2021 was an uneventful year for GPUs and AIBs. Neither AMD nor Nvidia introduced a new GPU architecture, and only released AIBs based on derivatives of their 2020 GPUs. It will be mid-February before we get the final results, but we estimate the desktop PCs will hit 117 million, notebooks 297 million, workstations 3.5 million, and tablets 170 million units … Read more
Maxon has been spewing news lately; it’s hard to track but it all adds up to a strong play for more of the creatives’ business. The headline is that Maxon plans to buy the assets of Pixologic, makers of the revered ZBrush sculpting tool. Maxon’s CEO David Gavran and the team have published a quick post with reassuring words for … Read more
If you are the one person who hasn’t heard the U.S. FTC may block San Jose-based Nvidia’s intention to acquire UK-based Arm from Japan-based Softbank, then let me be the one to bring you up to date. On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission moved to block Nvidia’s planned $40 billion purchase of SoftBank’s semiconductor business Arm Ltd., saying the deal … Read more
The gunfighters are circling the corral and their fingers are twitching. In-play is the opportunity presented by Arm. As if it’s not enough that Arm owns mobile phones, automotive, consumer electronics, industrial appliances, and it has a growing role in the datacenter, Apple has proven that Arm can take over in personal computing, and even workstations. There are a lot … Read more
Autodesk’s Media and Entertainment division is rebuilding itself within the Autodesk enterprise. The company has always wanted its DCC division with its enormous wealth of creative tools to be able to serve the entire company as well as be a major force in professional entertainment content creation. We’re seeing those first steps. Things change quickly these days. At Autodesk’s … Read more
Nvidia's Q3’21 earnings report continues the company’s revenue gains and sets another record. For the third quarter ended October 31, 2021, the company reported sales of $7.1 billion, up 50% from a year earlier and up 9.2% from the previous quarter, with record revenue from the company’s Gaming, Data Center, and Professional Visualization platforms. The company’s Graphics business revenue was … Read more
Weta’s Digital Tools have just barely made their public debut when Unity swoops in and picks them up for a cool billion and a half bucks, or $1.625 billion to be more precise. Weta Studios has long had a talented development team, who have made their mark in film with credits for Avatar, Black Widow, King Kong, Lord of the … Read more
The acceptance of BIM through the last decade has been astonishing. Once a slow-growing luxury for large construction firms, BIM is now accepted as a requirement on large projects. BIM has been around as a concept since the 1980s and began to gain regulatory traction in the 2000s. The technology got a leg up from European government bodies, which had … Read more
This could be an entertaining or totally aggravating, lawyer invoking party game—ask when the personal computer was invented. Someone did—ask that is. There’s a charming site located in Seattle called Blinkenlights Archeological Institute. It was established in 1997 to excavate, preserve, research, and present interesting and historically significant computing devices. The website, http://www. blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml, lists seven qualifications of what constitutes … Read more
It was integrated circuits that made Moore’s observation possible. You can’t scale something unless you have the thing, and six-foot-six Jack Kilby gave us that thing—the integrated circuit. Fifty-six years ago, in a little lab on Forest Lane, Dallas Texas Kilby asked the basic question: “Why do we need the wires? If I make parts out of all of the … Read more
AMD reported revenue for the third quarter of 2021 of $4.3 billion, an operating income of $948 million, and a net (GAAP) profit of $923 million. “AMD had another record quarter as revenue grew 54% and operating income doubled year-over-year,” said AMD president and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. “3rd Gen EPYC processor shipments ramped significantly in the quarter as our … Read more
Intel reported its third-quarter revenue had a strong recovery in the Enterprise portion of Data Center Group (DCG) and the Internet of Things Group (IOTG), which saw higher demand amid recovery from the economic impacts of COVID-19. The Client Computing Group (CCG) was down due to lower notebook volumes due to industry-wide component shortages and lower adjacent revenue, partially offset … Read more
