Jen-Hsun Huang

Nvidia used the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., to show the world it has reached a new milestone in graphics processing. Nvidia demonstrated its next-generation GPU architecture, code-named Fermi. The new architecture will not replace the CPU, but will secure a significant place in PC system architecture.

Fermi's graphics capabilities will mean substantial improvements to game play, multimedia encoding and enhancement, and other PC applications, according to the company.

Nvidia used the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., to show the world it has reached a new milestone in graphics processing. Nvidia demonstrated its next-generation GPU architecture, code-named Fermi. The new architecture will not replace the CPU, but will secure a significant place in PC system architecture.

Fermi's graphics capabilities will mean substantial improvements to game play, multimedia encoding and enhancement, and other PC applications, according to the company.

More than 40 years ago, Gordon E. Moore, one of the cofounders of Intel, observed that the number of transistors that could be incorporated into an integrated circuit had increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years. Despite the challenges posed by the incredibly minute sizes of modern-day chips, Moore's Law is expected to hold true for at least another decade.

Having retired from Intel a dozen years ago, maybe Moore has time to work on a new law: The growth in the number of attorneys needed to litigate new chip designs.

Figuring out the best way to transform a frozen pizza into a perfectly warmed pie, gooey on top and crispy on the bottom, is as much a computer problem as a work of culinary art.

General Mills, maker of the Totino's and Jeno's brands of pizzas, would prefer not to whip up a thousand combinations of mozzarella cheese, tomato paste, crust and chemicals and blast them with microwave radiation. It's a lot less expensive and easier to model different pizzas using a sophisticated computer and only cook up the best candidates.

It will come as no surprise that Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jen-Hsun Huang believes in the future of graphics processing. As he pointed out in a two-and-a-half hour presentation at the Nvision 2008 conference, today's GPUs have the equivalent of 1,000 times the processing power of a Cray supercomputer from 30 years ago.

What's less obvious is that Huang also sees Nvidia's future in smartphones.

On Monday, Nvidia upped the ante on Intel. The company introduced the Tegra family of processors, a single-computer chip that promises rich high definition and Internet exploration consumers have grown accustomed to on PCs -- but on small mobile devices.

The Nvidia Tegra is a computer on a chip, smaller than a U.S. dime. Nvidia designed the chip from the ground up to enable the "visual PC experience" on a new generation of mobile-computing devices while consuming the smallest amount of power.