Overseeing the expansion is the company’s dynamic leader Jen-Hsun Huang, who sees his chips going ever faster and in more places. Next up for the company is a quad-core chip code named Kal-El.

Welcome to the last session of AsiaD. Here’s Jen-Hsun Huang.

Walt: Al Gore talked for a long time. Anyway: You pivoted into processors for “post-PC devices.” How many devices are your chips in now?

Huang: We’re in about 70 percent of non-iPad tablets. Thirteen models of phones (?) around the world.

Walt: Who are your competitiors?

Huang: Qualcomm is a direct competitor. We started out as a graphics company, and evolved from serving gamers, designers, etc.

And we tried to grow initially by growing into the basic PC market by integrating chipsets. That didn’t work out for me, because “going toe-to-toe with Intel is not a good idea.” So now we’re trying increase the usefulness of GPUs in different products.

12:13 pm: Walt: Now the GPU for many PCs is more powerful and complicated than CPU, right?

Huang: Yep. And they can do lots of stuff now: Computer graphics, image processing. Stuff like what Lytro is doing with their camera.

And the second part of the strategy was backing away from the chipset business, and investing in mobile computing. Back to competitors: Qualcomm is direct. Apple is an indirect competitor.

We partner with device makers, so in a lot of ways I’ve adopted their competition.

12:16 pm: Walt: So what’s new?

Huang: When we first got into mobile, I started talking to the cellphone companies and telling them mobile devices would become a computer. And the iPhone proved that and woke people up. So our perspective is that these devices would be “rich computers — quite powerful computers” and that graphics would play an important role.

So we built the world’s first dual-core graphics processor, the Tegra 2, and that’s what we’re shipping today. And now we’re working on our first quad-core processor, Tegra 3, which is really going to be called Kal-El. Huang notes that Kal-El is Superman’s name, and that the rest of the product lineup is also based on comics: “Wayne” for Batman, etc.

Anyway: Getting performance is the easy part. The challenging part is delivering that performance with low power, and better and better efficiency. The low-power core with Kal-El is 20x “less hungry” for energy.

Second invention: Use the image-processing technique to look at the color content of an image. That allows us to save a ton of power that way.

It allows us to sort of “cheat” on colors and use similar colors, with different lighting — the human eye can’t tell.

12:24 pm: Walt: Aren’t your competitors doing quad-cores as well, and trying to reduce power, too?

Huang: Sure. “Our challenge is to create something surprising every generation … we’ll have to come up with something magical or something surprising every generation.”

Walt: Is it a disadvantage for Apple to design its own chips?

Huang: Apple’s Bob Mansfield is really good at chip design. Also, we sell them chips for their PCs.

Anyway, there are a lot of good reasons to build your own chips — they can control the vertical stack, and they might have good insights on bringing stuff to market, and not sharing that with third-party competitors is a fine idea. But R&D costs will go up — I’ve already spent $2 billion on Tegra. So it may become more difficult for companies to build for lots of different segments.

“There might come a time when it becomes important to buy some or build some. We’ll see.”

Walt: “And they know your number.”

Q&A

Q: Please talk about [something, sorry, didn't catch it]

Huang: We started completely focused on mobile phones. That was Tegra 2. Then we tweaked that for the tablet market. Now we’re clear that ARM is going to be a large ecosystem. It’s possible for us to extend that beyond phones to tablets and clamshells. Most likely Windows on ARM.

[Apologies. Really can't follow any of this]

Q: You talked about building processors for phones or tablets. Do you think tablet-specific processors are really coming?

A: There’s not enough volume with 60 million tablets to build tablet-specific chips. But you can imagine building a processor where some versions are perfect for tablets, and other versions are perfect for high-end smartphones. That’s how you can make the economics work.

Q: (Hey, it’s Joanna Stern!)

[Sorry, couldn't follow this question, either]

Huang is advising Microsoft to come out with tablets first, for Windows-on-ARMs, to establish that “these are not PCs.”

If Office could run on Windows-on-ARMs “that would be the killer app.”

And we’re done. Thanks for joining us in Hong Kong, all.

Jen-Hsun Huang Session Photos

So why Asia? It seemed the most obvious choice for us, as we looked at the global landscape for tech. While the whole world has now been engulfed in the powerful trends of digitalization, perhaps nowhere else has been as important a place for understanding where it is headed next than this region, which is home to companies critical to the next phase of innovation.

There’s no question that Silicon Valley, which has been the base for most of the key players — such as Google, Apple, Facebook and more — has driven the digital revolution over the past decade. But as we look out onto what’s to come, it’s clear to us and many others that what’s coming next and even the next great company might be born here.

That’s why we have created a conference that mixes both important speakers from U.S. tech and also from all over Asia.

Given that smartphones are in ascendance globally, having Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android efforts, is a no-brainer. The longtime mobile exec is at the top of an aggressive push by the Internet giant to dominate the important sector across the world.

Speaking of domination, Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere are hard to ignore. His recent tussle and interest in Yahoo, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.

Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena.

Nvidia is not only a pioneer of graphics chips, but now its processors are widely used in the latest mobile devices. That’s why its founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a lot to say about the future of the fastest-growing sector of computing, from smartphones to tablets and whatever’s next.

Asus Chairman Jonney Shih has presided over the Taiwanese tech giant since the early 1990s. Most recently, the company pioneered the netbook market and is now plunging deeply into the tablet business, making Shih perfect to discuss these key issues in Asia and around the world.

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance in tech, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use?

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind-Google-and-Apple job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia, and Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

We also felt that it was important to hear from Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including: Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site; former Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who is running the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online; and David Goldberg, who is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company.

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou, needs little introduction. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba.

And so does LivingSocial, whose CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, it was natural to invite Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, who heads global product strategy for the Korean giant’s mobile business. That has surged in the past year to make Samsung a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, chairman of HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. Add to that HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market, and it’s clear it is in a pole position on the critical mobile market going forward.

Finally, we are also glad to bring back Al Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist. He is also on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, as well as a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins.

In total, along with some very cool demos to show off, it’s going to be an exciting AsiaD, and we are thrilled most of all to welcome our first international audience. So get ready for a busy three days here and we hope you will like what we have to show you.

And then there was Schiller and Gore.

That would be Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller and former Vice President Al Gore, who round out the stellar list of speakers at our upcoming AsiaD conference.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21 in Hong Kong, the lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of Silicon Valley start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky; Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Asia head Rose Tsou; LivingSocial’s Tim O’Shaughnessy, along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul; Samsung mobile head Dr. Won-Pyo Hong; HTC CEO Peter Chou, who replaces Chairwoman Cher Wang.

Schiller, who reports to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook (and before that, Steve Jobs) is a member of the executive team of the tech icon, where he has worked for 17 years. He is responsible for a swath of Apple’s outward-facing businesses, including product marketing, developer relations and business marketing.

Today, in fact, he was onstage at Apple’s iPhone event, outlining some of its new product offerings. In addition, Apple just opened its first retail store in Hong Kong.

Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006, needs little introduction. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist.

Gore is on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, which is a neat trick. At the same time, he is a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, a partnership that is focused on sustainable investing.

And, as most people know, he knows a thing or two about the Internet.

Walt Mossberg and I could not think of two better people to add to the lineup we have for AsiaD, which has very few seats left.

See you in China in two weeks!

With AsiaD just a little over a month away, Walt Mossberg and I are adding even more speakers to the list, for what we hope will be an awesome event in Hong Kong.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21, the conference lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and more.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

Now, to add to the kitty:

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba. One of Yahoo’s first big investments came from Asian investor Masa Son, in fact, way back when.

Also on deck is LivingSocial’s CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear with Daniel Shin, the CEO and co-founder of South Korea’s Ticket Monster, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia. Competing there with its U.S. rival Groupon, as well as a myriad of local social buying services, the market is a tough one.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, we thought it was important to have Dr. Won-Pyo Hong. He heads global product strategy for Samsung’s mobile business, which has surged in the past year to make the Korean tech giant a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, the chairwoman of three Taiwan companies, including HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. But just this week she talked about the possibility of HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market.

That’s it for now, but we will have more big names to come, as well as some pretty cool demos we will be putting onstage at AsiaD. So stay tuned.

After our grand tour of Asia last week — with stops in Korea and Japan — it seems like a perfect time to update the speaker list for our upcoming AsiaD conference in Hong Kong in October.

As Walt Mossberg and I said, we are trying to mix both U.S.-based speakers with a pan-Asian selection of speakers from across the region, and the new additions are just that.

For the international confab — this one will be held Oct. 19-21 — we’ve already announced a great lineup, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; and Asus Chairman Jonny Shih.

Now, to add to that terrific lineup:

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. In that role, the dynamic exec is at the nexus of the Japanese company’s efforts around tablets, smartphones, gaming and more. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance over the arena, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use? It’s an important question and Horowitz’s job No. 1.

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android far in the lead, Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. The former top News Corp. exec is now a movie producer — his first effort, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” is a big hit. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. The former CTO of Nortel, he’s heading up global development of Huawei’s cloud services for both businesses and consumers. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

Even in the midst of an economic downturn, there is no denying that it has been a golden time for Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including:

Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site that recently got a huge dose of funding and an equally large amount of controversy. How Airbnb can take the company to the next level, including across the world, while dealing with the kinds of challenges the small management team has to face, will be an interesting topic for discussion.

After stints as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America operations at Google and co-founder of the online personal finance company Yodlee, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is trying her hand at a small start-up again. She’ll talk about how the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online, plans to expand globally.

Finally, longtime tech exec David Goldberg is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company. With stints as founder of music site Launch Media, which was bought by Yahoo, and as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Benchmark Capital, he is the perfect person to explain what it’s like being an entrepreneur today in Silicon Valley.

We have even more speakers for AsiaD we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks, so get ready for what’s next.

No rest for the weary D conference producers!

Which would be Walt Mossberg and me, since we are now hard at work — after a very successful ninth D: All Things Digital — on our newest event: AsiaD.

An international confab — this one will be held October 19 to 21 in Hong Kong — is a big deal for us and we’re making sure it is up to snuff for our audience there.

That begins with the speakers, which we will start announcing now and continue to as we add them onto the roster. As we have said before, we’re going for a lineup of both Asian and U.S. speakers, as well as demos from the region, with a focus on the critical emerging market.

That’s why with smartphones in ascendance globally, having Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android efforts, is a no-brainer. The longtime mobile exec is at the top of an aggressive push by the Silicon Valley Internet giant to dominate the important sector across the world.

Speaking of domination, we are asking Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma onstage to talk more about his efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere. His recent bare-knuckled fight with Yahoo over Alipay, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.

Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena, even as others try to upend him.

Nvidia is not only a pioneer of graphics chips, but now its processors are widely used in the latest mobile devices. That’s why its founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a lot to say about the future of the fastest-growing sector of computing, from smartphones to tablets and whatever’s next.

And Asus Chairman Jonney Shih has presided over the Taiwanese tech giant since the early 1990s. Most recently, the company pioneered the netbook market and is now plunging deeply into the tablet business, making Shih perfect to discuss these key issues in Asia and around the world.

As usual with D, there will be more big names to come — and you can find out more here.

In light of recent events, in particular Nvidia agreeing to make ARM-based chips that will be used in forthcoming notebooks and tablet devices and thus setting up a new competitive dynamic with chip giant Intel, the revelation takes on new significance. Note my use of the word “new,” which this arrangement is not. (Update: An Nvidia spokesman tells me the arrangement between Nvidia and Microsoft has been disclosed every quarterly filing for more than a decade.)

Listed in the “Risk Factors” section–“buried deep” as Information Week puts it–of Nvidia’s most recent 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the following text:

On March 5, 2000, we entered into an agreement with Microsoft in which we agreed to develop and sell graphics chips and to license certain technology to Microsoft and its licensees for use in the Xbox. Under the agreement, if an individual or corporation makes an offer to purchase shares equal to or greater than 30% of the outstanding shares of our common stock, Microsoft may have first and last rights of refusal to purchase the stock. The Microsoft provision and the other factors listed above could also delay or prevent a change in control of NVIDIA.

When I first read it, I thought the date was a typo. Surely this deal was struck in 2011? Then I started looking back through filings from prior years. I went all the way back to the year 2000, when Nvidia filed a 10-K405, a variant of the 10-K that before 2003 indicated that the filing company hadn’t reported its insider trading activity in a timely manner. Here’s the relevant text from that year:

On March 5, 2000, the Company entered into an agreement with Microsoft in which the Company agreed to develop and sell graphics chips and to license certain technology to Microsoft and its licensees for use in a product under development by Microsoft. The agreement provides that in April 2000, Microsoft will pay the Company $200 million as an advance against graphics chip purchases and for licensing the Company’s technology. Microsoft may terminate the agreement at any time and if termination occurs prior to offset in full of the advance payments, the Company would be required to return to Microsoft up to $100 million of the prepayment and to convert the remainder into preferred stock of the Company at a 30% premium to the 30-day average trading price of the common stock.

So for whatever reason Information Week has decided to call attention to an 11-year-old arrangement. If its news to you, you probably don’t have any reason to read Nvidia’s SEC filings. Having been disclosed something like 55 times (five times a year give or take over 11 years), it’s obviously not news to anyone who routinely does read them, such as analysts, investors and pretty much anyone who pays reasonably close attention to Nvidia.

What the arrangement does explain is this, which may be a revelation–if you’re just tuning in to the Nvidia story: Why it hasn’t ever been acquired, or even come close. Nvidia has over the years been the target of repeated takeover speculation, occasionally with Apple or Intel named as the possible acquirer. Robert Cringely wrote just such a column in 2009, arguing that Intel would step up. To Information Week’s credit, Cringely seemed unaware of the role that Microsoft would necessarily play in such an attempted transaction. Speculation about Nvidia being targeted for a buyout has tended to ebb and flow with Nvidia’s stock price since 2006 when its main rival, ATI Technologies, was taken by Advanced Micro Devices.

The arrangement states that if a third party offers enough cash for a stake in Nvidia that amounts to at least 30 percent of the equity, Microsoft has the right to match that offer before Nvidia accepts it. And it is still in force. But it’s helpful to consider it against the backdrop of what was going on in 2000. Permit me, then, to revisit some ancient history.

In 2000, Microsoft put up $200 million to help Nvidia, then a young company with only $375 million in annual sales, to design a chip for what would eventually be called the XBox. In the six days after the deal was concluded, Nvidia’s share price nearly tripled, while trading volume in the shares surged by a factor of six. In fact, it was such a big deal for the company that an Nvidia employee got in trouble with the SEC for insider trading.

Nvidia was a participant in a graphics chip business during a period that proved extremely volatile. Companies that had led the segment were going out of business or splitting into pieces. Later in 2000, Nvidia would go on to buy out the assets of its bankrupt rival 3Dfx Interactive. Another graphics outfit, S3, broke up into pieces, one portion of which wound up in the hands of VIA Technologies, the Taiwanese chipmaker, while the other pieces became SonicBlue, a consumer electronics concern that before the age of the iPod was notable for acquiring the maker of the original Rio MP3 player. (I did say it was ancient history, didn’t I?)

Anyhow, Microsoft needed a hedge in case Nvidia failed to deliver the needed chip. As you can read above, the original terms called for Nvidia to pay back $100 million in cash, and the rest in equity, in the event that Nvidia failed to meet its commitment. Once it delivered and became a strategically important supplier, the deal terms changed to allow Microsoft the right of first refusal in the event that Nvidia was approached for an acquisition, or an investment stake of 30 percent or more.

Also at the time, it was still being prosecuted by the federal government for alleged violations of antitrust laws, making an attempt at an outright acquisition on Nvidia out of the question. In making a big bet on Nvidia’s technology, Microsoft would have wanted to ensure that the young company wasn’t vulnerable to an easy takeover by someone, say Sony, who might have endangered Microsoft’s supply of a critical component.

Fast forward to today. Before its $8.5 billion deal to acquire Skype, Microsoft had more than $50 billion in combined cash and short-term investments, and could, at least on paper, put up the $15 billion or so that would be required to acquire Nvidia if it came to that, which it won’t.

Why not? First off, any such deal wouldn’t likely pass muster with antitrust regulators. The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission might sign off on it, but does anyone believe that the hypersensitive European Commission would be so willing? With Nvidia mounting a reasonable challenge to Intel, it would seem to tighten an integration of hardware and software in one place (Apple notwithstanding). This is, after all, the same European Commission that set a record with the $1.45 billion fine it dealt Intel in 2009 just for playing super-tough against AMD. Forget it.

And if that’s not reason enough to doubt a potential takeover of Nividia by Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter, look at Nividia’s share price. The time for an acquirer to move on Nvidia was a little less than a year ago, when its shares were trading at less than $10 and the company had a market capitalization of less than $6 billion. Now trading at a valuation north of $11 billion, reporting decent profits and holding about $2.7 billion in cash as of May 1, Nvidia is doing just fine on its own. Though CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who was interviewed by ATD’s own Ina Fried at D@CES earlier this year, probably looks back fondly on the $200 million he got from Microsoft 11 years ago.

So? Everyone chill out. There’s really nothing new to see here. Instead, listen to this great, aptly named John Lee Hooker tune, with Carlos Santana sitting in on guitar. It’s not new either. But it’s a lot more interesting.

In a video posted to YouTube, Nvidia shows the chip, known as Kal-El, powering a graphics-intensive demo called Glowball. A glowing ball is seen moving around, casting light and shadows as it moves through the game space. Nvidia said that the video reflects real, on-the-fly game play powered by an accelerometer as opposed to a canned animation.

“Given that dual-core processors are already on [the] market, you might be wondering how Project Kal-El’s quad-core technology will improve the mobile experience,” Nvidia said in a blog post. “Rather than try to explain it, we’ve put together a hands-on demo to give you a sneak peek at the new capabilities coming to superphones and tablets later this year.”

Nvidia first announced plans for the chip, code-named Kal-El at February’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Kal-El, which packs 12 graphics chip cores in addition to its four processing cores, is slated to be the successor to the company’s Tegra 2 chip, which powers a number of current phones and tablets, including the Motorola Xoom and other Honeycomb-based Android tablets.

For more on how Nvidia sees its future powering mobile phones, tablets and even PCs, check out the on-stage interview I did back in January with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at our D@CES event.

Nvidia is looking to take on not only ARM-based rivals like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, but also traditional PC powerhouse Intel as Microsoft looks to support ARM chips with the next version of Windows. Qualcomm has said it expects to have a quad-core chip on the market next year.

“You’ll have trouble finding one that doesn’t look like the MacBook Air,” he told Cnet. “I think the Macbook Air is a good mental image of what a clamshell laptop will look like. They’ll be thin because you won’t need any heat pipes, the fan, and extra batteries to lug around.”

That’s not a particularly original observation; Apple’s been touting the Air as the “Next Generation of MacBooks” since it first debuted. But it’s interesting that we’re now hearing it from C-level executives outside of Apple who seem perfectly willing to concede that the Air has redefined the concept of portable computers and parrot a theory put forth by Steve Jobs when he introduced the Air’s latest iteration: “We think all notebooks will look like these one day.”

The company has more ambitious goals for subsequent years, with plans to more than double performance in each of the next three years with chips code-named Wayne, Logan and Stark.

Nvidia’s current Tegra 2 chip is at the heart of many Android phones and a number of Android Honeycomb tablets, including the Motorola Xoom, LG G-Slate and the just-introduced Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

However, Nvidia isn’t the only company ramping things up. Qualcomm announced a new series of ARM-based chips on Monday, though its quad-core chip isn’t slated to arrive until 2012.

For more on Nvidia’s plans for the future, check out the onstage interview I did with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at our D@CES event in January.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/aiming-to-power-ever-more-powerful-graphics-nvidia-plans-quad-core-mobile-chip-this-year/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110121/full-dces-interview-video-nvidias-jen-hsuan-huang/ http://allthingsd.com/20110121/full-dces-interview-video-nvidias-jen-hsuan-huang/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:44:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39815

As promised, after posting highlights last week, here’s the full video from an interview with Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at our D@CES event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The chipmaker exec talked a lot about how mobile is about to see super-duper-duper smartphones and more.

Here’s Huang in a video of the interview with Mobilized’s Ina Fried:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110121/full-dces-interview-video-nvidias-jen-hsuan-huang/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110114/dces-highlights-video-nvidias-jen-hsun-huang/ http://allthingsd.com/20110114/dces-highlights-video-nvidias-jen-hsun-huang/#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:01:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39510

Our next highlights video from our D@CES event last week is of Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

The event, which we did in cooperation with the Consumer Electronics Show, was only three sessions in one afternoon. It was followed by a lovely party, all at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Huang talked about how mobile is about to see super-duper-duper smartphones and also touched on the chipmaker’s legal battle with Intel, which was settled earlier this week.

Here’s a longish highlights video of Huang’s interview with Mobilized’s Ina Fried:

I’ll be posting the full videos of this interview, as well as with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Dean Hachamovitch, who is in charge of Microsoft’s Interet Explorer browser from D@CES next week.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110114/dces-highlights-video-nvidias-jen-hsun-huang/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110110/intel-will-pay-nvidia-1-5-billion-to-maintain-patent-peace/ http://allthingsd.com/20110110/intel-will-pay-nvidia-1-5-billion-to-maintain-patent-peace/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:36:57 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=1593 Intel has agreed to pay Nvidia $1.5 billion to settle their long-simmering legal dispute that had been set to go before a Delaware Chancery Court in December.

Intel will pay Nvidia in five annual installments beginning Jan. 18, and in return will receive full access to Nvidia’s full range of patents, which had been part of the dispute. Nvidia will retain use of certain Intel patents that had also been in dispute.

“This agreement ends the legal dispute between the companies, preserves patent peace and provides protections that allow for continued freedom in product design,” said Doug Melamed, Intel senior vice president and general counsel, in a statement.

The fight had been over the terms of a 2004 agreement under which Intel granted Nvidia access to some of Intel’s technology for use in its chipsets, the chips that sit between the microprocessor and the graphics chip like connecting tissue. The cross-licensing agreement allowed Nvidia to make chipsets that were compatible with Intel microprocessors.

The trouble began in 2008, when Intel released its Nehalem generation of PC chips. The two companies disagreed over whether the 2004 agreement allowed Nvidia to make chipsets that would work with Nehalem chips and generations of chips that would follow. They filed dueling lawsuits in the Delaware Court of Chancery in early 2009. Intel asked a judge to rule that the agreement didn’t cover Nehalem and future generations of chips, while Nvidia sued for breach of contract, and sought to terminate Intel’s right to use some Nvidia patents that had been part of the agreement.

As I reported last December for Businessweek, the dispute caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, which added it to an antitrust complaint that was later settled.

The larger backdrop here is the growing threat Nvidia’s chips, known as graphics processing units (or GPUs), pose to Intel’s chips in servers and supercomputers. Engineers often refer to this as the CPU-GPU debate, where Intel’s chips are referred to as CPUs.

GPUs are common in most PCs, and usually handle the processing required to make games look good and run smoothly, working in concert with the CPU.

Since GPU chips do certain kind of math known as a floating point operation a lot faster than a CPU, they’re increasingly being used in systems that Intel has traditionally considered its primary domain: Heavy-duty financial modeling (oil and gas exploration is a good example). They’re also making a huge splash in the rarefied world of supercomputing: Nvidia GPU chips are being used in three of the top five systems on the elite Top 500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. And as we all saw at CES last week, they’re starting to show up in tablet and other PC-like devices running Windows with the full support of Microsoft.

The dispute between them, which effectively put Nvidia out of the business of making chipsets that were compatible with Intel chips, certainly hurt. Though for Intel’s part, losing the Nvidia patents in question could have conceivably hurt its new Sandy Bridge chips, which combine a GPU and a CPU into one single component. Intel formally launched Sandy Bridge at CES last week.

And as recently as last week, sources familiar with the matter were saying that a new trial date was scheduled for February. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang was careful not to directly answer a question about that from Mobilized’s Ina Fried in an interview at our D@CES event last week:

Intel and Nvidia had mysteriously withdrawn the case from the court’s calendar days before opening arguments were set to get underway on Dec. 6. Bloomberg News then reported that settlement talks were underway, though by mid-December there were signs that those talks had stalled, and sources said that a new trial date had been agreed to. That was until today, when sources at both companies started to drop hints that news was imminent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/intel-will-pay-nvidia-1-5-billion-to-maintain-patent-peace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110110/could-a-settlement-between-intel-and-nvidia-happen-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20110110/could-a-settlement-between-intel-and-nvidia-happen-today/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:59:11 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=1594

Something is definitely going on between Intel and Nvidia, and it’s possible that a settlement could be announced after the market closes today, sources said.

[UPDATE: Yes, they settled, in a new $1.5 billion licensing deal. Story to come.]

The two had been scheduled to go to trial in December in the Delaware Chancery Court, but the parties agreed to reschedule that.

Soon, word of settlement talks surfaced. Still, as recently as last week, a source familiar with the matter said a trial was on track for February. Now, other sources are saying that may not be the case, which would suggest a settlement is imminent.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang declined to discuss the Intel dispute in an interview with Mobilized’s Ina Fried at D@CES last week.

The fight between the two tech giants is over the terms of a 2004 agreement under which Intel granted Nvidia access to some of Intel’s technology for use in its chipsets, the chips that sit between the microprocessor and the graphics chip like connecting tissue. The cross-licensing agreement allowed Nvidia to make chipsets that were compatible with Intel microprocessors.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/could-a-settlement-between-intel-and-nvidia-happen-today/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-nvidia-ceo-jen-hsun-huang-at-dces/ http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-nvidia-ceo-jen-hsun-huang-at-dces/#comments Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:21:36 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27766 All of those tablets rolling out this week means lots of opportunity for chipmaker Nvidia, which used to specialize in graphics, but is now looking to power a whole new class of mobile devices. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang tells Mobilized’s Ina Fried how he sees the market shaking out, and what it means for his company and his competitors. We’ll also be looking for an update on Nvidia’s legal battle with Intel.

Sorry, joining slightly late. Jen-Hsun Huang is walking through Nvidia’s recent announcements.

And also some history. 1995 was important because the personal computer really became personal back then. (I assume this relates to a Windows release but not clear why.)

At the time, we thought we’d be a $300 million company in five years. But we got a lot bigger.

Ina Fried: You’re expanding beyond graphics, but how big is that business?

JH: We’ve shipped one billion GeForce processors. That’s a lot. We’re also doing Quadro processors for high-end processing. We’ve got the new Tesla business, where we use our GPU for general technical computing. It’s being used for the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Our newest business is the Tegra business. Using our expertise for a new class of mobile computing.

IF: Earlier versions of the Tegra were used in the Zune.

JH: And the Kin.

IF: I wasn’t going to mention the Kin.

Now JH is talking Intel. Which started with move into building chipsets, 12 years ago. Started with Xbox, then AMD platforms, then we wanted to scale out so we started talking about Intel. Now we’re in a dispute.

IF: So where do things stand with that?

JH: [More or less a non-answer here.]

IF: Okay, let’s talk about the future!

JH: Cool. 2011 is a big year, a year that computing is getting redefined because of these mobile products.

IF: That sounds like hyperbole, but I sort of agree. There’s some amazing stuff being shown off this year. But explain what’s different about this stuff.

JH: We like to call the new phones superphones. Time to do a demo.

JH is plugging in a new Android handset into a dock. It’s taking awhile. Complains about his vision. Okay, there we go. Showing off multitasking, apps, etc. Showing off 1080p video that looks cool. No audio, though. “This is a full-on computer.”

JH: We think these will really change things, because they can be laptops, or a media center, etc., simply based on where you dock it and the kind of accessories.

IF: So you have cellphones basically being able to replace a computer. But Microsoft is also announcing that Windows will run on ARM processors, including ones you make. How important is that?

JH: If you’re a software company of any kind, your primary focus is to target processors, anywhere. At this point, it’s a foregone conclusion that ARM will be the largest installed base of processors in the world.

Then the important thing is the operating systems: Andriod, iOS and RIM are incredibly important.

IF: So Windows is fourth most important?

JH: The most important CPU architecture going forward is likely to be ARM. At this point, you have to embrace ARM or you’re going to miss out on a very important market. Now they have a huge growth market that’s opened up to them.

IF: Again, explain the importance of Windows on ARM vs. Intel, etc.

JH: It’s huge!

Then he talks about energy dissipation, and that the designs are more elegant. He notes that the D staff backstage is using MacBooks and Airs “because they’re more elegant.”

And note that Steve Ballmer showed off a next gen of Windows running on Tegra 2/ARM. Office, too.

IF: But beyond Windows, what kind of software work has to be done to take advantage of ARM?

JH: Lots of work.

IF: Windows took a decade to catch up last time around. They can’t take this long this time.

JH: Right. That’s why we’re talking about this now, so when next gen of Windows is out, we’ll be ready.

A discussion about how the market shakes out between different chipsets.

JH: Next-gen Windows, by the time it shakes out, I don’t think it will matter what chipset you use if you’re a consumer. Enterprise will still run on x86, I think.

IF: Back to the cool stuff we’re seeing this year at CES, which seemed impossible a few years ago. What will we see in a few years that we can’t imagine now?

JH: Whatever expectation you have for game consoles, PCs, etc. will be “fully met by mobile devices in the next three to four years.”

And in the next three to four years this kind of device will likely exceed your expectations, because the supercomputer will be in the cloud.

IF: More future talk, please. 3-D on the phone?

JH: 3-D on the phone is a foregone conclusion. This kind of glass (on phone) is perfect for 3-D display. And it will work perfectly when you’re touching it. Long term, this device will have much better computer vision, so instead of taking a picture and sending it back, it might analyze the image and send a signal back, to reduce bandwidth.

IF: Except there are all kinds of problems with bandwidth. You had problems with wireless at your demo. Isn’t that a bigger problem going forward?

JH: The carriers finally have real incentive to invest in the pipe, because there’s a reason to use it, with all the hi-def video, etc. So we can take their promises seriously, finally.

Next year every phone will be a 4G phone.

IF: Talk about your fab-less approach to this business.

JH: In 1993, we couldn’t get a fab. We didn’t have a choice. And now ARM has democratized the CPU. It’s a big deal. [Missing the connection here, but perhaps it's my ignorance.]

Okay, that’s it! Thanks.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-nvidia-ceo-jen-hsun-huang-at-dces/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110107/dces-today-twitter-nvidia-microsoft-in-the-vegas-spotlight/ http://allthingsd.com/20110107/dces-today-twitter-nvidia-microsoft-in-the-vegas-spotlight/#comments Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:00:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39276

First things first, for those emailing me frantically about getting into our D@CES onstage interview event later today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: We’re sold out and have a very long wait list.

That said, people in Sin City tend to flake out, so if you show up at the Marcello Ballroom at the Venetian Hotel at 3 pm, you might snag a seat, as people did last year at the same event.

No guarantees, but it’s a betting town, so you might want to do so.

And, if you throw craps, our crack All Things Digital staff will be posting photos, reports and video quickly.

I am hoping there will be some juicy news for them to chew on, as we interview three fascinating subjects:

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and Dean Hachamovitch, who heads the Internet Explorer browser team within the Windows unit at Microsoft.

Our latest event comes after our successful D: Dive Into Mobile conference, part of the D: All Things Digital juggernaut.

(Actually, it is more like a tiny red wagon, but it is really cool.)

This is our second D event at the CES, which is taking place this week.

Last year’s tech execs onstage were Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin.

As usual, our event will be focused on the consumer electronics arena, and the big trends impacting it.

The D@CES program is only this afternoon, with the new trio.

Costolo (pictured here), a longtime entrepreneur, took over from co-founder Evan Williams earlier this year and is charged with turning the microblogging service into a real, live boy, um, company.

Twitter is making a big push into the mainstream and also wants to be present for all the many devices shown at CES.

As noted before, I will be grilling Costolo. Well done, I hope!

Nvidia’s Huang (pictured here) is leading a big change for the company. Although known for its PC graphics chips, Nvidia is shifting an increasing amount of focus to other areas, such as mobile chips with its Tegra line.

Huang will be interviewed by Mobilized’s Ina Fried.

Walt Mossberg will take on Hachamovitch (pictured below), who heads the IE team at Microsoft.

Well known for sporting a different black shirt featuring a different saying made up of the IE logo and letters at every keynote speech, he has been at the software giant since 1990.

We thought bringing his voice was important, since Hachamovitch has been focusing on privacy using the browser, an increasingly key topic in tech.

So get ready for some fun–after all, it’s Vegas, baby.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/dces-today-twitter-nvidia-microsoft-in-the-vegas-spotlight/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110105/a-phone-thats-a-beauty-on-the-outside-a-monster-inside/ http://allthingsd.com/20110105/a-phone-thats-a-beauty-on-the-outside-a-monster-inside/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:10:45 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=1252 At Nvidia’s press conference today, CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang admitted this was going to be a promiscuous CES for the company.

Nvidia, which builds tiny computer processors to help devices display graphics, games, video and more on phones, will be found all over the show floor, demonstrating products in conjunction with wireless carriers, automotive makers, handset makers and others.

And for those looking for even more from Huang –and maybe a demo that works– he’ll be appearing on stage with my colleague Ina Fried at our own D at CES event on Friday.

The biggest partnership of all, however, was not announced–a rumored relationship with Microsoft that will likely be unveiled later today, Huang hinted. [Update: that news can be found here.]

What Nvidia was willing to talk about was its plans to build high-performance ARM-based CPU cores, designed to support future products ranging from personal computers and servers to workstations and supercomputers. Up until now, the project was code-named “Project Denver.”

However, Nvidia spent most of the time talking about its new Tegra 2 processor, which is designed to efficiently display Internet content and games–on par with the quality of a console–on a cellphone. That means a compact design that provides the same quality but helps preserve battery life.

Nvidia’s Huang demonstrated the capabilities of the chip with the help of LG, which made an appearance onstage to show off the new Optimus 2X, a new Android phone. Loaded with a Tegra 2, one of the head honchos from LG described the phone as “a beauty on the outside–a monster on the inside.”

Huang plugged the phone into a giant HDTV to demonstrate the chip’s capabilities. He played Angry Birds and navigated a few apps on the homescreen.

But one of the big pushes is in viewing Adobe Flash, and the demo gods were against them. The wireless network was slow, prompting Huang to ask the packed crowd of reporters to spare a bit of bandwidth for him.

“I feel like I am on 56K here,” Huang said. “Oh you guys suck,” he joked.

Huang said the company brought in technology to block others from hogging the bandwidth, but people were using it anyway. “You guys really suck,” he said to more laughs.

More demonstrations were made with videogames, and even other demos failed, including a video chat over Skype.

After it was all said and done, Nvidia served lunch.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110105/a-phone-thats-a-beauty-on-the-outside-a-monster-inside/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101215/dces-what-happens-to-twitters-dick-costolo-in-vegas-stays-on-atd/ http://allthingsd.com/20101215/dces-what-happens-to-twitters-dick-costolo-in-vegas-stays-on-atd/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:10:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38521

After our successful D: Dive Into Mobile conference last week, the D: All Things Digital train keeps chugging away and is now headed to Las Vegas just after the new year.

There, we will do a second D event at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will take place from January 6 to 9, 2011.

It will, natch, be focused on the consumer electronics arena, and the big trends impacting it.

Unlike our other conferences, the D@CES program is only one afternoon, on Friday, January 7, at the Venetian’s Marcello ballroom, followed by a party at the hotel’s V Bar.

Last year’s tech execs onstage were Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin.

This year, the trio will be: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and Dean Hachamovitch, who heads the Internet Explorer team within the Windows unit at Microsoft.

Costolo (pictured here), a longtime entrepreneur, took over from co-founder Evan Williams earlier this year and is charged with turning the microblogging service into a real-live boy, um, company.

Twitter is making a big push into the mainstream and also wants to be present for all the many devices shown at CES.

BoomTown will be grilling Costolo. Well done, I hope!

Nvidia’s Huang (pictured here) is leading a big change for the company. Although known for its PC graphics chips, Nvidia is shifting an increasing amount of focus to other areas, such as mobile chips with its Tegra line.

Huang will be interviewed by Mobilized’s Ina Fried.

Walt Mossberg will take on Hachamovitch (pictured below), who heads the IE team at Microsoft.

Well known for sporting a different black shirt featuring a different saying made up of the IE logo and letters at every keynote speech, he has been at the software giant since 1990.

We thought bringing his voice was important, since Hachamovitch has been focusing on privacy using the browser, an increasingly key topic in tech.

D@CES is invitation only, but if you want to go, email me at Kara@AllThingsD.com and I will send an invite, as long as supplies last.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101215/dces-what-happens-to-twitters-dick-costolo-in-vegas-stays-on-atd/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101112/nvdia-ceo-like-ipad-magical-android-tablets-will-surprise-and-delight/ http://allthingsd.com/20101112/nvdia-ceo-like-ipad-magical-android-tablets-will-surprise-and-delight/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:15:21 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=52429 Apple, Steve Jobs likes to say, works very hard to “surprise and delight” its customers with “magical” products.

And so does Google, according to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who lauded the company’s recent tablet efforts with some Jobsian descriptives Thursday.

Discussing Nvidia’s Tegra chip during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Huang said we’ll see Google and its partners bring some killer Android tablets to market in the months ahead.

“Although they’re a little bit behind, the work that Andy Rubin’s team is doing at Google is just really amazing,” Huang said. “I mean, this is clearly a world-class engineering team. And they’re building a magical product. So I’m looking forward to the next generation of Android phones and tablets that are coming out. And I think it’s going to really, really surprise people and delight consumers everywhere.”

A magical product…that surprises and delights. Works for Jobs, right?

Well, at least he didn’t say “magical and revolutionary.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101112/nvdia-ceo-like-ipad-magical-android-tablets-will-surprise-and-delight/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091219/weekend-update-12-19-09-last-minute-shopping-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20091219/weekend-update-12-19-09-last-minute-shopping-edition/#comments Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:30:20 +0000 Drake Martinet http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=31092

Kara covered three Web companies this week, two with very 2.0 names and one about as Web 1.0 as it gets. BoomTown caught up with Mark Pincus of Zynga, the social-gaming juggernaut, right after the company raked in about $180 million from private investors. She got into it with Pincus over those questionable “offer” adverts in the video. Kara was back on familiar territory with a post about AOL (AOL) this week. The rebranded company, which went public a little over a week ago after its spinoff from Time Warner, was still trading pretty much flat as of Friday. And Kara rounded it all out with an attempted peek at Google’s Christmas list. Google (GOOG) has reportedly been drooling over Trulia, the real-estate search site valued in the $150 million range. I guess we mere mortals will just have to wait and see if Trulia’s little green pin marks start showing up on Google’s maps.

Before signing off for the holidays, John managed to bring a week of business bah-humbug to Digital Daily. Apple (AAPL) finally poured the last of the concrete for Psystar’s “special shoes” by winning a permanent injunction against the Mac clone maker. The holidays are always stressful, and the seasonal tension has been heating up over graphics processing units between Intel (INTC) and Nvidia (NVDA). John posted a victory lap in the form of a memo from Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang addressing the recent lawsuit brought by the FTC against Intel. John rounded out the week with some somber news from Palm (PALM), as the smartphone maker released a larger than expected loss for the last quarter of 2009. It might be a lean year under Palm’s tree.

Peter reported that Prime Minister Burlusconi wasn’t the only one to get a black eye this week as Google took a major hit in Italian court over copyright violations on YouTube. Mediaset, a broadcaster owned by Burlusconi, is reportedly seeking at least $730 million in damages. No word yet if Mediaset will be demanding cash or the standard Ferraris and underage models arrangement. Also in big media news, Sony (SNE) and News Corp (NWS) struck a content deal that will now be delivered exclusively to Sony’s Readers. Peter reported that the deal wasn’t big enough to change the balance of power in the content-ebook world but was a clear signal about the future direction of the two companies. Finally, peter reported on Google’s apparent hunger for Yelp and all its delicious restaurant ratings. If the acquisition does happen, analysts expect Google to shell out at least $500 million for the right to add another amorphous noun-verb to its arsenal. We need a new part of speech to describe all these noun-verb companies. I’m coining one. From now on, Google is a “Nerb.”

Maybe it was just the anticipation of all that holiday fudge, but Walt was all over a new generation of glucose meters from Bayer. As the name suggests, the Contour USB offers an important departure from its predecessors in that it connects to your home computer to help you track your blood sugar in a more meaningful way. Walt dutifully pricked his finger several times a day to test the unit and pronounced it a welcome direction for the tool that serves millions of users daily. While software issues and Web connectivity are lagging a little behind, Walt was positive on the device, which seems perfect for the diabetic tech-head. Over at Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered letters about really erasing personal data from a computer before donating an older machine. Readers were also curious about Open Office as an alternative to Microsoft (MSFT) Office for use on a netbook. Walt finished off his bit of pre-Christmas advice by confirming to a reader that Windows 7 could indeed be installed on an Intel-based Mac, just like XP. Katie covered a home stereo gadget that should make the post-Christmas lives of audiophiles a little merrier. The Sonos ZonePlayer S5 can send audio all over your house via your home network. This is the first Sonos product to work right out of the box. The player system gets high marks all around for usability, and is even able to play music form a networked computer’s hard drive, as well as various Internet-based music services.

Weekend Update wished everyone a happy holiday and will be back on Dec. 26 to bring you a wrap-up of all the techie holiday fun you missed while in your nog-coma.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091219/weekend-update-12-19-09-last-minute-shopping-edition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091216/nvidia-ceo-not-above-celebrating-intells-misfortune/ http://allthingsd.com/20091216/nvidia-ceo-not-above-celebrating-intells-misfortune/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:10:39 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=30952 A number of tech companies are rejoicing over the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint against Intel today, none more so than Nvidia.

A top player in the market for graphics processing units, Nvidia stands to gain quite a bit from the FTC lawsuit, which will obviously undermine Intel’s (INTC) efforts to extend its monopoly into the GPU market. In an all-hands memo to employees, Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang explained just how important the FTC’s action is to Nvidia (NVDA) and the GPU market.

Huang’s memo, in full, below:

The U.S. government announced today that it has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel. This is an action the industry needs and one that consumers deserve. And it’s one that can completely transform the computer industry.

The facts are clear. The FTC has charged that Intel has used its monopoly illegally to stifle innovation, to keep prices for their products inflated, and to unfairly block competitors. The FTC believes that millions of consumers have paid more and received less quality in return–and that companies and their employees have been forced out of markets where Intel has been threatened.

Intel is fully aware that great graphics have become one of the most important features for consumer PCs, the fastest-growing segment of the PC market. Even more alarming to Intel is the revolutionary parallel computing technology in our GPUs that is being adopted by software developers across the world. The more successful we became, the bigger threat we were to Intel’s monopoly. Instead of creating competitive GPU solutions and competing on the merits of their products, Intel has resorted to unlawful acts to stop us. The FTC announced today that this isn’t acceptable.

Nothing this complicated gets decided quickly. It will take months for the FTC case to be heard by an administrative judge who will then recommend a ruling back to the FTC. And it’s possible that this decision could be appealed. But today is a huge step forward for all of us that will begin to re-level the playing field.

Today’s FTC announcement highlights the industry-changing impact of the GPU and the importance of our work. Our innovation is making the PC magical and amazing again. I can now imagine the day when Intel can no longer block consumers from enjoying our creation and experience computing in a way we know is possible.

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