Newsgroup: it.comp.hardware.video-3d
Titolo: Interview: NVIDIA's Keita Iida

Australia, April 12, 2007 - Keita Iida, Director of Content Management at 
NVIDIA sat down with IGN AU to discuss all things Direct X 10 and the 
evolution of their Geforce graphics cards. Iida goes into detail on the 
differences between developing for the PS3's RSX graphics processor, and the 
latest development tools to hit the scene. We also pressed him for comment 
on Ubisoft's jaggy-infested PC versions of Ghost Recon, Silent Hunter and 
others.
IGN AU: Can you tell us a little about what your team does, apart from crank 
out graphics cards?
Keita Iida: We have a team worldwide of about 150 people, doing everything 
from writing demos to show what's possible with next-generation graphics, to 
teams building tools and software development kits and things of that 
nature - not only for PCs, but also for cell phones and obviously PS3 as 
well. We also have a dedicated team who educate developers and work with 
them, making sure the game works well on PC; compatibility is always a big 
issue. We kind of have this broad array of functions; the primary thing 
being that, at the end of the day, when we develop a chip, we don't just 
figure out how many new transistors and what new features to put in. We want 
to make sure we build the right chip for the developers who want to utilise 
those features.
IGN AU: You mentioned that part of your work is tech demonstrations; 'Dawn' 
was the DX9 figurehead - who's the DX10 model?
Keita Iida: Well, Geforce FX was the first DX9 chip; that was Dawn, the 
fairy. We had the mermaid Nalu for Geforce 6; for Geforce 7, we had a Lucy 
Liu-looking girl in an armoured superhero suit. With Geforce 8 - which is 
DX10, we have Adrianne Curry, based on the reality-TV star.
IGN AU: These demos are all well and good, but games haven't come close to 
that - it's one character on screen with no AI, no backgrounds. Now, we've 
seen some cool DX10 demos, such as the Microsoft Flight Simulator X 
side-by-side comparison shots, but no one has seen that running yet. Running 
on today's hardware - an 8800 GTX - with all effects on, is that going to be 
a 'slideshow'?
Keita Iida: Yeah, I mean, you may have to make some compromises in terms of 
draw distances or certain effects. However, the one thing that can't be 
answered at this point is the extent that the rendering engine can be 
optimised as much as possible. But as you build the game, there's a lot of 
optimisation, both on the driver and application side. It's really hard to 
tell, at the end of the day, exactly what the performance level is going to 
be - which is why you never have a publisher or a developer call out the 
specs; especially in terms of minimum recommended specs, until they're 
printing the box.
Given that the DX10 version of Flight Simulator X patch is still a while 
away, we can't just come out and say the game is going to run at 30 frames 
per second at this resolution on a single-card 8800. Naturally, given that 
we have the only current hardware on the market, and they're using that as 
the reference hardware for DX10 development, it makes sense for both parties 
to make sure that people with 8800 GTXs will have a great experience.
Keita Iida, at this year's GO3 event in Perth, Western Australia.
IGN AU: Crysis is probably the other really big DX10 example. We've heard a 
few reports about the performance of that under DX10 and we have an 
expectation of how this game will look, based on all the screens that have 
come out. Can you comment on the performance of that? Will we get to see all 
of this eye candy running on today's hardware?
Keita Iida: We have nothing but pure confidence - especially with 
8800-series cards - that with Crysis, you're going to have a tremendous 
experience. Again, since they're developing with 8800 as a reference, their 
target is going to be 30, if not 60, frames per second at relatively high 
resolutions. With DX10, given that it's a clean break from DX9, there are a 
lot of new art assets that need to be created; there are a lot of special 
effects that need to be written. Usually what they do is, when they take the 
DX9 engine and port it to DX10, they need the underlying renderer to support 
the DX10 features, and then they add the features on top of it - whether 
it's art or game-building.
What happens is, first, you need to get the game up and running; get the 
features implemented. Right now, Crytek, with Crysis, is in the process of 
adding new features and will soon be at the optimisation stage. That said, 
we would love to show you the game running on 8800 hardware, but we're bound 
by NDAs, and that's a decision bound by EA and Crytek; but we have every 
confidence that, by the time it's ready to be demonstrated to the public on 
DX10 with the 8800 or whatever advanced hardware is available at the time, 
it's going to run perfectly fine.
IGN AU: What are your thoughts on Microsoft effectively forcing gamers to 
upgrade to Vista in order to run Direct X 10 - when there's no real reason 
why it can't run on Windows XP?
Keita Iida: It's a business and marketing decision.
NVIDIA's demonstration model of Adrienne Curry, rendered in real-time.
IGN AU: You're pushing DX10 hardware and yet you're limited by the number of 
people who are running DX10 because of Microsoft's decision.
Keita Iida: Initially, to some degree, it's in our best interest as the only 
provider of that solution to have DX10 software as early as possible. And to 
that extent, maybe if they had made DX10 available on XP, this would've 
facilitated the development and adoption of DX10 features much faster. Also, 
the user base would've been higher because people with 8800s who have XP 
could already have DX10 available to them.
That said, the underlying kernel of the operating system and the code of 
Vista is a clean-break from XP - it really is. There's not as much legacy 
code as XP had from [Windows] 98 or 95. It slowed the progress of DX10 
development and it slowed the user base, but in the long run, we feel it's 
not going to have any impact - in fact, it may be better. From a quality 
assurance standpoint, you have to account for so many variables, it makes 
sense to make a clean break from legacy hardware specs, and just package 
Direct3D and Direct X with Vista and just make a future-move that way.
IGN AU: Can you comment on what happened with NVIDIA's Vista drivers? You 
guys have had access to Vista for years to build drivers and at the launch 
of Vista there were no drivers. The ones that are out now are still 
basically crippled. Why did this happen?
Keita Iida: On a high level, we had to prioritise. In our case, we have DX9, 
DX10, multiple APIs, Vista and XP - the driver models are completely 
different, and the DX9 and 10 drivers are completely different. Then you 
have single- and multi-card SLI - there are many variables to consider. 
Given that we were so far ahead with DX10 hardware, we've had to make sure 
that the drivers, although not necessarily available to a wide degree, or 
not stable, were good enough from a development standpoint.
If you compare our situation to our competitor's, we have double the 
variables to consider when we write the drivers; they have much more time to 
optimise and make sure their drivers work well on their DX10 hardware when 
it comes out. We've had to balance our priorities between making sure we 
have proper DX10 feature-supported drivers to facilitate development of DX10 
content, but also make sure that the end user will have a good experience on 
Vista. To some degree, I think that we may have underestimated how many 
resources were necessary to have a stable Vista driver off the bat. I can 
assure you and your readers that our first priority right now is not 
performance, not anything else; it's stability and all the features 
supported on Vista.
IGN AU: So what kind of timeline are we looking at until the end user can be 
comfortable with Vista drivers? With DX9 drivers that work as stably and 
quickly as they do with XP?
Keita Iida: We're ramping up the frequency of our Vista driver releases. 
Users will probably understand that we release a number of beta drivers on 
our site, so we're making incremental progress. We believe that, in a very 
short time we will have addressed the vast majority, if not all of the 
issues. We've had teams who were working on other projects who have 
mobilised to make sure that as quickly as possible we have the drivers 
fixed. I'm not going to give you an exact timeframe, but it's going to be 
very soon. We're disappointed that we couldn't do it right off the bat, but 
we hear what everyone is saying and we're willing to fix it.
IGN AU: Moving onto PS3, there's a lot of talk about the difficulty of 
developing for the PS3. As with any console launch, but perhaps more so for 
the PS3, there's a lot of potential that hasn't been touched. However, Sony 
recently announced new tools to help developers, called 'Edge'. Were NVIDIA 
involved in the development of 'Edge' - the new software development tools 
for the PS3?
Keita Iida: We're kind of bound by the NDA, and in fact, developers who are 
part of the dev-net are privy to that information, but from our end we are 
cooperating very closely with Sony on many of the tools they are delivering 
to developers.
The PS3's RSX graphics processor was designed around NVIDIA's technology.
IGN AU: How much, percentage-wise, would you say the RSX (the PS3's graphics 
hardware) is being taken advantage of with these first generation titles? 
And what sort of potential does the hardware hold?
Keita Iida: There are substantial differences between the RSX and the 
standard PC-equivalent GPU, given the memory bus is different and how it 
communicates with the Cell-processor itself, as it's a completely different 
CPU. There's a lot that's had to be re-architected and rewritten, so from a 
developer's standpoint, the architecture of the RSX is well understood.
IGN AU: So Cell is the area they need to 'decode'?
Keita Iida: Well, you're right. Relative to RSX, the potential of Cell has 
not been maximised to the extent that RSX has. I think both of them have a 
lot of headroom left; you're going to see some spectacular things.
IGN AU: Do you think 1080p will become the norm, then, on PS3? Does RSX have 
the power to make this the standard resolution?
Keita Iida: Obviously it does - but it depends on the content.
IGN AU: Well, it can with tennis games with two characters - but more 
complex games with more effects on-screen are 720p.
Keita Iida: Right. Well, it's a trade-off. It depends on the game, how it 
was written, what hardware it's running on - in which case, the PS3 is 
locked hardware. It should run in 1080p, but it just depends on how much the 
developers have put into the game. Since we're not the ones creating the 
games, we can't guarantee that every game is going to run at 1080p, 60 
frames per second. All we can do is work with Sony to continue to ensure 
that the developers begin to better understand our hardware, make it easier 
to develop for, extract better performance and make it as apparent to them 
as possible.
IGN AU: Because of the potential for unique configurations, a lot of the 
potential for PCs goes untapped, when compared with consoles. For high-end 
PC hardware, how much of that potential is not being used?
Keita Iida: It's certainly not being used completely. At GDC, we released a 
new suite of tools designed for DX10's next-gen features, specifically for 
the 8800 series. In terms of PCs and why they haven't been maximised, I 
think it's pretty simple. If you're a publisher and you want to make money, 
you have to account for the user base as a whole - not just the high-end 
gamer. A lot of times a developer, depending on what genre their game is, 
will target Geforce FX, or Geforce 6 or 7, and then they create their art 
assets and to the extent that they can, branch off and make the game 
scaleable. That's where we come in.
First of all, for higher-end games, we focus a lot on marketing and creating 
awareness. The second thing we do is that is, the investment to enhance your 
game is not trivial in terms of resources - which is why we create tools - 
to help facilitate their adoption as quickly as possible and as a low-cost 
proposition. Companies know that from a ROI (Return on Investment) 
standpoint, to target the 8800 consumer is - from a PR stand point, it's 
cool - but the majority of people don't have that hardware. We want reach 
them, and we think it makes sense for companies to do it if it's cheap 
enough and easy enough and they can do it quickly enough.
Easily one of the most visually impressive games ever, Crysis was designed 
to run on 8800-series graphics cards.
IGN AU: Ubisoft has been given NVIDIA tools with which to develop their 
games, and yet their last 3 big PC titles - Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, 
Rainbow Six and Silent Hunter - have broken key features. None support 
anti-aliasing. Why, if they have these tools, is this happening? Why are 
they breaking your drivers? And how has NVIDIA reacted internally?
Keita Iida: Certainly, at a high level, we're very disappointed. We were 
disappointed that we were not able to engage to a level where that was not 
prevented, that we couldn't have done something about that. As we said 
before, one of the biggest impediments of PCs is the image of less 
compatibility compared with consoles, and certainly we make it our mission 
to address [this]. We try and touch on as many companies and titles as 
possible. Ubisoft, as one of the larger and more well-established 
companies - we should be doing a better job of that.
That said, if you look the hundreds of titles that come out for PC, we try 
to touch all of them - and for some reason some of them fall through the 
cracks.
IGN AU: Except that these are big titles. Based on the fact the same engine 
is behind GRAW 2 as it was for the original, there's a good chance that 
anti-aliasing won't run on that, too. Have these issues been recognised?
Keita Iida: Oh absolutely. Whether, it's a driver fix, or a game patch, 
we're working with them to address it. They are high-profile titles, and it 
would be ludicrous not to make sure that's addressed, and we'll do 
everything in our power to help them on that.
IGN AU: Thanks for your time.
Keita Iida: Thank you. 


cut
sarà che ho letto velocemente ma vedo molta foschia sugli argomenti delle 
dx10...
-- 
-------------------------------
SimBus82 --> 
www.simbus82.altervista.org
 --> Hi-Tech Content Inside
-------------------------------