Interesting Information From NVIDIA's 2008 Stockholders Letter
by Ryan Smith on May 30, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Ryan's Ramblings
Earlier today we got our hands on NVIDIA's 2008 stockholders letter, and have been thumbing over it. For those of you that aren't familiar with annual stockholder letters, every year ahead of their annual stockholders meeting and voting, NVIDIA sends out a package containing a voting sheet along with a fairly thick book which in turn contains their proxy statement for issues to be voted upon, their 10-K statement detailing the previous year's financials, and a letter to the stockholders written in plain English that summarizes what the company has been doing in the past year and will be doing in the next. All of these elements are interesting for different reasons, but for now we're going to focus on the letter to the stockholders, as that's where the buried treasure is today.
While the rest of the document is printed on standard newsprint, the letter itself is printed on heavy glossy paper so that NVIDIA can use pictures (and lots of them at that). Not very far in to the letter, we came upon a most interesting picture.
To date, NVIDIA's biggest GPU is G92, with around 750 million transistors. The 1.2 billion figure listed here would be wrong for a current GPU, but not for a next-generation GPU. Now NVIDIA's next-generation GPU is just about the worst kept secret in the industry, and to that extent there's been plenty of speculation on the features and size of such a GPU. 1.2 billion transistors is consistent (if not a tad higher) than what rumors have been floating about so the size doesn't come as much of a surprise, but we are surprised that NVIDIA would publish such a fact for a product that doesn't exist yet. None the less, of all the rumors we can at least lay those about the transistor count to rest: NVIDIA's next generation high-end GPU will have around 1.2 billion transistors, and that's right from the horse's mouth.
And just to put things in comparison, even Intel only has a single mainstream chip so far that is that big - the P4 based Tulsa Xeon with 16MB of on-die L3 cache, which came out to 1.3 billion. Beyond that, we'd have to start looking at exotic chips for supercomputers such as the latest Itanium (1.7 billion) to find something similarly large or larger.
We're still not sure what this die shot is of however. We don't have a die shot of the G80 or G92, which makes it hard to determine what this is a shot of. NVIDIA and AMD are both very protective of their parts in this regard, so it seems unlikely that the die shot matches the caption. If we had to take a bet, we'd guess that this is a G80 die shot although we certainly wouldn't complain if it was a shot of NVIDIA's next generation GPU.
Moving on, we have NVIDIA's financials for the quarter. NVIDIA's FY 2008 (February 2007 through February 2008) was positively monstrous, revenue was up nearly 33% and earnings were up 72%. If you're wondering why Jen-sun is driving the company so hard in a fight against Intel, there's a good part of the reason; Intel may be many times larger than NVIDIA, but NVIDIA has ample ammunition to stage a fight with.
Speaking of financials, we'll also touch quickly on their revenue breakdown for the year. Consumer GPU: 61%, Professional GPU: 14%, Chipset: 17%, Mobile/Console: 6%. Most of their growth for the year was in consumer GPUs followed by professional GPUs, while chipset and mobile/console sales were nearly flat by comparison.
Finally, there are legal matters. Back in November of 2006, the United States Department of Justice began an investigation in to illegal price fixing and other anti-competitive actions between AMD and NVIDIA. So far that investigation has not resulted in any charges, and it's not immediately looking like it ever will. However civil suits are another matter, since the start of the DOJ investigation some 55 civil suits have been filed against NVIDIA by consumers, alleging the same things as the DOJ investigation.
These have since been consolidated in to two suits, one for direct buyers of GPU products, and another for indirect purchases (i.e. those who purchased pre-built computers with NVIDIA GPUs). While we have known that some civil suits had been filed against NVIDIA, we hadn't previously seen a count; 55 was more than we were expecting however. It does not appear that these will end up being class action suits, the date for filing such a motion has passed and we are not aware of any such motion being filed or approved.
Discovery is ongoing, the trial will start on January 12th of 2009.
Update: If you're interested in seeing the investor materials, NVIDIA has the entire document posted to their site as a PDF. You can find it here.
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slickr - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
And how about the Nvidia Quadro FX graphic cards?Its not like Nvidia only sells mainstream graphic cards, so that transistor count might be from at least 3 different gpu's.
1:their next gen gpus
2:quadro gpus
3:nvidia build systems
ViRGE - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Quadro/Tesla cards still use the same GPUs as everything else. All the Telsas are G80, I think only one or two Quadros are G92. It's definitely a count from a future GPU.CTho9305 - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
The photo is almost certainly a G80. There's a G80 die shot in a presentation nVidia did at UIUC. A friend undistorted the new pic for comparison:(images hosted on NSFW website)
http://burntelectrons.org/img/ctho-chip2.jpg">G80
http://burntelectrons.org/img/ctho-chip1.jpg">undistorted photo
The four large structured areas and the I/O pads at the right edge wouldn't all match up across chip generations/process shrinks unless it was the same chip.
marc5002 - Sunday, June 1, 2008 - link
Nvidia can't Destroy intel it the best Cpu + overclockingBut They Can start a WAR what is useless Intel chipset or nvidia Video card ? We Know that intel chipset On Laptop is Crap
it not even Close to a Quadro of 100$ By nvidia for laptop
Nvidia & intel Fight ? they should stop And Do a Teaming so there so Called integrated Chipset who come with 70% OF the laptop
Would have some high technology and Gameplay
Amd Was The most Horse power Cpu With Thunderibrd Vs p3 * then P4 Vs Athelon XP . then 64 bits & then X2 64 Bits
as soon they made Socket Am2 . Intel Started Price War of CPU and initated a nice Counter Attack E6700 PRESENT : 30% more powerfull then Any Socket Am2 * overclocked +20%
Then E8500 MAke is apparition 3.100mhz : overclocked at 4.2GHZ With water-cooling According Review Like This Website & HardOCP
The 8500 not overclocked do 30 frame rate per second.
Over clocked over 70+ Then Any Socket Am2 Of AMD-ATI Team up
So Talking about high end machine they all on intel : With neither ATI Dual Gpu X2 CrossFire Or With Nvidia Best current 9800gX2 Wich is rumoured to be Already outclased by Sli 9900GTX (The GT200)
Back to waiting The FutureGame Benchmarking for the Gt200 * cause 9800gTX what the hell i tough it would be like 25% better then 8800GTS at Last. and some Benchmark show 8800GTS OC : of the Revision G92 chipset is Better
by anandtech02148, 1 days ago
Google destroy Microsoft,Apple.
Nvidia destroy Intel n Amd. Yes, dreams can come true.
LMAO This Guy aeternitas, is right your such a fools
To Think it possible to Destroy Intel
Intel can maybe Destroy half of AMD-ATI Business.Profit
I still think Ati one day will come back with a decent video card to bite back The Geforce Series G200+ Like in time of Elder Scroll Oblivion When it started they could get power for a short amount of time to being #1 but it was Already Know that nvidia would bite BACK Like intel Bitten Amd On the nut.
anandtech02148 - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
Google destroy Microsoft,Apple.Nvidia destroy Intel n Amd. Yes, dreams can come true.
aeternitas - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
You are a tool.Most of the great stuff you see in technology and your desktop day are from Intel, Apple(early hardware/software, mainly software now), and Xerox (early GUI to name one of many things). The only thing AMD really did was wake the monster (intel) from its complacent sleep. Google and nVidia, are great, but guess what? The people in those two companies grew up with the things you want gone. Moron.
Your dream is one of ignorant bliss. Go live on a deserted island where you will not screw with our genepool further. I can only hope you do not sprout wings or fins.
System48 - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
http://www.nordichardware.com/image3.php?id=5155">http://www.nordichardware.com/image3.php?id=5155System48 - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
I found this site, http://tinyurl.com/6ohoxt">http://tinyurl.com/6ohoxt, and the picture they're using does seem to match with the image above. Having said that, would there really be any noticeable difference between the G80 and the G92.BigToque - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
Does that not look like some sort of quad-core type chip?BelligerentChooChoo - Friday, May 30, 2008 - link
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