Will Internet Explorer 9 change the way we surf the web with its use of the GPU? Rob Enderle thinks it will.
IE6 became the dominant browser worldwide early last decade but unfortunately Microsoft took their eyes off the ball resulting in a raft of surprisingly good challengers. IE7 was OK but disappointing and IE8 moved back to challenge for leadership again. Now IE9 is looking like a whole different kind of beast. Although browsers have traditionally leveraged the CPU and system RAM, IE9 supposedly leverages the GPU (graphics processing unit) and promises to provide a significant performance improvement as a result.
This is why, for this cycle, NVIDIA has suddenly become a huge advocate for ie9. This is a big shift for browsers and where the market leader goes, the others will likely follow. This could be the biggest change for the web since the introduction of the web browser.
Bringing Graphics to Browsers
Coincidently I was sent a link to a video of the new Jules Verne world in Second Life that will go live in a few weeks. This is doubly amazing because he clearly had to work within the limits of current technology and couldn’t really make full use of a GPU. Imagine what this could look like if he could have used the full power of the GPU.
By adding graphics capabilities to the browser we could not only create websites that were vastly richer in terms of how they worked (for instance think of a Steampunk themed website where each of the elements was photorealistic and reacted mechanically to your touch to uncover menus which looked like physical constructs), pages could actually look like physical places you could interact with creating the first real opportunity to create interactive web based virtual worlds.
Power to the People
What makes this a potentially really big change is we haven’t been using most of the power in the PCs we currently have. The performance limitations on the web have stayed virtually static for nearly 3 decades and never embraced the GPU at all let alone the vast improvements the industry has made in graphics since the internet was created.
This power could not only be used for rendering but for animation and the creation of web based games the like of which we have yet to see. While locally based applications and games would, in theory, easily outperform web based properties still, the gap between the two could close much more tightly.
This could create broader categories of games that would run on systems that had strong enough graphical headroom like NVIDIA Tegra based phones and tablets, and future iPads. You have to believe that Apple isn’t going to let Microsoft go in this direction alone. And a race to graphics performance could have broad implications for what Google is doing with Chrome and Android.
IE9 Is Only the Beginning
Like any big change, it will take a while for this one to mature and for the other players to make it into a horse race. Apple is already pushing HTML5 which is also the core of IE9 and both vendors evidently want to put Google in its place so they might actually cooperate on this graphics driven web effort.
Check out the IE9 preview site, unfortunately you have to use a lot of imagination because there aren’t yet any really compelling examples of what future sites could look like only examples of animation and physics to give you a rudimentarily idea. Good thing about the web is once developers get their hands on this puppy the only limitation is their imagination and while most have been imagining improvements in the back end IE9 and others like it will get developers focused once again on the desktop.
The Anti-Cloud
We have this sense that things tend to go in cycles. First everything was on mainframes which was one extreme, then we had the desktop wave which was another, and most recently we spoke about putting everything in the Cloud, or on the internet. This change could bring performance back towards the middle and allow things to run more effectively where the performance is the least expensive. Not sure what we’ll call this new construct and we’ll likely want a new name because client/server doesn’t sound trendy any more than hosting did, which is what Cloud computing really is (I agree with Larry Ellison on this).
In a way this is something new but it is also something old – it will make a change in the internet that could be both profound and wonderful. Get ready for the real Web 3.0 and the birth of the GPU Browser that will change the Web Forever.
Showing 17 comments
RSSAre you kidding me? IE will never rival other modern browsers again as long as it uses the trident engine. Now if IE were to adopt webkit or gecko, now that might change the web forever.
There is no "ahead" of standards. There is following or breaking standards. Microsoft have traditionally chosen to falsely follow and then break standards in order to generate further user lock-in.
Your subscription to their market-speak is something you should be worried about.
So IE will have something that by the time IE9 is release all the other major browsers will have already, but it won't have many of the features Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera have already.
Will IE9 Change the Web Forever? I don't think so. Others already did. IE is years behind many other browsers.
If the desktop was handled by the GPU, insted of windows manipulations..
If all the Video display formats, Divx, AVI, and soforth were handled by the GPU as it should,
Insted of the CPU decompressing/extrapolating them into the proper formats..FOR WINDOWS.
You would could increase CPU/computer power by about 8 times.
Why put power into Vertices rendered in a second, when it takes 10 times that amount of time for WINDOWS to tell the card HOW to make a SQUARE BOX.. The Vid card should ALREADY know how.
I will reserve my verdict on IE9 until we see it 'in the wild'.
For now, Chrome is faster and more committed to moving with the standards.
As to it not being used by thought leaders, do you think staying in line or ahead of standards as said by @Rob Enderle would rectify that?
I have always had a tough time using IE simply because of it's slow page-load speeds. I like the Bookmarks manager better in IE and a lot of other features which Google Chrome seems to be missing. I also think IE needs better plugin/add-ons/extensions support. The current setup for add-ons is just too bulky and hard to remove IMO.
On standards they need to stay ahead of them, otherwise they risk losing share. I think the goal remains to drive the standards bodies in a MSFT favorible fashion. Nothing unusual there.
Eventually, this is typically a cart and horse issue though for most and will take awile. Putting a lot of efffort into an IE9 site before there is much IE9 in market doesn't make sense to most site owners.
While I see it as a great improvement over the current browser offerings, I have a few questions:
1) Does it not seem like Microsoft is attempting to 'embrace and extend' in an attempt to preserve IE's current dominant position?
2) With all the talk of meeting global standards, isn't this a fork away from W3C's web standards?
3) Do you see website creators biting, and creating IE-optimized websites?
This is a Multi sided coin.
MS
CPU power
GPU makers
Windows Created DirectX to force standardization of abilities in the video market.
Windows Software, is Software driven, so Everything has to run thru the CPU. Stupid. It has its limitations.
GPU companies Made the SAME cards, with Better resolution, and NOTHING MORE. There really ISNT any real changes from over 10 years ago.
The CPU and GPU went up in power.
The CPU got better, but Tech for doing Multitasking was Never added to the hardware until recently and has been around for over 20 years.
The GPU can process TONS more data, once it gets there and shade/color/display Tons more data, AFTER the CPU has processed it. Insted of placing Drivers and infs/dll and letting the Video card DO the MATH and processing of video ON ITS OWN.. AVI/DIVX/WMV/.. and all the other formats can be on a CHIP and Even updated as needed. Even the desktop could be Programed Into/onto the video card and Stop ALL the CPU processing if Video data. That alone would/could free up 80-90% of windows CPU processing.
Tell the vid card to make a Window and Then let the software tell it what to display..GET the WHOLE windowing process OUT of the CPU.