel makes a deal with their arch enemy, low cost-high volume SOC producer TSMC. Peter Glaskowsky argues that the Intel-TSMC alliance announced earlier this week is a good thing for both companies, but not for the reasons stated by Intel. Peter discusses Intel's problem of competing with low margin manufactures like TSCM. He walks through the challenges and options Intel has, describing why this is a killer deal for both Intel and TSMC. The losers however are Nvidia, ViA and ARM. Great discussion! Looks to me like Intel is very concerned about Nvidia and the ION-Atom motherboard. So much so that they are willing to risk a massive anti-trust action.
There are a number of articles and comments at the diigo "Future of the Web" group discussing Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang, the ION-Atom motherboard, and Jen's "Age of Visual Computing" vision. His views on legacy x86 CPU processing power and why we need a combined GPU-CPU architecture are fascinating. Soon enough, i expect to see a netbook running the Google Android OS on a ION-Atom or ION-ViA motherboard. What a day that's going to be.

Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang is on a mission to get graphics chips into everything from handheld computers to smart phones. He expects, for instance, that low-cost Netbooks will become the norm and that gadgets will need to have battery life lasting for days. Holding up an Ion platform, which couples an Intel low-cost Atom processor with an Nvidia integrated graphics chip set, he said his company is looking to determine "what is the soul of the new PC." With Ion, Huang said he is prepared for the future of the computer industry. But first, he has to deal with Intel. Good interview. See interview with Charlie Rose! The Dance of the Sugarplum Documents is about the evolution of the Web document model from a text-typographical/calculation model to one that is visually rich with graphical media streams meshing into traditional text/calc. The thing is, this visual document model is being defined on the edge. The challenge to the traditional desktop document model is coming from the edge, primarily from the WebKit - Chrome - iPhone Community. Jen-Hsun argues on Charlie Rose that desktop computers featured processing power and applications designed to automate typewritter (wordprocessing) and calculator (spreadsheet) functions. The x86 CPU design reflects this orientation. He argues that we are now entering the age of visual computing. A GPU is capable of dramatic increases in processing power because the architecture is geared to the volumes of graphical information being processed. Let the CPU do the traditional stuff, and let the GPU race into the future with the visual processing. That a GPU architecture can scale in parallel is an enormous advantage. But Jen-Hsun does not see the need to try to replicate CPU tasks in a GPU. The best way forward in his opinion is to combine the two!!!

I posted a digg on Peter Glaskowsky's CNET article discussing the Intel - TSMC deal. In 1995, i somehow managed to get between Intel and TSMC regarding funding for Virtual Realty, a video conferencing based loan origination / real estate transaction processing company that used Intel ProShare. TSMC wanted to invest a ton of money in VRi, with the idea of providing a full graphical listing, brokerage and transaction service for all of Asia. Intel needed a business model proving the value of ProShare, and capable of putting down the basics of a wide bandwidth video conferencing communications-data network they could grow into a platform.

At first this seemed to me like a win-win for everyone. Then i found out how seriously pissed Intel was about TSMC's deal with ViA and the resulting "WinBook". Although this is not the time or place to tell the story, i was truly stunned and shocked when i saw the Intel-TSMC deal announcement. Wow!

My response to Peter focuses on his comments about how this deal will impact Nvidia. And then, how the Nvidia vision of an ION-Atom motherboard impacts WebKit and the future of the Open Web.