**thread name change* Nvidia and AMD moral and immoral business practices

[SirPauly]

The obvious advantage would be that with AMD on board, it's pretty much a given that many more developers will adopt PhysX than what is currently the case. This would give PhysX more leverage. nVidia doesn't have to be the ONLY vendor offering GPU-accelerated physics... in fact, it may be better if all vendors offer it,[/b]

I don't disagree, then why hasn't nVidia ported PhysX to OpenCL?

Edit: For me, it is to offer differentiation to help sell nVidia GPU's and bring more awareness and value to the GeForce brand-name.

 

[Scali]

I don't disagree, then why hasn't nVidia ported PhysX to OpenCL?

I answered that MANY times already.

Thirdly, as I already said before, I wouldn't be surprised if nVidia already HAD an OpenCL port, or at least has done enough preparation to release on on short notice... should their hand be forced, that is. Until there is any reasonable threat from competing physics middleware, there is absolutely no pressure on nVidia to open up PhysX for all OpenCL-supporting vendors (without them having done any work at all, or even obtaining a license... which would be different from the situation concerning nVidia's original offer to be open to other GPU vendors).

 

[n0x1ous]

Scali: Again you are missing the point,AMD can do what they want,I don't know why you are upset with what they have done,companies will do what they want,PhysX is overated IMHO but thats just my opinion,who cares if they teamed up with Intel or any other company?.....point is they and other companies do what they feel is right.


Forget all the legal fighting crap,one time you had Intel/AMD/Nvidia all involved trying to fight and sue each other in the law courts,so what?..it does not change anything.

Are you upset because AMD did not go with licensing with Nvidia for PhysX?

Remember like me you can only speculate an opinion on reason why,end of the day huge companies like AMD,Nvidia etc..will look after their own agenda and to be honest I can understand that regardless of what company it is.

we all know amd can do what they want. your point was that it didnt make sense for amd to take on physx because it would put them at the mercy of nvidia. scali is simply stating that your argument doesnt make sense because they still r at the mercy of a competitor. which is absolutley correct. amd may have multiple reasons for what they do but what they did do is contradictory to what you think r their reasons

 

[Scali]

we all know amd can do what they want. your point was that it didnt make sense for amd to take on physx because it would put them at the mercy of nvidia. scali is simply stating that your argument doesnt make sense because they still r at the mercy of a competitor. which is absolutley correct. amd may have multiple reasons for what they do but what they did do is contradictory to what you think r their reasons

Exactly, thanks.
To add to that, I'm certainly not upset that AMD didn't team up with PhysX.
My gripe with AMD is that they haven't delivered an alternative either, but mainly just launched a mudslinging campaign towards PhysX.
It's been more than 2 years... they should have had SOMETHING by now. nVidia managed to come up with a working Cuda backend for PhysX in just a few months after acquiring Ageia.
Surely AMD should have had something to show for all this 'effort' they have put into GPU physics and whatever else they promised... And their Havok partnership and all that...

But no, they don't have anything... and after more than two years of mudslinging, I think that makes AMD look pretty bad.

 

[railven]

Not so fast...
Part of that statement is true.
Let's take it line-by-line:


Fair enough, not the end game... but it is a start nonetheless.



Yes, but I suppose nVidia, the PhysX team and every game developer feels pretty much the same way. Bit of a non-statement.



This is debatable.
On the one hand we have plenty of examples of games that were successful while riding mainly on their 'eye candy' hype.
On the other hand, we have plenty of examples of games that were successful simply because they had good gameplay... they were basically just good games.
If GPU physics is included in such a game, it will piggy-back on its success and gain traction that way.
Heck, the entire OpenGL API pretty much just piggy-backed on the success of GLQuake, and other major games which adopted the engine (eg Half-Life). It helped push Glide from the number 1 spot of 3D APIs.



Yes, but see above... that is not necessarily a bad thing. More eye-candy is pretty much what the entire GPU market revolves around anyway. It's a bit hypocritical. I mean, if you compare the early Voodoo accelerators to today's DX11 cards, they're a truckload of features on the new cards, but hardly any of them have much of an effect on gameplay and experience... They just give you more eyecandy (realtime shadows, HDR effects, sharper texturing, antialiasing etc).
Since pretty much all games make use of these features, and nothing looks like early GLQuake or such anymore, I would say that eyecandy is generally a good thing, and AMD made a lot of money selling it.



Okay, you said that more than 2 years ago... Where is it?
Seems like you haven't even made a start yet, let alone that you are anywhere near your proposed 'end game'.

So it's true when you use it to claim people are sheep.

And it's not true when it is applied to actual games.

Interesting.

 

[Mem]

we all know amd can do what they want. your point was that it didnt make sense for amd to take on physx because it would put them at the mercy of nvidia. scali is simply stating that your argument doesnt make sense because they still r at the mercy of a competitor. which is absolutley correct. amd may have multiple reasons for what they do but what they did do is contradictory to what you think r their reasons

I understand that,AMD as the underdog will always be fighting a competitor in one form or another and I'm sure they did what they feel was right in the companies interest regardeless of what we all think.

End of the day there is no true right answer,just opinions.

Remember two wrongs don't make a right,sometimes companies like AMD are in a no win situation so its a case of which one is lesser of two evils as they say.

 

[BenSkywalker]

if its CEO were more respectful and didn't say stuff like how NV would open a "can of whoop ass" on Intel;

This comment was directly about Larrabee and Intel trying to enter the discrete GPU market. Obviously they didn't open a can of whoop ass, the brought a tanker truck instead. It is certainly true that JHH was seriously understating things and didn't respectfuly tell Intel 'you are shockingly inept in this field and don't have a chance so don't waste a billion dollars', that certainly would have been more respectful, but with Intel pulling the chipset license from them perhaps he wanted to lull Intel into a false sense of security making them think they could be within a couple of orders of magnitude. That was certainly disrespectful, it would have been more respectful to deal with the situation by explaining what utter morons Intel was for even coming up with such a stupid idea.

It's all a matter of perspective,Nvidia have their competitors so does Intel,AMD etc....the point I was making is AMD and any other company will always look after their own interests first,you can't expect AMD to follow Nvidia's way of thinking or support their products ie PhysX.

I can understand this line of thinking, but where is the alternative? Give us an AMD alternative, or hell, support OpenCL based Bullet on your consumer devices- something.

 

[Scali]

So it's true when you use it to claim people are sheep.

And it's not true when it is applied to actual games.

Interesting.

Come again?

 

[SirPauly]

I answered that MANY times already.

Why should their hand have to be forced? The key it isn't really about how quick the adoption is for PhysX to me but about more-so differentiation to help sell product now and to build value and awareness for GeForce.

 

[SirPauly]

I understand that,AMD as the underdog will always be fighting a competitor in one form or another and I'm sure they did what they feel was right in the companies interest regardeless of what we all think.

End of the day there is no true right answer,just opinions.

Remember two wrongs don't make a right,sometimes companies like AMD are in a no win situation so its a case of which one is lesser of two evils as they say.

I don't think of ATI/AMD as the underdog and just did take the discrete crown a short time ago. I think of ATI/AMD as serious competition to nVidia and always did. Consider them both world class and world leaders in their fields. The CPU component -- Intel is a monster, hehe!

 

[Mem]

Exactly, thanks.
To add to that, I'm certainly not upset that AMD didn't team up with PhysX.
My gripe with AMD is that they haven't delivered an alternative either, but mainly just launched a mudslinging campaign towards PhysX.
It's been more than 2 years... they should have had SOMETHING by now. nVidia managed to come up with a working Cuda backend for PhysX in just a few months after acquiring Ageia.
Surely AMD should have had something to show for all this 'effort' they have put into GPU physics and whatever else they promised... And their Havok partnership and all that...

But no, they don't have anything... and after more than two years of mudslinging, I think that makes AMD look pretty bad.

To be fair I remember when members said samething about Nvidia few years ago("oh nothing new" etc),to answer your question I think only AMD knows that answer,maybe they are more concerned with their CPU division,again only they can answer that,personally its not an issue for me.

I do know one thing companies like Nvidia/AMD have their secrets that they don't want the competition or us to find out about,thats another whole new story.

 

[Mem]

I don't think of ATI/AMD as the underdog and just did take the discrete crown a short time ago. I think of ATI/AMD as serious competition to nVidia and always did. Consider them both world class and world leaders in their fields. The CPU component -- Intel is a monster, hehe!

I think members here and other places like to think of them as the underdog so thats why I said that,I like to think of them as a competitor and another choice for the consumer .

 

[SirPauly]

imho,

When there are advantages based on spending resources like developer relations or Physics, when a company doesn't spend the same or do the same --- what do you expect the other to do? Mudsling and cast shadows on your competitor and change the subject to what you do well? That's all it is. Use grey territory, semantics, disingenuous data -- many companies are guilty of this to me.

How do you defeat it? Only exact clarity without the ability to wiggle out of it. AMD and nVidia can wiggle, hehe!

 

[SirPauly]

I think members here and other places like to think of them as the underdog so thats why I said that,I like to think of them as a competitor and another choice for the consumer .

I think that's the key -- so many complain about an actual choice one has. Personally embrace choice because it is so rare.

 

[blastingcap]

Point is Nvidia is more of a threat to AMD in the graphics gaming world then Intel(everybody knows you don't help your no.1 competition),end of the day you can't blame them,a lot of companies do this,I bet if things were reversed Nvidia would be doing the same thing.

I agree with the bolded part. ATI and especially NV are proud companies. Can you imagine JHH taking a hit to the ego by accepting a licensing deal for PhysX from ATI, had ATI gotten to PhysX first?

Yet Scali thinks ATI should have accepted NV's PhysX "offer" and characterized it in such a way that a casual passerby would be misled into thinking ATI was some ungrateful, lazy, unreasonable company for rejecting NV.

I'm sorry but if ATI were going to accept any sort of deal like that, it might as well be with INTC, or else strike it out on the their own with Bullet. INTC is a goliath and is going nowhere soon. NV has had periods of vulnerability and doesn't quite dominate the GPU market the same way INTC dominates x86 CPUs. Why help the vulnerable GPU market leader if you can either throw up your hands and ally with the undisputed CPU market leader, or to go Bullet?

I highly doubt any of the people posting about this were at the bargaining table when NV "offered" PhysX to ATI, so there may be other considerations as well that none of us have brought up.

And given how things have changed in the GPU market since NV's PhysX "offer," I am not sure it was the wrong choice for ATI to reject NV. Yes, NV maintains its professional graphics lead but PhysX has nothing to do with that.

 

[SirPauly]

I highly doubt any of the people posting about this were at the bargaining table when NV "offered" PhysX to ATI, so there may be other considerations as well that none of us have brought up.

Agreed! One may imagine, that these decisions have so many layers and variables to consider and most of this is just speculation and conjecture. One of the problems I have when playing the morality card is sometimes these cards are being played without all the data from both sides. To quickly judge based on a few examples with some of these such a small sampling of data. There are not just a lot of arm chair graders, but judges and executioners on forums. Morality, to some, may be being objective and fair as well.

 

[Scali]

Why should their hand have to be forced? The key it isn't really about how quick the adoption is for PhysX to me but about more-so differentiation to help sell product now and to build value and awareness for GeForce.

That's what I said, isn't it?
Currently they can market it as an nVidia-only feature, so there's your differentiation.
As soon as someone else starts offering an alternative GPU-accelerated physics solution, nVidia can once again differentiate themselves, by opening up PhysX to OpenCL (but maintaining superior performance and features through Cuda themselves).
But when there is no competition, why support OpenCL? (Cuda works better on nVidia hardware anyway).
I mean, it would be something different if AMD came onboard and implemented OpenCL (or Stream) support under nVidia's licensing terms. Then nVidia would have other incentives to go with an OpenCL solution.
But if they do it now, their competitors get a free ride at the expense of nVidia's efforts. So I can see why nVidia wants to wait until their hand is forced by a competitor.

 

[Scali]

Why help the vulnerable GPU market leader if you can either throw up your hands and ally with the undisputed CPU market leader, or to go Bullet?

Well the obvious answer is:
Because the CPU market leader doesn't want GPUs to compete on its turf.
Which probably has a lot to do with why Havok never amounted to anything.
We can argue whether or not PhysX would be the right choice...
But we cannot do the same with Havok.
We know it was a failure.

 

[blastingcap]

Well the obvious answer is:
Because the CPU market leader doesn't want GPUs to compete on its turf.
Which probably has a lot to do with why Havok never amounted to anything.
We can argue whether or not PhysX would be the right choice...
But we cannot do the same with Havok.
We know it was a failure.

Even if we take your position as true, this means that Havok AND PhysX were BOTH not-good options. The jury is out on Bullet and may be out for a long time, but at least AMD wouldn't be beholden to either of its major competitors.

And like I said, we don't know what happened in the bargaining room. For all we know, NV gave ATI such a bad offer that ATI stormed out, or ATI was so demanding that NV stormed out, or both, or someone called someone else names, or they just politely agreed to disagree, or whatever.

 

[Scali]

Even if we take your position as true, this means that Havok AND PhysX were BOTH not-good options.

That's what I said.
The only good option that AMD had was to acquire either Havok or PhysX themselves, but they let their competitors get the better of them.
I just think that PhysX would have been a better option than Havok. Not perfect, obviously, but it can't be worse than Havok.

The jury is out on Bullet and may be out for a long time, but at least AMD wouldn't be beholden to either of its major competitors.

The problem with Bullet is that it's not a major player on the PC market (the project was started by Erwin Coumans, who works for Sony, and the PS3 is the main market for Bullet as far as games go).
It's going to be hard for Bullet to get a decent backing from developers, where Havok and PhysX have already been integrated in major game engines for years.

And like I said, we don't know what happened in the bargaining room. For all we know, NV gave ATI such a bad offer that ATI stormed out, or ATI was so demanding that NV stormed out, or both, or someone called someone else names, or they just politely agreed to disagree, or whatever.

ATi themselves have publicly stated that they have never negotiated with nVidia at all. In fact, they claim they tried to contact nVidia, but nVidia did not respond (which I find unlikely, but hey). So let's stop the 'bargaining room' story, the negotiating never happened in the first place.

 

[blastingcap]

ATi themselves have publicly stated that they have never negotiated with nVidia at all. In fact, they claim they tried to contact nVidia, but nVidia did not respond (which I find unlikely, but hey). So let's stop the 'bargaining room' story, the negotiating never happened in the first place.

Regarding the PhysX offer, are you saying NV just threw a form letter and a legal document at ATI without any conversation at all? And if that's really what they did (which we both don't know), it's no wonder ATI refused.

 

[Scali]

Regarding the PhysX offer, are you saying NV just threw a form letter and a legal document at ATI without any conversation at all? And if that's really what they did (which we both don't know), it's no wonder ATI refused.

No, nVidia has publicly stated that they are open to talk to any GPU vendors. That was their offer (already posted a link to that at least 3 times now).
So that is basically an invitation to ATi to negotiate terms for a partnership.
ATi just never did.

WHy are you so hell-bent on trying to make it into something where nVidia has given ATi unreasonable terms, and ATi is the good guy by refusing it?
That's not how it happened.

 

[SirPauly]

ATi themselves have publicly stated that they have never negotiated with nVidia at all. In fact, they claim they tried to contact nVidia, but nVidia did not respond (which I find unlikely, but hey). So let's stop the 'bargaining room' story, the negotiating never happened in the first place.

That's not true at all.

because we've actually had quiet conversations with them and they've made it abundantly clear that we can go whistle.

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/interviews/2010/01/06/interview-amd-on-game-development-and-dx11/1

 

[blastingcap]

ATi just never did.

This is your conclusion, not what ATI said happened, and for all you know it really did happen the way ATI said it did.

I'm not saying ATI was necessarily the good guy, just pointing out that we're all speculating but don't know for sure what really happened.

 

[Scali]

That's not true at all.

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/interviews/2010/01/06/interview-amd-on-game-development-and-dx11/1

Oh good, now AMD has made me out a liar too. Damn Richard Huddy again.
I think Cheng said what I said 2 years earlier... but now I cannot find the link.
Edit:
Ah, there you go:
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/38392-does-amd-block-physx-on-radeon-development

We have attempted to initiate discussions with Nvidia on this matter, but so far they have been less than forthcoming.

I put more trust in Cheng's words at the time than in Huddy's words 2 years after the fact. Especially considering Huddy's reputation.
And as you can see, back then they were already leaning towards Havok, so they probably weren't considering PhysX support in a serious manner anyway.

At any rate, what I said is true. You just have do decide whether you believe ATi, or ATi (and we're back on topic... ATi seems to be rewriting history to make them look the good guys, I guess that could be called immoral) ...