Friday, November 6th 2009
NVIDIA Shuns Lucid Hydra
A promising new technology from LucidLogix, the Hydra, has perhaps hit its biggest roadblock. The Hydra multi-GPU engine allows vendor-neutral and model-neutral GPU performance upscaling, without adhering to proprietary technologies such as NVIDIA SLI or ATI CrossfireX. NVIDIA, which is staring at a bleak future for its chipset division, is licensing the SLI technology to motherboard vendors who want to use it on socket LGA-1366 and LGA-1156 motherboards, since Intel is the only chipset vendor. On other sockets such as LGA-775 and AM3, however, NVIDIA continues to have chipsets that bring with them the incentive of SLI technology support. NVIDIA's licensing deals with motherboard vendors are particularly noteworthy. For socket LGA-1366 motherboards that are based on Intel's X58 Express chipset, NVIDIA charges a fee of US $5 per unit sold, to let it support SLI. Alternatively, motherboard vendors can opt for NVIDIA's nForce 200 bridge chip, which allows vendors to offer full-bandwidth 3-way SLI on some high-end models. For the socket LGA-1156 platform currently driven by Intel's P55 Express chipset, the fee is lower, at US $3 per unit sold.
The Lucid Hydra engine by design is vendor-neutral. It provides a sort of abstraction-layer between the OS and the GPUs, and uses the available graphics processing resources to upscale resulting performance. This effectively kills NVIDIA's cut, as motherboard vendors needn't have the SLI license, and that users of Hydra won't be using SLI or Crossfire anymore. Perhaps fearing a loss of revenue, NVIDIA is working on its drivers to ensure that its GeForce GPUs don't work on platforms that use Hydra. Perhaps this also ensures "quality control, and compatibility", since if the customer isn't satisfied with the quality and performance of Hydra, NVIDIA for one, could end up in the bad books. This could then also kick up warranty issues, and product returns.
MSI has the industry's first release-grade motherboard, the Big Bang Fuzion P55 that uses Hydra to power multiple GPUs, while also allowing users to mix and match various PCI-Express GPUs to suit their needs, something new particularly for NVIDIA users. Earlier expected to be announced around this time, MSI's Big Bang Fuzion, as it is called by its maker, has been indefinitely delayed up to Q1 2010. Apparently to fill the void created by months of hype, MSI rushed in its cousin, a similar-looking motherboard, that uses the nForce 200 chip, to provide 3-way SLI support, called the Big Bang Trinergy P55, which will stay on as the company's top offering for the P55 platform. One can only hope that Hydra doesn't end up stillborn because of corporate strategy by much larger companies.
Source:
Overclock3D.Net
The Lucid Hydra engine by design is vendor-neutral. It provides a sort of abstraction-layer between the OS and the GPUs, and uses the available graphics processing resources to upscale resulting performance. This effectively kills NVIDIA's cut, as motherboard vendors needn't have the SLI license, and that users of Hydra won't be using SLI or Crossfire anymore. Perhaps fearing a loss of revenue, NVIDIA is working on its drivers to ensure that its GeForce GPUs don't work on platforms that use Hydra. Perhaps this also ensures "quality control, and compatibility", since if the customer isn't satisfied with the quality and performance of Hydra, NVIDIA for one, could end up in the bad books. This could then also kick up warranty issues, and product returns.
MSI has the industry's first release-grade motherboard, the Big Bang Fuzion P55 that uses Hydra to power multiple GPUs, while also allowing users to mix and match various PCI-Express GPUs to suit their needs, something new particularly for NVIDIA users. Earlier expected to be announced around this time, MSI's Big Bang Fuzion, as it is called by its maker, has been indefinitely delayed up to Q1 2010. Apparently to fill the void created by months of hype, MSI rushed in its cousin, a similar-looking motherboard, that uses the nForce 200 chip, to provide 3-way SLI support, called the Big Bang Trinergy P55, which will stay on as the company's top offering for the P55 platform. One can only hope that Hydra doesn't end up stillborn because of corporate strategy by much larger companies.
230 Comments on NVIDIA Shuns Lucid Hydra
And your counter argument is that I have no proof that they weren't offered to run invidias physx api for free? Do you know what Occam's razer is? So this grand gesture of generosity given by invidia, a corporation, with noticably greedy habits seems likely to you? It's giving away it's IP...for free. I suspect you've never read this anywhere, you just want to make these claims so that invidia will continue to look good. Or maybe if invidia looks bad your head will explode or something. idk.
-Nvidia needs to do less shunning, and start making new hardware.
Open Standard =! Open Source =! Open door
Just in case ;)
www.geeks3d.com/20080705/update-on-physx-on-ati-radeon-cards-nvidia-offers-help-on-the-project/
That is, just a little bit after the rejection, Nvidia was fully supporting that programmer, tell me, they were going to ask him for money? He would have to pay for every Ati card that used that hack or what? :laugh:Yeah, but it's not the same. An Open Standard doesn't have to be open source. And definately doesn't have to be free. Open Source doesn't have to be free either.
I mean, open standard means you are free to use it and almost always you can do it for free (although not always), but the code or technology is not necesarily open. You can't change it and sometimes some bits of the open standard are semi-propietary. It says in the wiki too.
You can say "well nvidia reps said they offered it free" until you're blue in the face but they are going to try and make it seem like nvidia is a saint (that's tehir job)- the fact is that nvidia paid for physx, they would never give it away for free since they don't get any money for physx games being sold (they only get money for hardware sales). It is all propoganda at the end of the day - nvidia said they'd never bother with dx10.1 because it wasn't worth doing then they released the gt210/220 cards and now dx10.1 is required for the best gaming experience.
OT i keep seeing the excuse of quality control being thrown around as the reason why nvidia is blocking the hydra chip - this is a load of bull as hydra just sends directx calls to different locations - there is no QC needed on the nvidia end of things as their drivers get directx calls and render the scene - it doesn't matter how many directx calls there are or even if all of the scene is present as it will work the same. Nvidia is just abusing it's dominance in the GPU market to influence manufacturers to delay or prevent the launch of competing products (in this case the hydra chip which competes with nvidia solutions) - this is extremely similar to what intel did to AMD in the Athlon 64 era - they used market dominance to influence manufacturers to not launch products with competing technology.
The fact is that they are jus the target of everybody's hate and that is what I hate and why I'm always on their side. I hate all that BS, lies and FUD that is always based in previous FUD and BS. This thing about Lucid must be because of wrongdoing and not a valid reason because of what they did with PhysX and Ati, what they did with Ati+PhysX was wrongdoing because what they did with Batman AA, what they did with Batman was wrongdoing because of what they did with AC DX10.1 and so on. Reality is that they are not guilty of anything of that, but the ball just gets rolling, it would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. But hey, it's the same mechanism that establishes all the myths and I love MythBusters so I should be happy... :) :shadedshu No, it's pathetic. As pathetic as UFO hunting.
Personally, why should we care what Nvidia has to say about another product? Do we listen to Del Monte rip Chiquita over their substandard bannanas? Are Charmin's claims about having softer toilet paper over their competetors really true?!