Nvidia Swings Into Hollywood

摘要

At Sony Pictures Imageworks, the special-effects house behind Spider-Man 2, there's no such thing as faster. "You just get it done better," says VP for technical operations Bill Villarreal. Yet the crew that's pixel-pushing Spidey has more time and graphics power -hundreds of times more- than it did the first time the webslinger swung onto the big screen. Which means that watching the superhero battle to save his girlfriend, Mary Jane, from the clutches of Dr. Octopus will be even more eye-popping than when he saved her from the clutches of Green Goblin. And for that, you can thank Nvidia. The Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker made its mark with graphics acceleration chips for desktop computers. It sells about $2 billion worth of them a year, mainly to run videogames. Its big score was winning the contract to supply the Xbox in 2000. But it will lose ground once Microsoft switches to Nvidia's chief competitor, Canada's ATI Technologies, for Xbox 2. Though Nvidia hasn't been ruled out as a supplier for the even more lucrative Sony PlayStation 3, holding its share via the PC market is a constant struggle. Also, notes Gartner analyst Joseph Byrne, "the PC side isn't a large growth opportunity for a graphics chip-maker right now."