hobold (hobold@vectorizer.org) on 8/3/10 wrote:
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>I find it impossible to predict which of the three approaches is going to win.
>I don't see clear advantages or disadvantages to either of them.

I'm pretty NVidia's approach is going nowhere, because
they're a relatively small company, they've lost marketshare
and developer mindshare with the DX11 generation, and
they don't seem to be executing well on the basics of
shipping chips with high yield and competitive performance-
per-dollar and performance-per-watt. Couple that with
the lack of a high-performance CPU to integrate, and they
just have too many strikes against them. And they're
bleeding money.

I would agree with you that both Intel's and AMD's approaches
look like plausible contenders. There's probably room for
both to survive, though if past history is any guide,
it will be 80:20 in favor of Intel ... But the market
is so huge that AMD can live with 20%, and probably make
large profits if they get it up to 25% or 30%.

Anyhow, it's going to be interesting. And the devil will
be in the details, which we won't know much about until
both SandyBridge and Llano come out and people start
optimizing for them.