7. It just had to be known

I’ve got a rather strange track record in this community, having played quite a few of the hundreds of imaginable roles. I’ve been manipulated by PR through the NV30 hyping campaign. I’ve speculated. Then later I’ve had concrete info in my hands. Now, I’m just quitting it all.

Through my time here, I’ve seen countless points of view on just about every situation, all contradictory. In a way, you could say that’s what intelligence is all about: managing to get a coherent theory out of apparently contradictory elements.

Well then, I fear I’ll never manage to figure out how smart I really am; too much contradictory information comes into play. I’ve most likely got more elements to put together than most people working in this industry, but whether my brain’s doing the job right, I can’t say. I do believe it mostly likely is, though, otherwise I obviously wouldn’t be writing this.

I’m focusing so much on NVIDIA only because it has always been my specialization, information-wise, and it’s also because that’s where the most interesting and relatively unknown elements exist. Please do not even consider I might be doing so because I don’t like ATI. In fact, I respect ATI a lot for what they have accomplished, as well as for staying reasonable. I’m focusing so much on NVIDIA simply because that’s what I know best.

But instead of commenting on information you don’t have access to, and potentially misinterpreting the whole thing, I thought I might just as well give you give you more authentic employee quotes. Of course, this information might be subjective–but that’s true for everything, I sadly fear. I’ll let you judge by yourself, with minimal commentary.

I've seen scads of contradictory dates. Current HW eng schedule has NV36 production mid-Sept, so cards likely won't show in retail until October.

What confuses me is that a marketing roadmap had NV36 and NV38 both launched October 15! I don't curse for emphasis too often, but that's ****ed up!

The above tidbit, dated summer 2003, was given at a time everyone, myself included, assumed the NV38 and NV36 wouldn’t be launched together, with the NV38 either in late August or early September–the NV36 was assumed to be targeted at Computex. Both were launched on the 23 of October, after numerous delays.

ATI promised the world that they won't announce a product unless it's 30 days or less from retail. NVIDIA now has a non-public but enforced policy: never "launch" a product unless 10,000 units are available from production (not eng samples).

Get this- Dell wants to put NV36M (mobile) into the PC Magazine Issue 21 (End of October). NVIDIA is refusing. NVIDIA is apparently willing to lose 100% of Dell's Christmas mobile business to ATI M10 rather than let Dell announce a NV36 device before there are 10,000 units in production. (expected to be mid November)

On the same topic, the hardware statistics page mentions 0.11 um process i've never seen anywhere else. However, engineering and marketing data contradict each other regarding what specific NV4x/NV5x devices are planned at .13, .11, .09.

it appears that NVIDIA internal docs have three different NV33s and even the project managers have not cleaned up the project names in documentation for devices-no-longer-named-nv33. Don't believe anything anyone has said, not even me.

I could find similar messages, from other sources too. I hope you realize on just how much information and experiences I’m concluding these lines from. There’s widespread confusion at NVIDIA, and the situation ain’t getting any better.