How many of you out there have used a laptop with NVidia’s Hybrid Switchable Graphics? The answer to the age old problem of having to choose between crappy embedded graphics that offer amazing battery life, or great graphics that drain your battery dry in mere minutes, the implementation has been less than perfect. Current switchable graphics require you to manually shut down applications to free hardware resources before you can switch. NVidia has acknowledged that limitation and just announced their newest offering in the mobile graphics space: Optimus.
Optimus removes all of the manual work of switchable graphics, putting both GPU’s inside the laptop and dynamically switching between them as needed. No work is required on the user’s part, and they get the best of both worlds (Good battery when they’re just surfing the net, and great performance when playing games or using CUDA-accelerated applications).
Read on inside for all the details.
Switchable graphics is a technology introduced by NVidia about 2 years ago. 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. 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.
With Optimus, NVidia decided to model the switchable graphics system after another popular hybrid device: The Prius. Just like the Prius transparently switches between gas and electric engines during operation with no interaction from the user, Optimus will automatically switch between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU depending on the user’s and application’s needs.
This video from NVidia describes it best (7Meg Quicktime):
Unfortunately, this is not a simple software upgrade. Users of existing switchable graphics systems will have to learn to use what they have, but a new generation of laptops is coming out that will support the new Optimus systems. New hardware exists between the display and the two GPU’s enabling the transparent switching, so new laptops will be coming out to support the Optimus technology. First off is the new ASUS UL50Vf, announced today.
While ASUS may be first to the table, they are not the only offering as NVidia plans to have 50 laptops supporting Optimus by this summer. And not just laptops, as the list of supported hardware brings it to Netbooks, Laptops, and possibly even other new devices.
And that is Optimus. Not an earth-shattering idea, but a revolutionary new implementation of an existing idea that could usher in a whole new era of powerful laptops. As more and more computation is done on the GPU, it’s not a stretch to see people using little netbooks with Atom processors to postprocess home video (Flip Mino HD anyone?) with their integrated Geforce chipset, bring whole new functionality to these little devices. Jon Peddie agrees, calling Optimus a “Game-changer” for the notebook industry.
Currently, it is only available for Windows Devices. Hopefully the same technology will eventually migrate to the Linux drivers, and then to an upcoming MacBook. I know I would love to have this kind of switching in my MacBook (or MacBook Pro), although it would require Apple to return to NVidia chipsets. Who knows, anything’s possible? 🙂
So what’s your thoughts? Are you going to rush out and buy a new Optimus-Enabled laptop?
Switchable graphics has been around for a few years. A couple of years ago you could get switchable graphics, but that meant having to reboot your machine. That was Generation 1 for switchable graphics.
Generation 2 is has been out for the past year or so. It allows you to manually switch between the integrated graphics and discrete GPU without having to reboot. This takes on the order of 10 seconds to close down any blocking applications and then switch over. There is no reboot. The Asus UL80Vt is an example of a laptop that allows this. For the record, I have an Asus UL80Vt on order.
Generation 3 allows the switch between the integrated graphics and discrete GPU to happen seamlessly. This is obviously better than the Gen 2 product. No manual switching is needed. No closing down blocking applications. No 10 second delay. There is no screen flicker or screen blanking. The delay has been reduced to 200 milliseconds, which for all intents is what we call instant. However, the Gen 2 hardware has an 11% advantage in battery life over the Gen 3 hardware in real world usage.
Will I cancel my Asus UL80Vt order? No.
Why not? First, it takes time to get anything ordered through our Purchasing Department. Once the process is going, it is better to let it run its course. Second, the Gen 3 hardware is not available for order, yet. Theoretically it is available today, but I just checked Newegg, and it is not there. Third, I am likely to use the discrete GPU all the time when plugged it, and the switch over to the integrated graphics when I am not plugged in.
In short, Gen 3 is better, and I would love it have it on my laptop.