Jon Peddie Back Pages - It's all about the pixels

The art of testing and other esoteric sidelines

Posted by Jon Peddie on July 22nd 2010 | Discuss (0)
Tags: directx graphics 3d opengl benchmarking testing benchmarks

We test a lot of things here at JPR and at JPA before that. We’ve been testing stuff officially and unofficially for 30 some years—you’d think we’d know what we’re doing. Hell, we thought we knew what we were doing. This last batch of graphics AIBs really threw us. We couldn’t get things to work. Benchmarks wouldn’t bench. Command lines needed to set parameters wouldn’t work. Resolutions would stay stuck, and over-clocking tools defied us to make them behave—and all the while the clock is ticking …. No one wants to read about a test done on a product that was…

Been seeing double for a very long time

Posted by Jon Peddie on July 8th 2010 | Discuss (0)
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The idea of using a computer for stereovision representation of molecules dates back to Project MAC at MIT in 1966. And in the early 1980s the concept became known “molecular graphics” and the Molecular Graphics Society (MGS) in the UK formalized the notion and science of computer-based molecular modeling. Initially much of the technology concentrated either on high-performance 3D graphics, including interactive rotation or 3D rendering of atoms as spheres (sometimes with radiosity). The first stereovision machine I saw was an Evans & Sutherland (E&S) workstation in the early eighties. It had a vector (“stroke”) display. The stereo device or selection…

It’s the noun stupid - Video Game Consoles

Posted by Jon Peddie on June 23rd 2010 | Permalink
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I couldn’t understand after all these years why the press keeps referring to, and getting excited about “video games,” and yet never mentioned the PC. The first console dates back to the “Brown Box,” Ralph Baer developed at Sanders in 1962 (although Baer says he thought of it in 1952.) Sanders licensed it to Magnavox in 1969, and Magnavox then released it in 1972 as the Odyssey. However, the first computer game, “Spacewar,” was developed on a PDP-1 in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen at MIT. Actually, using a computer to play a “game” dates back to…

Those ungrateful consumers

Posted by Jon Peddie on June 11th 2010 | Permalink
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Look at all we’ve done for them and have they once said thanks? No, all they want to do is talk about the good old days. The good old what? You mean when we had Windows 95, and a laptop had VGA resolution in a nine-inch screen, weighed ten pounds and ran on a battery for almost three hours? Yeah, that was great wasn’t it? Today we hardly even mention the battery life of a laptop. Kathleen Maher has a Vaio that refuses to quit, in fact she runs out of energy before it does. She also has an iPad and…

The Tyranny of Terminology

Posted by Jon Peddie on May 28th 2010 | Permalink
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One of the running jokes about the difference between the English, French and German languages are how rich and efficient English is and how complicated and wordy French and German can be. We struggle with terminology here all the time, trying to come up with meaningful, efficient, and entertaining nomenclature to describe the incredibly complex thingies we deal with every day. We are currently struggling with two developmental products that as of yet have not been totally defined or turned into a comfortable acronym. Our attempts this week concerned the new class of processors, which have graphics embedded in them, and…

To be S3D you have to see

Posted by Jon Peddie on May 14th 2010 | Permalink
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James Cameron called me the other day and told me (he never asks) I should pay more attention to 3D. I told him I’ve been involved in “3D” longer than he has been making movies, and what he really meant was Stereo-3D, or S3D. He didn’t get it, but he will. Maybe about the time I convince Jeffrey Katzenberg to say S3D. These movie types think they’ve just discovered imposibideum, like it’s some secret force of nature that was just lying under the surface waiting for them to remove the plenum and re- veal it to the rest of us. Obviously…

To 3D or not 3D, that’s no longer the question

Posted by Jon Peddie on April 28th 2010 | Permalink
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Visual stereoscopy, also known as S3D, has definitely come to the PC. It was actually always there, just not exposed. Soon there will be video stereo­scopy available on your TV, you can see cinematic stereoscopy now in most metropolitan theaters in the industrialized world, and this time next year most new smartphones will offer web, game, and video stereoscopy content via auto-stereoscopic glasses-free displays. All of this gets bundled in the phrase “3D.” Obviously “3D” leaves a lot to be desired in terms of meaning and to the people using it. Yes, issues still exist and probably will for a couple…

Moving toward the edge —it may be uncomfortable there

Posted by Jon Peddie on April 16th 2010 | Permalink
Tags: nvidia gpu ati intel amd ipg igp

This week’s issue of Tech Watch looks at the inflection point we are entering with the end of the IGP and the introduction of the IPG—Integrated Processor Graphics. The question is, or at least one important question is, how does the IPG affect the discrete GPU? We also take a look at the latest, greatest GPUs from ATI and Nvidia, and we reviewed some massively multi-monitor systems. All of these developments are pushing the edges of conventional computer componentry and our concepts of what is normal. It all adds up to what’s called an inflection point or disruptive technology by pundits…

Almost every year Intel’s Paul Otellini gets to be proven right

Posted by Jon Peddie on April 2nd 2010 | Permalink
Tags: gpu intel cpu gpgpu nokia arm cell cores ip

Paul Otellini says no other architecture has ever survived other than the x86. He cites RISC, Transputer, SGI’s geometry processor, array-processors, DSP, and others. Now he can add the Cell to his list. Last month, Sony said they would not do a Cell 2 for the next gen PlayStation, and last week IBM said they would not develop a Cell 2 for their next gen servers. The noble if somewhat limited Cell experiment is over. Alas poor Cell, we never knew you well. The Cell suffered from an awkward programming structure and lacked some critical inter-processor linkages. One could say all…

On seeing more

Posted by Jon Peddie on March 19th 2010 | Permalink
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Peddie’s second law is—The more you can see the more you can do. Looking good, feeling better. And if you’ve looked at my blog, you will see what I’m currently experimenting with to test that theory. And a test it will be, when you have a video wall in front of you, your operational dynamics change. If all the displays are filled with individual applications, then you want the screens about 60cm or two feet or less away from your eye. If you are using all six in an extended desktop mode then you want them a meter or three feet…