AMD CEO Lisa Su Applauds NVIDIA's FreeSync Adoption, Extols Importance Of Ray Tracing
This year's Consumer Electronics Show wrapped up just a few days ago, and while some years it is relatively tame in the tech space, the convention did not disappoint this time around. There were new product announcements, technology previews, and even a bit of back and forth between NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, For her part, Dr. Su refrained from slinging mud at the competition, though she did address NVIDIA's decision to finally embrace adaptive sync.
AMD's full implementation of adaptive sync is better known as FreeSync, which is essentially the company's marketing term for that particular variable refresh rate technology, and how it's utilized within AMD's own hardware and software. The bigger takeaway, however, is that adaptive sync is an open standard.
During a Q&A sessions with a group of reporters, Dr. Su said AMD made the right decision in adopting adaptive sync, which is reinforced by NVIDIA's decision to jump on board.
"Look, we knew FreeSync was the right answer. We’ve known FreeSync was the right answer for a couple of years. The fact that others have decided that FreeSync is the right answer, I think, says that we made the right choice a few years ago," Dr. Su said.
"We believe in open standard. You know, we believe in open ecosystems. That's been a mantra. So we have no issue with our competitors about FreeSync. And we think that just means that, you know, it’s better for gamers and we did a good job," Dr. Su added.
While the initial question was about NVIDIA deciding to support FreeSync monitors, Dr. Su's response also alludes to Intel's efforts in the discrete graphics space. Intel has gone on record saying it fully intends to support adaptive sync, and that it also believes going with open standards is important.
Part of what's interesting about all this is that Huang claimed FreeSync doesn't work all that well, even on AMD's own hardware. According to NVIDIA's testing of 400 FreeSync monitors, only a dozen passed muster.
"I don't believe we've seen that. So, yeah," Dr. Su said in regards to FreeSync supposedly not working. When asked specifically about the flickering and other anomalies that NVIDIA demonstrated on a FreeSync panel at CES, AMD's PR team noted that those those things are governed by certification.
"It’s a good point. I think both definitions will be used interchangeably, and that’s okay. So adaptive sync technology, FreeSync is a free version; there are other adaptive sync technologies," Dr. Su elaborated.
Dr. Su also talked about the emergence of real-time ray tracing in games. Huang slammed the Radeon VII's performance, and said that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 would "crush" it when enabling ray tracing, and also DLSS. That will probably turn out to be true. However, as we previously reported, Dr. Su said that GPUs with ray tracing support are "deep in development."
"I don’t think we should say that we’re waiting. I would say that we are deep into development, and that development is concurrent between hardware and software. And so for us, it’s, you know, what is the consumer going to see? The consumer doesn’t see a lot of benefit today because the other parts of the ecosystem are not ready. I think by the time we talk more about ray tracing, the consumers will see that," Dr. Su said.
She addressed various other topics, which you can catch by following the link in the Via field below. What it all boils down to is that it is going to be a wild year in tech. Buckle up, folks!
