IE9 Will Change the Web Forever

Night Hawk · 12 Apr 2010

IE9 Will Change the Web Forever

By: Rob Enderle
April 12, 2010

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.

More at: IE9 Will Change the Web Forever

not so gray matter · 12 Apr 2010

I'll stick with a browser that eats my processor, not my gpu thank you very much.

whs · 12 Apr 2010

That's all we need - more eye candy and games. What a waste of effort. But it's clear why they do that, it attracts the paying masses.

helmutcheese · 12 Apr 2010

GPU is way forward, CPU is so old.

Many things are now being done on the GPU, why use 4 Cores when Nvidia have 480 Cores ?

polarbear · 12 Apr 2010

I'm open... will wait and see... GL :)

helmutcheese · 12 Apr 2010

Adobe's new CS5 due out real soon also uses Nvidia GPU's capabilities (CS4 did partly esp iof a Quadro GPU).

Flash Beta/RC builds also use it.

List goes on, and no clue why anyone inc peep above would want to very unparalleled CPU over a very parallel GPU.

smarteyeball · 12 Apr 2010

helmutcheese said:

GPU is way forward, CPU is so old.

You seem to be an advocate of the 'way forward' - yet you hate Seven... hmm.

helmutcheese · 12 Apr 2010

smarteyeball said:

helmutcheese said:

GPU is way forward, CPU is so old.

You seem to be an advocate of the 'way forward' - yet you hate Seven... hmm.

I do not see the many bugs/removed basic functions in Win 7 (basically Vista SE) as way forward and so far SP1 fixes next to nothing.

If you need to ask me about the above then you obliviously do not know much about the OS or use it fully.

I do not see your point in even posting TBH.

Firestrider · 12 Apr 2010

notsograymatter said:

I'll stick with a browser that eats my processor, not my gpu thank you very much.

A GPU can do what the CPU can do but do it more efficiently (e.g. more performance for the same power consumption) depending on the workload. Having the rendering engine utilize the GPU is definitely a step forward.

Although I hate how Microsoft is using their proprietary DirectX technology instead of an open standard its not a surprise.

si8mon · 13 Apr 2010

When the IE9 beta come out i be quick to adopt it to see if it's as fast as chrome. I think it will be much faster then IE8 but not as fast as chrome and opera.