Nvidia’s Optimus Technology – A Huge Leap

After reading (and watching) some of the reviews this morning of the Nvidia Optimus technology, I cant say enough good things about it. Never again should a laptop have to suffer with awful Intel graphics. I’ll keep this brief…

Good:

• Negligible hit to battery life for most apps (web browsing, music, productivity). A few web sites even had the Optimus-enabled profile last longer than the Intel GPU only profile – this is likely due to the more energy efficient offloading of YouTube video decoding to Nvidia’s GPU rather than the Intel CPU working hard to decode it all in software.
• Based on the reviews, the technology doesn’t have that many bugs. I didn’t read any complaints about the quality of the drivers or software. Hopefully this was because the software was polished, not that Nvidia asked the reviewers to keep quiet about any bugs…
• Not having to deal with Intel’s GPU for “real” 3D apps. Even if they did have AutoCAD running on their newest IGP at CES, that doesn’t mean much.
• This paves the way for future GPUs to work with CPUs that have their own on-board IGPs. Finally, a setup that is mostly transparent to the users and still has good performance.

Bad:

• For Windows 7, “application profiles” that tell the Nvidia driver how to handle each application. Nvidia will automatically update the profiles in the background from the internet, which is good, but its still kind of a “hack”. I guess the Windows API doesn’t have some sort of call to say, hey, I could use some 3D or hardware accelerated video that Nvidia could pick up on.

When I was reading the reviews this morning. I chuckled a little once it dawned on me that Nvidia is doing this in software, and Lucid’s Hydra technology is doing something very similar in hardware.

It doesn’t seem far off that the next generation of Nvidia Optimus technology would be smart enough to know what calls are for 3D, OpenCL/DirectCompute or video hardware decoding and what is for basic run-of-the-mill 2D effects and drawing.

Now I just need Apple to create a 13″  MacBook Pro with this tech!