Rene Haas is the General Manager of Notebooks at NVIDIA

It was a little over a year ago that NVIDIA became the first GPU manufacturer to provide a notebook GPU driver directly to end user.  It was a milestone moment for notebook users, solving a long standing problem that plagued notebook computers. Consumer demand for timely driver updates has outgrown the rate at which drivers were being supplied by the notebook manufacturers. Customers need new drivers in order to take full advantage of the latest visual computing applications. The move was applauded by notebook press around the world.

In fact, drivers can be so critical that with NVIDIA now providing quarterly notebook driver releases, it’s pretty much impossible for us to even consider recommending anything else for a gaming notebook ….” -Anandtech

Verde is available today for all types of Notebooks mainstream, gaming, thin & light, netbooks. With Dell commercial and Lenovo joining last year and the inclusion of Sony starting in April all major OEMs will be represented in our program. Driver updates are an easy thing to dismiss, but they should not be trivialized.  Today we have over 1 million customers a month downloading notebook drivers.  They are coming for new performance, new features and to gain support for new standards.

With the advent of Verde there were no longer notebooks waiting for a driver that would allow them to take advantage of new standards or operating systems.  A comparison of the driver before our Verde program was launched, v179.32, proves eye-opening. Through a steady flow of drivers we have introduced the following support to NVIDIA-based notebooks via Verde:

• Windows 7 support
• DirectCompute support
• Open CL support
• Support for Open GL 3.0, 3.1 and 3.1

That is an impressive list.  But it gets better.  Besides adding support for new industry standards and OSes, we use Verde to give our existing notebook GPU customers new features.  In the same time frame, we have enabled the following:

• NVIDIA CUDA support for GPU computing, opening up a host of applications that use the GPU for processing
• NVIDIA PhysX support for advanced in-game physics effects

• Ambient Occlusion, a shading method that adds realism to games

• Adobe Flash 10.1 acceleration, for awesome web videos
• 3D Vision Discover support, to turn your games into a 3D experience

A gamer should know that any multi-GPU configuration is only as good as its ability to run games on two GPUs, and that requires a profile for every game you play.  Through the Verde driver program, we have introduced over 300 SLI profiles to make sure games work on NVIDIA SLI machines.    Those profiles would not have been made available to a notebook user without Verde.

To give you an idea of the performance jumps we have given games with driver updates we took an average frame rate increase on a GeForce 9600M GT (a popular mid-level GPU) for the following games:  Devil May Cry 4, Fallout 3, H.A.W.X., Lost Planet: Colonies, Need for Speed Shift, Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, and World in Conflict.  The average increase was 30%.  What is significant about those titles?  In all cases, we bumped the frame rate up from unplayable to a playable rate of over 30 fps.

By taking that important first step of supporting our customers with drivers for notebook GPUs, NVIDIA was able provide our customers with constant performance boosts, new features and fix bugs along the way.  We now have a driver pulse of about once a month now, but we are not tied to a strict schedule.  We believe the right time to release a new driver is when it is needed.  If it is less than a month, great – more than a month, that’s ok too.

The NVIDIA Verde driver program offers new features, improved application compatibility, and performance optimizations direct from NVIDIA. The explosive growth in notebooks coupled with the rapid rate of innovation for GPUs makes driver updates a critical issue for all notebook users.

NVIDIA: A Million Consumers a Month Can’t Be Wrong is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

Rene Haas is the General Manager of Notebooks at NVIDIA

In the past, consumers were forced to prioritize notebook performance or battery life, as one feature typically suffers significantly in order to accommodate the other. You could have long battery life from an underpowered notebook, or all the GPU power you desired from a notebook without extra long battery life.  As of today, those days are behind us.

A new technology for notebooks called NVIDIA Optimus is available today on systems from Asus. Just as a Hybrid car chooses between the gas-powered and electric car engine on-the-fly and uses the most appropriate engine, NVIDIA Optimus technology does the same thing for graphics processors.

NVIDIA Optimus is a game changer for the notebook PC industry. It intelligently and seamlessly manages graphics performance while extending battery life to provide the best notebook PC experience.”

- Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research, a pioneer of the graphics industry and a leading analyst

NVIDIA Optimus optimizes the mobile experience by letting the user get the performance of discrete graphics from a notebook, while still delivering great battery life. Optimus accomplishes this by automatically and seamlessly selecting the right graphics processor for the job between an NVIDIA discrete GPU or Intel integrated graphics.

Older technology called switchable graphics helped address the performance/battery life balance, but there were still several issues. Switchable graphics was pioneered by NVIDIA about 2 years ago and quickly adopted by other graphics companies. With switchable graphics, users have the advantage of having access to discrete and integrated graphics. However, they are required to manually switch between the two display adapters. Switching also often requires shutting down applications that are running and sometimes requires rebooting the system.  Also, with switchable graphics often users do not know or remember what state their notebook is in. The result:  users get frustrated and rarely switch.

Switchable graphics is a great idea in theory, but in practice people rarely switch between integrated and discrete GPUs.  The process is just too cumbersome and confusing.  Some buyers wonder why their performance is so poor when they think the discrete GPU is active, but, unknown to them, it isn’t.  Optimus fixes what is broken with switchable graphics.”

- Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, one of the computer industry’s best-known market intelligence analysts

Optimus offers notebook users a far better user experience.  Optimus is automatic. Optimus determines the best processor for the workload and routes it accordingly, with the decision being entirely transparent to the user.

Optimus is switchable graphics done right.  No toggles, no reboots, no thinking.   Finally, there is an optimized notebook solution that painlessly gives notebook users both the performance they want and the battery life they need.”

- Rob Enderle, President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, one of the most influential technology pundits in the world

With more and more processing being done on the GPU, the significance of Optimus becomes increasingly more important.  GPU Computing is the use of the massively parallel architecture of the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a computational engine that can be programmed with high level languages and APIs. We already have a great roster of applications that run on the NVIDIA CUDA architecture that consumers love. In fact, video is the killer application for the GPU, and a number of new video applications are able to tap into the computing power of the GPU thanks to CUDA.  Adobe has added support for GPU computing to their popular CS4 Suite, Flash 10.1 and their Mercury Playback Engine.

NVIDIA Optimus is designed to work in ways consumers expect hardware and software to work together, it’s simple and seamless. We worked closely with NVIDIA to enable Adobe Flash Player 10.1 to take advantage of GPU acceleration whenever possible.  As a result, consumers get the benefit of maximum battery life and the best multimedia experience when browsing the web.”

- David Wadhwani, general manager & vice president, Platform Business Unit, Adobe, which is redefining business, entertainment and personal communications by setting new standards for producing and delivering content

ASUS N61JV with NVIDIA Optimus

Notebooks with NVIDIA Optimus technology will be available shortly, starting with the Asus UL50Vf, N61Jv, N71Jv, N82Jv, and U30Jc notebooks.

We are all hands-on-deck to bring this innovative new technology into the consumer market.  NVIDIA Optimus is a unique approach that solves the problem of users having to choose between systems and graphics performance versus extended battery life. ASUS’ powerful multimedia N series and the thin and light UL series notebooks will adopt this new technology, and in doing so provide our users with powerful multimedia enjoyment at home or on-the-go.”

- P.C. Wang, Corporate Vice President & General Manager, Notebook Business Unit System Business Group of ASUS

Optimus is new and is a level beyond switchable graphics.  Optimus is able to automatically give users the performance they need while also maximizing battery life, transparently, and with zero effort.  It just works.

The genius of NVIDIA Optimus is in its simplicity. One can surf the web and get great battery life and when one needs the extra horsepower for applications like Adobe Flash 10.1, Optimus automatically switches to the more powerful NVIDIA GPU.”

-said Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research, a pioneer of the graphics industry and a leading analyst.

For more information on NVIDIA Optimus technology, side by side videos and additional details, visit http://www.nvidia.com/optimus.

Optimus Makes it Simple is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

Rene Haas is the General Manager of Notebooks at NVIDIA

Netbooks sales which have been on a hot streak for a while — are about to get super-heated this fall with the release of Windows 7. With the critics hailing Windows 7 as fast, stable, and easier to use, consumers will be quick to embrace it. This is the first time people can buy a netbook with a new operating system.

If you’ve been watching all this and waiting for Windows 7 before jumping in the water, we have some advice for you.

1)     Not all netbooks are created equal.

Until recently, almost every netbook had an Atom CPU and lousy graphics. Atom was OK for Windows XP, but the poor graphics was a deal-breaker, because it meant people couldn’t run some of their favorite applications (or they ran so slowly that it wasn’t worth their time). It got so bad, some people called for the death of integrated graphics.

But with the introduction of Windows 7 and NVIDIA ION, the picture has changed dramatically. ION netbooks like the HP Mini 311 have virtually all of the capabilities of full-sized notebooks.

2)     Windows 7 uses two processors.

Windows 7 will introduce a key change in how applications are processed. Instead of running your programs solely on the CPU, Windows 7 will offload some computing tasks to the graphics processor. Doing this can speed up applications 5-10 times over the CPU alone.

One immediate benefit is that Windows 7 netbooks will provide native video acceleration in Windows Media Player if the system detects a graphics processor. Video transcoding will also be accelerated natively under Windows 7. This video shows video transcoding running almost 10 times faster on a netbook with an ION processor.

3)     Get the big picture with HDMI.

In a recent poll, Liliputing.com asked its readers if HD video is important to them. More than two-thirds of respondents said yes (about half of whom said yes if the netbook has a 720p or higher display). As more content today is being produced in HD, it just makes sense that your computer would have the ability to run it. The problem is most netbooks today are still hampered by Intel integrated graphics, which in most cases can’t  handle SD video full-screen, let alone HD video (and apparently won’t support it anytime soon). Because so few netbooks can handle HD video, very few offer HDMI.

ION changes all that. The Lenovo S12 with ION, Samsung N510, and HP Mini 311 all have HDMI, so you can use them to output HD video on an external display like an HDTV. This broadens the repertoire of the once-lowly netbook, turning it into a potent, portable media center. These systems also have full 24-bit 8-channel, lossless codec support, so you can enjoy full 7.1 audio through your home entertainment system via HDMI.

4)     Internet video

Today, more people watch internet video than breathe. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration but it’s almost true. You, your mom, and probably your pet have watched internet video at some point.

Watching streaming video on a netbook today is painful. Again, the non ION based netbooks simply don’t have the processing power to handle it. The problem is that Flash-based video today is run on the CPU, which on a netbook isn’t the fastest. NVIDIA and Adobe are working on a new version of Flash that will use NVIDIA graphics processors to speed up streaming video. When the new Flash Player 10.1 is released early next year, netbooks with graphics processors (like ION) will be able to handle 720p HD video with ease.

See streaming HD video running smoothly on the HP Mini 311.

5)     Games

We all know gaming has been a sore spot for netbooks, so it was good to see CNET declare that netbook gaming has finally arrived with ION-based systems like the HP Mini 311. Of course, no one should expect a netbook to compete with a more powerful gaming system, but ION netbooks do introduce the capability to play more recent games like SPORE, Battlefield Heroes, World of Warcraft, the Sims, and many others.

Conclusion

Over the past couple of years, netbooks developed a reputation for being small, weak, and incapable of running today’s more demanding applications. That’s why the moniker netbook” was created in the first place. Thankfully, that is no longer the case, but you have to know what to look for. Today’s netbooks have larger screens, larger keyboards, and better capabilities than ever. Not only do they blur the line between netbook and notebook, they provide new capabilities that never existed like HD video, accelerated media conversion, faster overall performance under Windows 7, and gaming capabilities.

Today’s ION-powered netbooks feature long battery life (more than 5 hours), attractive pricing (the HP Mini starts at under $400), and will soon be able to handle HD video streaming live off the Internet. An ION netbook with Windows 7 will meet the needs of typical PC users, students, and business travelers who want a light, versatile PC to take on the road.

Check pricing and specs for the Lenovo Ideapad S12 with ION, Samsung N510, and HP Mini 311.

5 Tips for Buying a Windows 7 Netbook is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

In today’s modern PC’s the GPU and CPU exist in a co-processing environment where each can handle the computing task they are best suited for.  The CPU is good at performing sequential calculations, I/O, and program flow.  The GPU excels at performing parallel calculations.  By using both, you are essentially using the best tool for the job.

Microsoft announced that Windows 7 hit the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) milestone, which means   we are on the verge of the launch of the first Windows operating system to enable true coprocessing native to the Operating System.  No longer are GPUs limited to rendering and accelerating graphics and video.  With the introduction of DirectX Compute in Windows 7, Microsoft is for the first time really opening up the immense parallel computing horsepower of the GPU natively right in the operating system.

With Windows 7, not only will an NVIDIA GPU give you an awesome gaming experience, but  will also see a real difference in how you interact with your PC every day in ways you never have before.  Applications written to take advantage of Windows 7 DirectX Compute will be able to provide high-quality video playback and high performance transcoding, enabling new media scenarios and extended control over your media library.  GPU Computing applications simplified the ways you interact with your devices and the PC will be faster and more responsive.

Be Ready for Windows 7

Parallel programming is the next big thing for the world of computing – it has started already.  DirectX Compute will accelerate this discontinuity by enabling massive parallelism to the masses.  You will get your best Windows 7 experience with a GPU in your system.

Don’t take our word for it.  We have started to see even mainstream editors sing the praises for the GPU for notebooks.  Walt Mossberg of Wall Street Journal noted:

“In the new operating systems, adequate graphics chips will be more important than ever, because the computers will offload some tasks typically performed by the main processor onto the graphics chip. So, if possible, spring for what’s called a discrete graphics processor, which has its own memory. If you can’t afford this, look for an integrated graphics chip, which shares your main memory, that’s as powerful as possible. One example is the NVIDIA 9400.”

MSN posted a Laptop Buyer’s guide with the same sentiment, warning against most integrate graphics solutions:

“The GPU can make or break your experience on a laptop, yet this is the first thing the manufacturer will give short shrift to in order to achieve a lower price. At the very least, go for a notebook that offers a discrete graphics board option, even if you’re not completely convinced that you’ll need it. A GPU can affect the system’s performance in ways you may never have considered, so don’t dismiss discrete graphics as being a necessity only for gamers.”

You should also protect yourself by getting a notebook that can be upgraded to the Windows 7 operating system.  And this is about more than just having adequate hardware. Without the correct Windows 7 drivers to your notebook, you will not be able to move to the new operating system.  In the tech world, a driver is a small file that helps the computer communicates with a certain hardware device. It contains information the computer needs to recognize and control the device.

NVIDIA continues to be the only notebook GPU manufacturer that offers notebook drivers to end users on our website.  This means if you have an NVIDIA GPU in you’re your notebook, you have access to  new features, improved application compatibility, and performance optimizations that driver updates deliver.  Customers need new drivers in order to be able to take full advantage of the latest visual computing applications.  NVIDIA has worked diligently over the past year to modularize its driver architecture and develop a unified driver install package that will not only work with laptops from all manufacturers but also maintain all of their specific model customizations such as hotkeys and suspend and resume functionality.     Over 4 million downloads have occurred since we started this at the end of last year – well beyond our expectations.

According to Anandtech drivers for notebooks are vital:

“In fact, drivers can be so critical that with NVIDIA now providing quarterly notebook driver releases, it’s pretty much impossible for us to even consider recommending anything else for a gaming notebook until the other GPU vendors follow suit.”

NVIDIA has drivers for  Windows 7 today.  They are WHQLed and ready to go.  If your laptop manufacturer is on our supported list you can grab a copy of the Windows 7 BETA release and upload our driver today.

Microsoft Windows 7 has RTMed.  We are more than ready, we can’t wait.

Rene Haas is NVIDIA’s General Manager of Notebook Graphics

Windows 7: Ready or Not, Here it Comes is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

Today we announced the completion of the GeForce 200M Series of GPUs with the introduction of five new GPUs:

• GeForce® GTS 260M and 250M GPUs for enthusiast notebooks

• GeForce GT 240M and 230M GPUs for performance notebooks

• GeForce G210M for mainstream notebooks

These additions to the GeForce 200M Series are engineered to deliver up to twice the graphics performance with up to half the idle power consumption for every market segment. The GeForce 200M Series are Windows 7-ready and provide GPU computing horsepower for the growing number of GPU- accelerated applications.

I was in Taipei a few weeks ago for Computex and we took that opportunity to pre-brief press on our new notebook GPUs so they could have stories in the can for launch day. These exchanges are always eye opening because we are able to get direct feedback from experts, and allows us to listen closely to their questions to get further insight into what they are thinking.

A common question we got in these briefings was How can we say we are going to get 100 design wins?” Quantifying the 100 new design wins is easy, because of the nature of the notebook business. Lead times for notebooks are much longer than desktop PCs, so we know now what the design wins are for the foreseeable future because they have already been awarded. Due to NDA obligations with those notebook manufacturers, we obviously cannot list them for you, but they will all come out over time. All of the 100 new design wins are already in the bag”–we just had to count them.

We also got questions about which architecture these GPUs came from and if we were simply renaming old GPUs. The answer to that is definitive–these are new GPUs based on a new design and 40nm process. At a high-level these chips are based on the same architecture used in the high-end NVIDIA desktop GPUs, so they share the same compute benefits. There were also adjustments in the micro-architecture to improve battery life and overall graphics performance compared to the previous generation, and also enhancements from the process shrink to 40nm.

We also got asked why we do not place more emphasis on the fact that these are 40 nanometer parts. We have a different view of the importance of these being in the 40 nanometer process than others do. While some companies like to push that to the forefront, NVIDIA really sees that as marketing to yourself. The bottom line is end users do not care if your GPUs are 40nm or 55nm–they want them to be fast and reliable. The fact that they are 40nm is not hugely significant. It’s not just about process, it’s also about efficiency of the architecture. These GPUs deliver great performance for games and GPU-powered applications and provide up to half the power consumption than previous generation GPUs when using office applications or surfing the Web. They also support Graphics Plus–PhysX, CUDA and SLI. They are also supported by user upgradable drivers, which other GPU companies do not offer. Those are the things end users care about and those are the things we will push to the forefront.

These chips also support DirectX 10.1, so press asked us if we changed our opinion of DirectX 10.1. The answer is no. DirectX 10.1 is a minor update to DirectX 10 that won’t have a major impact on games in the near future. The fact is, you can do just about everything DirectX 10.1 brings to the table in DirectX10. But the timing of these new GPUs made sense to add DirectX 10.1 support. It is simply a natural evolution.

We know that the GeForce 200M Series will be a landmark series of notebook GPUs for NVIDIA, as notebook OEMs around the world are in the process of harnessing the power of the GeForce 200M GPUs to provide their most powerful notebooks ever–up and down their product lines. The growth in notebook computers is well documented and new GPUs will put us in front of that trend with over 100 new notebook design wins.

Rene Haas is General Manager, notebook business at NVIDIA

100 New NVIDIA-Based Notebooks on the Way: Your Questions Answered is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

As I have discussed with you in the past, NVIDIA is the only GPU maker that provides notebook users their graphics driver upgrades. Our first driver delivered CUDA to notebook users. The feedback we got from this was great we consistently heard two things:

1) They love getting timely drivers (especially gamers)

2) They want their drivers on the same schedule and feature set as their desktop counterparts

Last week NVIDIA launched its WHQLed Release 185 drivers for desktop AND notebook PCs with NVIDIA GPUs. While the first notebook driver release was all about CUDA and PhysX on a notebook, we are just as excited about this release because it provides notebook customers with the exact same features and performance optimizations as desktop customers just as we were asked to. PC gamers will be thrilled to hear that this driver offers all of the latest game optimizations and performance for both single GPU and SLI notebook PCs.

This driver also supports Windows 7. Many of you probably know that Microsoft just posted the release candidate version of Windows 7. That build together with NVIDIA’s R185 drivers provides a rock solid, fully featured Windows experience. I’ve been using this combination both at work and at home and I am really enjoying the speed and responsiveness that Windows 7 and NVIDIA GPUs offer, not to mention the increased battery life.

Windows 7 significantly increases the use of the GPU over Windows Vista by utilizing the GPU to accelerate 2D as well as 3D. GDI hardware acceleration, Direct2D, and DirectWrite are all new to Windows 7 and will bring more speed and more visually compelling applications to customers. Also new in Windows 7 is GPU accelerated H.264 and DIVX codecs in the box for high quality playback performance. This combined will battery life improvements will allow you more playback time for high definition movies.

But perhaps the most compelling new feature for GPU in Windows 7 is DirectX Compute. This new API from Microsoft allows developers of many types to harness the GPU for computing workloads in multimedia, scientific computing, and gaming. This allows for an entirely new level of performance on systems that ship with GPU’s. DirectX Compute runs great on the NVIDIA CUDA architecture, and NVIDIA has already demoed DirectX Compute on several occasions. DirectX Compute is the foundation that both NVIDIA and Microsoft will use to bring new consumer lifestyle applications to market at the time of launch. All in all, we are really excited about the possibilities that Windows 7 and Microsoft are bringing to the table and how the GPU is being used.

This driver also delivers improved performance in GPU computing applications by including version 2.2 of the CUDA toolkit and SDK. We have a great roster of applications that run on the NVIDIA CUDA architecture that consumers will love. Just ask Xavier about vReveal. You can download trial versions of these applications and many more cool NVIDIA PhysX gaming applications here (all for FREE!).

Like typical driver updates, this driver is an instant upgrade to your GPU performance. Examples of this performance jumps include:

o Up to 25% performance increase in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

o Up to 22% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled

o Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled

o Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2

o Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror’s Edge with antialiasing enabled

(Release 185 drivers vs. Release 179 drivers -results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings)

I encourage notebook users to upgrade to these new Release 185 drivers and you can find them here.

New Driver Improves Your Gaming Performance 11 to 45%!! is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

I explained earlier that one of the key reasons NVIDIA went to a downloadable driver model for notebooks was to enable new features for customers with capable graphics processors (GPUs).  The backbone to this is NVIDIA CUDA technology and the emergence of consumer applications that benefit from parallel computing, which is where GPUs really excel.

CUDA technology is the name of NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture. The first CUDA GPU was introduced in November 2006 with the GeForce 8800 (G80 Architecture) and CUDA has been in every new GPU since. We now have an installed base of over 118 million CUDA GPU’s.

Since its introduction 2006, CUDA has been a technology that has driven ridiculously high application speed-ups for oil and gas exploration, product design, medical imaging, scientific research and other commercial applications in the HPC arena.  It saves companies millions of dollars and allows them to be more productive.     This is now finding its way into mainstream applications.

There is a global movement underway to enhance the visual computing experience in every type of device. Photos, videos, 3D graphics are the most popular and important forms of data today and the graphics processor is the perfect processor for this content and an area of exciting innovation.  This fact is illustrated best by the flood of CUDA-enabled consumer software titles that will be rolling out in March and April.  I have already talked about vReveal, one of the applications that notebook users can now take advantage of, but here is a rundown of all the CUDA-enabled video applications:

• Badaboom Media Converter: Elemental Technologies’ Badaboom is a video transcoding program that converts video files into other formats. For example, the program can convert an MPEG file to play on an iPod or other portable device. Video transcoding can be one of the most time-consuming tasks in home computing. Converting a two-hour movie, for instance, can take six or more hours when using the computer’s CPU. However, with Badaboom on the GPU, the conversion process can be up to 20 times faster than traditional methods, getting the job done in a few minutes and, in the meantime, also freeing the CPU to handle other tasks like email and Web browsing. Badaboom is available now, try it for free.

• CoreAVC: CoreCodec’s CoreAVC is a video CODEC that uses NVIDIA CUDA to accelerate the decoding of H.264 videoclips. By leveraging the NVIDIA GPUs, CoreCorec was able to reduce CPU utilization by up to 92%. This provides a better experience and a better battery life. CoreAVC is based on the MPEG-4 Part 10 standard and is one of the CODECs used in Blu-ray and in High Definition DVD. You can download a trial here.

• PowerDirector 7: CyberLink’s PowerDirector 7 video editing software provides faster editing of HD video by using NVIDIA CUDA^TM technology to tap in to the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU). With NVIDIA CUDA technology, PowerDirector offers incredibly fast performance gains of 274% for encoding high-definition video into H.264 format and improved user experience in processing HD videos with advanced video effects such as Gaussian radial blur, pen ink, and others. Download a trial of PowerDirector here.

• TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress: Pegasys’ TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress video encoding software lets you take almost any video file and encode it to your desired file format including DivX, AVI, QuickTime, MPEG 4-ISO, H.264, DVD-Video, DVD-VR, HDV camcorder, Blu-ray Disc and much more. NVIDIA CUDA technology is now supported for processing the video filters and decoding and shows a 446% increase in performance. Download a trial of TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress here.

• vReveal: MotionDSP’s vReveal is a super cool product that I am really excited about and it is out today. vReveal features an adaptation of the CSI-style video enhancement technology behind MotionDSP’s Ikena, the high-powered forensic software used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. With vReveal, you can dramatically improve the quality of your videos with just one click. The enhancement technology powering vReveal works wonders with videos that are dark, shaky, noisy, pixilated, or blurry. vReveal has been specially tuned to run up to five times faster on CUDA-enabled NVIDIA graphics processors. Watch these before and after videos for a taste, or get a free 30-day trial today. 

• SimHD: Arcsoft’s TotalMedia Theatre with SimHD. SimHD uses NVIDIA CUDA processors to upscale your DVDs to Blu-Ray quality in real-time, with amazing results. The upscaling is processor intensive, and an NVIDIA GPU is the only processor that can pull it off. Look for SimHD with CUDA acceleration became available on April 1st.

• Super LoiloScope: Loilo’s Super LoiloScope is an easy to use video editing software that makes editing HD movies a snap for anyone. Super LoiLoScope has an intuitive and easy to understand user interface that makes it ideal for aspiring movie makers from 6 to 60, regardless of their technical knowledge. Despite its unassuming interface, Super LoiLoScope is a powerful movie creation software package with lots of features. Look for the CUDA version in early April 2009.

• Move It: Nero Move It is designed to allow consumers to effortlessly convert and share digital media content among a variety of popular entertainment devices. Nero uses NVIDIA CUDA to enable faster file transfer time through accelerated video encoding times and decreased CPU usage. Nero Move It is currently available worldwide and via online download from the Nero Online Shop. The version of Nero Move it with support for NVIDA CUDA will be available to consumers in April 2009.

Being a bit of a videophile, I have played with each of these applications.  Moving processing for video data from the CPU to the GPU has improved my life in two ways:

1) it has given me more of something I need most…time.

2) it has improved the quality of my video editing and viewing immensely.

With a GeForce GPU in my notebook I can convert videos to different formats much faster.  I can edit videos faster.  I can instantly experience my standard DVD library at near HD quality.  I can turn my cruddy camera-phone videos into usable videos!

If you are lucky enough to have a GeForce GPU in your notebook go grab the latest driver and try some of the trial versions of these video applications today.

The GPU is the Right Processor for Video Applications is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

Rene Haas is General Manager of Notebooks at NVIDIA

When NVIDIA went to a driver model that allowed consumers to update their notebook graphics drivers direct from NVIDIA, we enabled millions of notebook users to enjoy the benefits of our CUDA parallel computing architecture. One application that was released today that is a great example of how CUDA makes life better is vReveal from MotionDSP.

If you have a digital camera or one of those cool “Flip” cameras, your notebook is probably full of photos and videos you’ve taken. Photos are easy to touch up and share, but do you ever wish you could do the same to your videos? Today, one of NVIDIA’s partners, MotionDSP, released a revolutionary CUDA-powered video application you should definitely check out. MotionDSP is well known for their high-end “CSI-Style” forensic video software, which, if you read their website carefully, was funded by InQTel, the venture arm of the US Intelligence Agencies — yes, the three-letter agencies.

vReveal is a Windows-based video enhancement application you can download from NVIDIA’s NZone site. It can dramatically improve the quality of flawed videos with just one click. The unrivaled enhancement technology powering vReveal works wonders with videos that are shaky, dark, noisy, pixelated, or blurry. With vReveal, you can play video files, preview enhancements to videos, and then save enhanced videos to disk or upload them directly to YouTube. vReveal even offers low-light correction and image stabilization that does a better job than tools costing 10 times more.

vReveal is the only consumer software that enhances video with genuine super-resolution technology. It uses patented algorithms to analyze and extract information from multiple frames to reconstruct single, enhanced frame. vReveal has the unique ability to increase resolution and remove noise in all your videos.

vReveal runs up to five times faster on CUDA-enabled NVIDIA graphics processors. That means you can process video enhancements in less time and have your CPU available for normal everyday tasks like emailing and internet browsing. The chart below compares the performance of the CPU with some of our desktop GPUs.

The more CUDA-cores you have, the faster vReveal runs, so it really shines on the new 200-series notebook GPUs we announced last month. And, as you can see from the benchmark chart below, it scales right down to our ION chipset, putting the Atom processor to shame.

How CUDA helps: CUDA allows vReveal to shift the video processing to the GPU, leveraging the power in your notebook GPU for faster speed. And the speed difference is huge: up to 5x faster — even on the NVIDIA ION platform.

Why does vReveal run so much faster? NVIDIA’s new notebook chips like the GeForce GTX 280M have as many as 128 CUDA-cores, which work in parallel in apps like vReveal to process your video through many processing pathways. Your CPU, on the other hand, typically has two cores, which can only run sequential tasks. Netbook CPUs can have only a single core. They just can’t process huge amounts of data, like video, as quickly.

What this means to you is: if you run vReveal on a notebook with an NVIDIA GPU (as opposed to a CPU), you save a ton of time. Touching up your videos and pushing them to YouTube can literally save HOURS.

You can download a 30-day trial of vReveal from NZone and learn more about on the vReveal website.

Amazing New CUDA-Powered Video Enhancement is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

Today NVIDIA launched the new line of GeForce enthusiast and high performance notebook GPUs, the GTX series and GTS series. We’re excited to launch these new products for a number of reasons.

The new flagship GeForce GTX 280M is the fastest Notebook GPU in the world and when coupled with SLI the fastest multi-GPU notebook solution. Playing the latest demanding 3D games with desktop-caliber settings on a notebook is finally a reality.

The new line-up of notebook GPUs from NVIDIA include:

• GeForce GTX 280M and 260M enthusiast notebook GPUs. The GeForce GTX 280M is the world’s fastest notebook GPU

• GeForce GTS 160M and 150M, perfect GPUs for high-performance, sleek notebooks.

These new GPUs are designed to maximize performance while minimizing power consumption. By leveraging an advanced 55nm-process with the G92 GPU architecture we’re able to deliver up to 50% higher performance and increase the perf/mm^2 by 80%, all within the same power budget, compared to the previous generation. With this level of efficiency, these new enthusiast GPUs are perfectly suited for the notebook market and deliver up to 30% more performance than our competition.

One note about product names – We made the decision to name this product series the GeForce GTX 280M and GTX 260M as it lines up with our company-wide product naming format (GTX x60-x95 is enthusiast, GTS x40-x60 is high-performance, etc), making it easier for end users to determine which GPU is best for them. We understand the die-hards (and admittedly our best customers) might want our naming format to reflect the underlying architecture. To the technical minded reader, we readily acknowledge the underlying GPU architecture, and are thrilled to bring you these new super-breed 55nm GPUs which drive so much more performance than our previous generation…up to 50% more.

In addition to raw graphics performance, these GPUs also offer NVIDIA PhysX technology that enables a totally new class of physical gaming interaction in upcoming games and existing ones like EA’s Mirror’s Edge. NVIDIA CUDA technology is also built in, so users can accelerate demand tasks such as video transcoding up to 10 times. These GPUs also are included in the new notebook driver downloads from nvidia.com, which I’ve blogged about in the past so you’re always up-to-date with the latest apps and games.

These products also complete the launch of our entire new set of notebook GeForce GPUs, which we believe offer great value to end users. The GTX” series is for enthusiast gamers who desire gaming performance above anything else. The GTS” series is ideal for high-performance gamers who also want a sleek notebook. The GT” is our performance GPU product line and offers a great mix of GPU capability and mobility. And the G” is for mainstream users who desire maximum mobility.

Finally, along with the announcement of these new notebook GPUs we’ve launched a new microsite on nvidia.com that talks more about the advantages of gaming on a notebook and some of the unique features offered by these GPUs, as well as information about our partner’s systems which include them. We urge you to check it out and see which of these new GPUs is right for you.

As end users are gravitating more toward mobile form factors we’re investing resources to deliver more compelling solutions in this space. You can see that with the new ION product for ultra portability and affordability, Tegra for smartphones, and these new enthusiast GeForce notebook GPUs today. NVIDIA solutions for mobile devices are available for all types of users.

Rene Haas is General Manager of Notebooks at NVIDIA

NVIDIA Delivers the Fastest Notebook GPU Ever – and More is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.

Back in 2004 our notebook partners faced a tough problem every notebook needed to be custom engineered for each GPU. That might not make a difference to consumers, who just buy complete notebooks with a GPU inside, but the problem with custom engineering is that it takes a lot more time and effort to bring a notebook to the market with the latest GPU.

For consumers, that meant that new notebooks which used GPUs typically took longer to come to market.

So NVIDIA took the lead in working with our notebook partners to define a standard module that could be designed once, and leveraged across many notebooks. We called this module specification MXM. Think of this as an add-in-card for notebooks. After doing all the technical homework, we released MXM as a standard to the computing industry. MXM was quickly adopted by OEMs and GPU makers alike, and it opened up the selection of a GPU to the most competitive GPU, which means consumers get better products. For our notebook partners, that was also good because then they could design one notebook to support a wide variety of different MXM GPUs.

In today’s challenging economy, reducing unnecessary work and bringing out new products faster makes everyone happy both our partners and end consumers. In the case of MXM, using the interface can mean getting notebooks to market 3-6 months sooner than designing a new motherboard.

Today, you’ll find that nearly every high-performance notebook uses some form of an MXM card. In fact, not only is this the case for high-end gaming systems, but there are also many vendors who ship MXM in less expensive systems simply due to the design and manufacturing flexibility it gives them in their supply chain.

Of course, end users have always wanted user upgradable graphics, but MXM is not intended to be an enabler for end user upgradable graphics. The fact is that defining a module specification like MXM isn’t the only thing that’s necessary to deliver upgradable graphics. The chassis, the thermal solution, and many other factors are at play.

Notebooks are the obvious home for MXM, but as it turns out, the technology is not limited to this one market. Not only does MXM help make new GPUs available in notebooks faster, but it also makes it easier to get a GPU into anything that’s small and difficult to cool.

Today’s desktop designs are becoming increasingly focused on sleek industrial design. Many OEMs are now offering all-in-one systems (with integrated displays like the iMac), or tiny Atom-based desktops where there’s not a lot of space to cool a GPU, or even fit one in the chassis. These systems are facing many of the same problems that notebooks have faced for years. For these desktop designs, MXM offers a nice, compact existing solution that’s already an industry standard in notebooks.

You can find MXM modules in lots of all-in-one and small-form-factor desktop systems like the HP TouchSmart PCs, Apples iMacs, or Sony VAIO desktops, for example. You’ll also find many of the most cutting edge desktops that are packing high-performance GPUs into cool, quiet chassis. For example, the HP Firebird system has two MXM cards running in SLI an impressive amount of computing horsepower in a compact beautiful chassis.

Going a bit farther outside the normal consumer PC space, we’ve even found that there’s great interest for using MXM cards in embedded systems for industrial or military applications, as well as for high-end servers with GPU farms that need to pack more computational density into small racks

Going forward, we’ll continue to invest in making MXM a better solution. The MXM 3.0 specification adds new features like Display Port, shaves about 1mm from the thickness, and creates upward mechanical compatibility between small and large MXM form factors. With MXM 3.0, we are also happy to welcome AMD as an official partner of MXM. Their input has been instrumental in making MXM an open and forward-looking specification for everyone in the PC ecosystem.

Rene Haas is General Manager of Notebooks at NVIDIA

MXM Brings Flexibility to Notebook Graphics is a post by Rene Haas from Notebooks.com.