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Nvidia Rumored To Be Readying X86 Chip Release
jdb2 writes with the (honestly labeled) rumor from the Inquirer "that Nvidia is preparing to release an x86 microprocessor with its guns targeted directly at its two major rivals — Intel and AMD/ATI," and excerpts from the just-linked Inquirer article: "THE HOT RUMOR going around IDF ... [is] that the company will do an x86 part. The background whispers say that the part will be announced next week at Nvision ... Nvidia's men in white coats certainly have the brainpower to do it, but they also most certainly don't have a license to sell such a part. NV is basically locked out unless Intel and AMD both decide to be magnanimous, and we would not recommend holding your breath waiting for this to happen ... That leaves the lawsuit option open ... Any attempt to enter the market without a license would bring down Intel legal on them like flying monkeys blackening the sky. It would get ugly. Really ugly. Expensive too.""
Didn't i just read that nVidia was getting out of the x86 chipset business? Why would they now be releasing an actual x86 Chip if they don't want to even be in the chipset business?
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/02/1749213
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How is it that AMD is able to release x86 chips, but nVidia can't without a license from Intel? Why would nVidia need AMD to be gracious?
Does VIA has a license to make x86 processors?
It's a rumor about Nvidia producing a commercial product they're not able to produce and sell without getting a much larger and more wealthy companies lawyers descending on them like a plague of locusts.
Is there really nothing else to post stories about?
And last week The Inquirer reported that nvidia was getting out of the chipset business.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/02/nvidia-chipsets-dead
So according to the inquirer nvidia is getting out of the chipset business, but is going to produces an x86 processor. I guess they'll have to hook up to an intel chipset...
For some reason I do not believe what the inquirer is writing...
They could pull a Transmeta and build a RISC/VLIW core or six and package it with an x86 interpreter or JIT translator, basically do the front end in software instead of hardware. Crusoe was using the same core to do the translation and execution, but with a multi-core CPU that pipelines the translator and interpreter on separate cores they could end up with quite a nice design.
Well this is good for the home market and we should see some consoles targeting this chipset combo possibly. However I don't think that NVidia would possibly be a contender in the real $$$ business market.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Sure, if Nvidia tried selling x86 chips in the US or Europe, the company would get its ass sued off. But what about China? What about India? What about the third world? Merely because Intel has a rock solid patent portfolio in the US does not mean diddly squat in Bangladesh.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
choices are good. freedom is good. why should they not be allowed to make a processor and see if it can stand a test of time?
I was going to tell you to RTFA but TFA is almost as useless as the summary. Apparently Intel and AMD have a "lock" on the technology. What part of the technology they have a "lock" on is left unsaid... the instruction set? The manufacturing processes? TFA doesn't bother to say.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Given the cost of developing a full custom microprocessor (several tens of millions of dollars) including the complexity of verification ... surely a Legal Plan would have proceeded either development or acquisition.
...like Transmeta had. If they have a few chips that can convert and run converted x86 instructions quickly, that would work too. Provided it runs better than Intel or AMDs stuff.
Doesn't IBM and VIA (from Centaur and Cyrix) have x86 licenses as well?
I'm tired of looking at gross call traces that are aligned every which way. Itanium was weird, but at least it would make sense. The x64 extensions are at least interesting, but don't remove the basic flaws in x86. Anybody doing systems or embedded software will have to deal with this at some point. How much brain power do we need to waste on it? Of course, the hacks that Intel itself has to go through are bad enough as it is.
Would this be the same Inquirer who (incorrectly) reported that Nvidia was pull out of the chipset business? Yes, yes it is (http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/02/nvidia-chipsets-dead).
I wouldn't worry about the licensing. Because if it were impossible for anyone besides Intel and AMD to make an x86 part, then please be so kind as to tell me how in the heck there are a bunch of companies out there that provide x86 parts at various levels of compatibility with the Intel original? It's not just Intel and AMD. There are Transmeta, VIA, Cyrix, ST, Fujitsu, just to name a few. Innovasic Semiconductor makes processors to replace ones that Intel has declared obsolete (see this. The fact that even one company besides Intel exists (AMD) proves that it is possible for such a company to exist, either through a licensing agreement or through no agreement if none is required. This indicates that if Nvidia wishes to enter this business, it is possible for them to do so in one way or another. So I wouldn't worry about monkeys blackening the sky with thrown chairs. Instead, I would ask if it sounds reasonable that Nvidia would want to enter this business, and if so, what does this mean for the computer hardware and software communities, and let Nvidia's legal team figure out what legal strings need to be tied up. They do that all day long anyway.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
though currently, these are only rumors, it would be interesting to see how it will play out if these turn out not to be rumors.
For one, aren't both Intel and AMD having their own problems with anti-trust litigation in various places around the world? (I know Intel and the EU like to go at it)
Intel might just quickly license nVIDIA to do so just so that they can claim that there is no anti-trust going on, especially when there's a 3rd player at the table.
Cyrix, Texas Instruments, IBM, NexGen, amongst others.
Other companies made clone x86 CPUs as well (The list: IBM, NEC, AMD, TI, STM, Fujitsu, OKI, Siemens, Cyrix, Intersil, C&T, NexGen, and UMC). Intel has never been really successful at prosecuting anyone for creating their own x86 compatible CPU. They won't sue, unless the company is small enough to just give up (Hint: nVidia isn't).
Check out the legal histories of AMD v. Intel and VIA/Cyrix v. Intel. These essentially show that there are agreements and settlements all over the place, but few-to-no actual court decisions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Technologies#Legal_issues
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix#Legal_troubles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#Litigation_with_Intel
It essentially seems that NVIDIA would need to have a patent on something which Intel has produced in order to induce some kind of Mexican standoff, just like the others have.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
The idea of Nvidia producing an x86 CPU might seem dubious but perhaps not in the light of the fact that Nvidia bought Stexar in 2006. Stexar was a little known and quite secretive startup composed of a large portion of ex-Intel engineers and higher-ups from Intel's Xeon team. Before being swallowed by Nvidia they were intimating that work was being done on some sort of x86 "DSP".
jdb2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers
So can someone tell me how anyone outside of NVidia (who isn't quoted here) would know they need a "license" (patents I'm assuming) for a technology that nobody knows anything about, is completely unreleased, and likely doesn't even exist?
This story is complete nonsense. We're all dumber after having read it.
AccountKiller
that's another interesting point.
I'm not sure why it (parent) was tagged as offtopic.
The article linked to in the original post is on the Inq website and most slashdotians know that Inq (specifically one Inq contributor) is biased against everything nVIDIA does. Add to the fact, there are tones of bias in the original post (probably from the Inq article).
Considering they have announced they are getting out of the chip set market, this would seem to be a bad business decision. If they were going to start making their own processors, they should also be making their own chip sets. This would allow them to market "pure nVidia powered" devices. It would allow them to optimize the product lines to work with each other.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Actually Intel has one big reason to wish for as many x86 vendors as possible : in case of a collapse of AMD, it would take as many other competitors as possible to keep Intel out of trouble from the anti-trust authorities.
Look guys, here's the facts: Nvidia will be releasing a chip. It won't be x86, though, it will be ARM based (with an fpu and vector unit), running around 1GHZ or more. A couple months ago, ARM Holdings announced a major license agreement (but didn't provide any other specifics). There was a lot of speculation that it was Apple. It's Nvidia.
My source didn't tell me if it's going to be targetted at smart phones, internet tablet pcs, etc.
There is no legal problem if they reverse enginneer it and don't copy the socket design. There is not a single legal barrier to making a processor that can decode x86 instructions.
Any attempt to enter the market without a license would bring down Intel legal on them like flying monkeys blackening the sky. It would get ugly. Really ugly.
Particularly when the DOJ gets involved investigating Intel and AMD for antitrust collusion.
NVidia has an x86 processor. http://www.nvidia.com/page/uli_m6117c.html
Unless they can produce it at 45 nm or less, I don't see how they could compete with Intel, right now AMD is not able to do this so Intel has this technology to themselves for the x86 processors. If they could produce something, as others has mentioned, Intel has to be very careful about not hindering rivals since they are in such a dominant position the market.
NVidia hired a guy who was SGI's Chief Engineer last November. He's also done some other very interesting things.
I've worked with him directly in the past (as well as indirectly at SGI), and he is one of the smartest people I know.
If NVidia management lets him be useful, then I think we'll see some interesting things coming out of NVidia. It beats me what their management is like though.
This is really disappointing, because I'm rooting for AMD and their graphics efforts. And because NVidia is well known for their binary blob approach.
How can someone own rights on an ISA? Its like saying your own the rights to Esperanto and you going to demand licence fees from everyone who uses it. Languages, conventions, communications protocols etc are not copyrightable and patentable for good reason, only particular works made with them or implementations of them are. An ISA is basically a language or a protocol and the legal consensus is these are not copyrightable, and probably not patentable. We have so many independant implementations of languages and APIs already that are proof of this. In fact very little would work and progress on computer technology would have been stalled if such barriers had existed. From what I can see Nvidia does not have a restriction against an independant implementation of an ISA, and if there is any such restriction, its time it is legally challenged.
AMD is still saying Q4 for 45nm. I sure hope so.
If NVIDIA do anything it will be releasing an update of their Tegra application processor, or showing off the first generation of devices that will be using it.
As the original article even says, NVIDIA don't have a license for creating an x86 compatible CPU. Maybe they are making a non-backwards compatible x86-64 CPU instead! Ha! But why ... VIA have been doing it for years and can't compete. Maybe this is NVIDIA showing off a chipset solution for VIA's Nano, that's more feasible.
Okay so did transmeta and Via have licences?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Depends on what they want it to do.
nVidia doesn't make anything. They contract out to TSMC, Chartered, etc.
If nVidia has a black-box version of the x86, licensing is irrelevant and Intel can do nothing about it. Montalvo Systems is doing a black-box x86, and doing it well enough that Sun bailed them out when they were running out of money in April.
AMD's problem is AMD got its x86 know-how from Intel's own documentation, so AMD is Intel's bitch forever, or until AMD runs itself into the ground, which at this point is rapidly approaching.
I will have to agree with Linus on this one
Cyrix originally didn't license anything. They reverse engineered 386/486 designs. Intel sued them over it and mostly lost. The settlement allowed Cyrix to continue producing the designs, provided they were made in Intel licensed factories. Later, Cyrix nailed Intel infringing on some of their patents, and it was settled by allowing each to use the others patents.
If Nvidia tries to produce their own CPU, I would guess they'd be sued, but it would probably end in a pro-nvidia settlement. I suspect Nvidia holds some patents they can dangle over Intel's head.
Anyways, all of the speculation is meaningless, if Nvidia is actually doing this they've got the legal parts taken care of.
Intel has been making forays into the graphics-chip business, so it's entirely possible that they've stepped on an nVidia patent or two. It's nearly impossible to produce anything without stepping on patents, after all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I would like to see them put an x86 in the chipset that could work as a High Performance RAID controller if you have a CPU installed. If there is no CPU detected then make the x86 in the Chipset function as the Primary CPU. Make the performance equivalent to a VIA C3 CPU or maybe less. Make it like a Pentium 3 500~1000 Mhz processor.
That way they could sell their motherboards/chipsets as both consumer end devices and users of embedded systems could use the same chipset/cpu without having to buy an additional CPU for their kiosks/terminals/industrial automation.
I would love to be able to boot without a CPU if I needed to flash BIOS, test hardware etc....
Since the Chipsets these days on some motherboards already work as a sound card/bus controller/network card/video card/RAID controller/USB controller/SATA Controller/IO Controller/Memory Controller. Why not add a rudimentary CPU while we are at it.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
It's been said enough times before that this article is probably bullshit, but it would certainly be nice to see what nVidia could pull off if they got into the mainstream processor market.
I mean, when AMD bought out ATI, some people specualted that the combined might of a graphics chip expert and a general processor expert could produce something really special, but both nVidia and Intel still took them to town (albeit on two different fronts) and the rumour mill seems to indicate that AMD's fusion wont be all that special. Basically what I'm trying to say is that if nVidia can put up a hell of a good fight in one area, they should be able to apply that same fight to another and maybe even give Intel a run for their money.
Hell, they might even be able to combine their general processor design with some built-in CUDA-powered goodness for specialised purposes. Someone above mentioned a software layer to interpret x86 calls, but why not also do the same for MMX, SSE et all? Hell, I'm sure if nVidia put enough effort in, they'd only need to be able to design a basic x86 chip and find a way to pan off the real processing to the on-board "graphics" chip. Could even evolve into the x86 successor we've all been waiting for.
But, alas, it's all a big pipe dream and we'll be stuck with the bloody thing for ever.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
What are the odds of nVidia finding some patent violation in Intel's or AMD/ATI's graphics chips? Would nVidia be able to play the Mutually Assured Destruction card?
I can see this scenario as playing out.
Spooky, Mulder. Just spooky.
See for yourself http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/19/nvidia-has-x86-cpu-in-the-works/
This is fucking absurd. Just imagine if the law had no clearance to work in Science or technology. Think about how much more advanced the world would be if people could freely build on existing technology without fear of things like this.
What a backwards-ass world we live in, where innovation is stifled by greed. It's sad.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Seems easy to bypass the X86 issue. Create a full CPU using the X86 instruction set. Remove anything and everything related to 286 protected mode (keep "real" and 386 "protected" modes). Optionally, remove ring 1 & 2 from 386 protected mode, but keep the register format the same (windows and unix only use ring 0 and ring 3). Then, add a new CPU instruction or two that would really boost the performance of Nvidia's graphics drivers, which Nvidia can autodetect and use in their shipping drivers (just like most graphics drivers used to detect SSE and the like). Naturally, no one else would use these instructions, but Nvidia could be a good citizen and document them.
The resulting chip wouldn't be X86, because all X86 code does not run. The result would be a new chip that isn't backwards compatible. Let Intel bark and moan all day long in their marketing that the chip isn't X86. All Nvidia has to do is make sure it runs Windows just fine without a new SKU from Microsoft (is it Intel's fault that MS doesn't use 286 protected mode? Is it Intel's fault that MS doesn't use ring 1 or ring 2?).
There would still be a lawsuit, and it would be *wise* to ensure that your legal team is well funded. But it seems most legal arguments are letter of the law these days, and the subset and extended X86 is definitely not X86 (you can produce code that works on X86, but would fail on this, you can produce code that works on this but fails on X86).
This would be a ballsy move for Nvidia, but seems right up their alley.
I assume Nvidia has some juicy tech they could cross-license to Intel and AMD in return for the rights to make their own x86.
But who will build it? Last time I checked Nvidia didn't own a fab plant. All their stuff is built by TSMC, a very respectable GPU fab but still a generation behind Intel in process technology. Unless Nvidia has some secret fab project going for the last ten years, they certainly don't have "guns targeted directly" at Intel or AMD.
Now if you told me they were going to compete with VIA in the ultra-low-power SOC market, that might be interesting. Still, I imagine Nvidia has better things to do than throw resources at such a low-margin business.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Why not combine Intel/Nvidia?
Ave Molech Setting
Unless someone with deep pockets thought they might have a case with illegal cartel price fixing as the basis. If AMD and Intel can dominate the market by exclusively licensing to each other but not to other parties, that would start to inch pretty close to market price fixing and collusion.
Not saying this is what is going on, but it might be. If they had approached them and tried to license and got told a flat no, at any price, they would have at least a good enough case to bring suit then.
OK, I'm officially boggled. It just seemed to me like a logical way for nVidia, with their experience in parallel processing, to do it. I didn't expect the universe to take me seriously.
OK, combining this bit of free association and the followup noting that nVidia licensed Transmeta's tech... how about an embedded processor with an nVidia GPU implementing x86 using JIT translation and CUDA for acceleration?
This got me to thinking - but I am no expert on this - so here's a question for those who know:
Given legal and licensing issues, it makes sense to work around this issue with a RISC / VLIW core (and NVidia has already mastered this) with a JIT or x86 bytecode interpreter at the front end. The pipeline grows by a cycle or two or six or eight, but throughput after the first nanosecond is the same . . . or is it?
Could this be the marriage that ends the x86 vs RISC war? Like a Windows VM riding on top of Linux, is this a way to maintain legacy compatibility and programming efficiency with increased horsepower? Assuming the same fabrication scale and technology, the same semiconductor chemistry and fabrication, all other things being equal, I can imagine that a RISC/VLIW processor could be made to outperform an x86 core by lightyears. Complex highly parallel code could be executed with fewer transistors per core, more cores per chip (or smaller chips), decreased energy and heat, increased clock speeds, etc. I can even foresee where the pre-process interpreter could be swapped in or out (on the die) to make the multi-core, multi-pipeline RISC processor compatible with any other existing processor or code base. If NVidia's core is itself proprietary and protected, and if the hybrid chip really looks like an x86 to the code base out there, but runs really really fast and cool and efficient, this could put NVidia on the throne of processor sales in decades to come.
Whether any of these rumors are true or not, whether any of this happens or not, am I right in thinking that an interpreted front end on a good RISC processor would ultimately be faster and more efficient?
Say it with me: preceded
Not proceeded!
Nvidia isn't making a new CPU necessarily. They are making one of those All-in-One PCs like what ASUS are making with the EEE PC and the EEE Box.
For a long time, Nvidia has been making graphics cards with huge heat sinks, fans, boards and power supply connectors. Some of the cards require as much power as the rest of the desktop computer. Basically, they've been accustomizing their customers that all of their future products will be built in a similar way. They've also gained invaluable cooling experience. I think the next logical step is to take all this and make a computer.
Sure, NVidia don't have x86 patent leverage, but they have GPU patent leverage. What with the Intel's GPUs (current and futuer) and AMD's purchase of ATi, they most certainly have patent leverage. Is it enough? I would guess that it is.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Dare I suggest, that Nvidia is making a game console. This would seem to make sense based on the patent issue. The game consoles don't need to be x86 compatible. The PS3 certainly isn't. Or, at the least might not need SSE2, SSE3, compatible chipset, socket, etc. I seem to recall on the "Xbox 1" project, Nvidia had serious problems with MS trying to undercut their margins and asking for huge orders on unrealistic deadlines. Nvidia would basically corner the market until AMD got into the market as well. It might be the only way the companies would survive Intel making better GPUs. Sony and MS are both relying on the GPU makers for the graphics chips.
As well, Nvida has the expertise in writing drivers for their own stuff, has the general grpahics programming language in play. They could potentially program/make everything from the ground up.
If they aren't hire me as a marketing, consultant or PM please! And thankyou! ;)
(my other post was intended as sarcastic, but I had this thought while writing it).
Could somebody enlighten me on why I need a license from Intel if I want to create an x86-compatible processor with my own design? I've always thought that you could only patent a particular implementation of an instruction, but not the instruction itself. Am I wrong? If I am, then isn't it a serious flaw in the patent system?
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Nvidia gotta watch out for Intergraph :)
http://www.intergraph.com/about_us/ip/cases.asp?caseid=97-N-3023-NE#case
or
http://www.dvhardware.net/article2539.html
Both Intel and AMD offer integrated graphics now. I would assume they may license NVIDIA patents as well. I'm sure something could be used as leverage from NVIDIA. I doubt they would embark on something as expensive as manufacturing a new processor without asking their lawyers about possible legal ramifications.
It might actually be good. NVIDIA has more experience at programming multiple cores. I'm going to go start brushing up on my GPGPU assembly now...
The time is long past folks. X86 is hampering progress and all because of some stupid corporate protection racket. I don't care how well it's selling or that even Apple moved to it, it's still a bloated piece of shit. We need processors that are optimized for compute speed AND low power consumption. We need Cpus that don't use any power at all unless there is an active operation being performed. We need cpus that basically mimic water systems. If there is no activity, the water doesn't flow at all. Zero power use. The tubes are still. If we can just make sure that the cpus are basically a series of tubes to carry data, we'd have superfast computers with very very low power utilization. Kill off Intel and amd NOW!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
That's some big news!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
How is it that AMD is able to release x86 chips, but nVidia can't without a license from Intel? Why would nVidia need AMD to be gracious?
The chip business is a mine field of patents. You really can't build much of anything without stepping on someone else's patent. AMD has been the processor business long enough that, should Intel file suit for patent infringement, AMD could fire right back. Sort of a commercial form of Mutualy Assured Destruction. As a result, the two companies have broad cross licensing agreements in place so they don't waste their money of futile patent fights. AMD also has specific court case history dating from 80's giving it special rights in building Intel compatible processors.
In the 90's, Cyrix and Nexgen tried to build x86 processors. They ultimately folded into National Semiconductor and AMD, respectively, because, without the protection provided by the larger firms broad cross-licensing agreements, the startup couldn't build anything.
Nvidia is a fair bit larger and more established then Cyrix or Nexgen. They might have a big enough patent portfolio to keep Intel and it's lawyer's honest. Iffy, though.
AMD's problem is AMD got its x86 know-how from Intel's own documentation, so AMD is Intel's bitch forever,
That was true until, you know, more than a decade ago. Then AMD bought a little company called NexGen, which had developed its own black-box x86, and put the NexGen team to work developing its further x86 processors. Every AMD x86 processor from the K6 on has been a descendant of the NexGen "RISC86" line, not the old based-on-Intel line (the K5 and earlier).
One hundred million dollars would not even cover the P4 design team's salary for 1 year. Intel's R&D costs were about 2.5 billion in 1998 and 6 billion in 2007. AMD's was almost 2 billion in 2007. The bar in this field is very high.
Is not that a simple solution of licensing problem?
They have a lot common together already... And IMO, Intel will have to renew agreement with VIA anyway.
I give my 4 left nipples to see this. The more competition the better.
They'll put out rumblings we'll do our own x86 chip which they can't do it without the blessing of Intel/AMD. And since they don't have the capital($ or fabs) to do it themselves to either actually produce or litigate they'll push for a buyout/merger.
here's all of the unlicensed x86 compatibles and their descendants
All your examples were licensed.
Cyrix got around the license by having its chips manufactured by companies that held cross licensing agreements. Intel and Cyrix were in a patent dispute for years. It ended with a settlement; Intel agreed Cyrix had a right to sell x86 compatible CPUs. Cyrix then sued Intel for patent infringement and the case was settled with a cross license agreement.
Centaur (WinChip) was a fabless subsidiary of IDT (which has a cross license agreement with Intel) and the chips were manufactured by IDT.
NEC has a cross license agreement with Intel.
IBM has a cross license agreement with Intel.
NexGen was fabless, having its chips produced by IBM. Like Cyrix, they depended on the licensed manufacturer.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Mod parent up ! This a very insightful comment.
NVidia is a fabless company, while Intel has spent millions in fab R&D, which has allowed them to be the first in developing a process based high-K dielectrics. Can a fabless company compete on the CPU market ? A lot of operations on CPUs are not massively serialisable like on GPUs, but are instead sequential in nature. While the core of a GTX 280 runs at 600 or so Mhz, desktop CPUs have a clock speed going higher than 3 GHz. And for this, you need small transistor sizes...
The Silicon valley chess game is always an interesting one to watch. Pretty much everyone agrees nVidia must make some strategic move in order to survive in the market. Discreet GPU cards and mobo chipsets aren't enough to drive the company in the long haul with Intel and AMD both trying to integrate good performing GPUs into the x86 CPU.
AMD made a strategic financial blunder acquiring ATI. nVidia is likely not working on their own x86 design, but watching, anticipating, the continued downward financial spiral of AMD, waiting for the right moment for a hostile takeover. That, IMO, is the only real likely way that nVidia will break into the x86 CPU business.
They have gfx & chipset already... How about a performance based minimal OS (email,browser,mediaplayer) resulting in a streamlined standardized realtime graphics powerhouse. Kind of a new school SGI.
Seriously, make a really bitchin' system. Some monster multi-core hi speed interfaced to a powerful GPU or 2, tons of cache, and a big giant chunk of ram. Make one that is awesome, and then make 80 billion more of them. They obviously have tons of production capability. Don't make it x86 at all, Make it a Field-programmable gate array, with so many CPU and GPU cores that it can perform like a multi-core x64 x86 chip. Do that and release a machine with a custom built Ubuntu derivative, complete with Pidgin, VLC, Open Office, Virtualbox, Iceweasel, Rhythmbox, Brasero, Gimp, and Milkdrop. The FPS could be insane. Put that massive chip in an iphone form factor, with a USB 3.0 out that connects to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and utilizes wifi VOIP and Speex and H.264 for real time video chat. Sell it for $100 with all FOSS software, and the upgrade option to buy an XP license to run as a VDI. Meanwhile you could include an improved ReactOS VDI for free out of the box, including all the most popular FOSS Windows apps and games. Work on customizing the hardware for improved Wine performance. Take down Apple and Tom Tom and Microsoft and Intel and ATI/AMD all at once.
Give the device ad hoc p2p wifi capabilities, and remove ISPs out of the equation while you're at it (at least for short hops). Put Zsnes on there out of the box, with touch screen buttons, or an option for a real honest USB gamepad, or even wiimote. Sell a docking station with surround sound speakers and an LCD projector.
We should be farther along than we are right now. Really where are the technical or practical difficulties in eliminating all these Cyber-monopolies with technology that frees us and is cheap, abundant, and open source?
Why doesn't Canonical or some other corporations step up to the plate and deliver us?
And while they're at it, why don't they LOSE THE BROWN:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/12326/
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I'm not entirely sure if I remember the details correctly, but I'll try to go on memory since researching it should be left to someone else.
Intel licensed the 8086 processor (and 80286 if I recall correctly) to AMD per demand of IBM. Speculatively, I believe that Intel has always considered having a second x86 CPU source as a good thing. It keeps the monopoly monkeys off their backs.
When 386 came around, AMD stayed pretty quiet. But, as you would see from NEC who produced x86 processors with 286 functions (like pusha and popa) Intel started closing up their market. x86 already had established such a strong foothold that Intel became territorial and actually did attempt to monopolize the market by not granting 80386 licenses to anyone else.
AMD responded with the 386dx-40, which for the most part was the start of the megahertz war. Cyrix (spelling), Evergreen and a few others quickly jumped on board and all started releasing 386 clones at an incredible rate.
So far as I know, at this point, NECs response was the v40 which sold primarily in the embedded and Japanese markets.
The 486 generation was a terrible era for system builders. The 486 was still using a very simplistic front side bus and didn't make use of clock multipliers. Motherboards were stills shipping with socketed crystals so that you would modify the system speed by putting in a different crystal. Since there were now so many chipsets to choose from (there must have been 15 or more brands competing) and the chipset manufacturers weren't producing stable reference implementations, motherboards came in only two quality grades... bad and worse.
Now came the absolute worst part. VESA local bus. VESA local bus was pretty much the same thing as ISA in that it connected a periperal board directly to the processor's I/O and memory busses without any logic inbetween. This was a response to the extremely overpriced and overcomplicated EISA bus and the fact that ISA was only 16Mhz x 16-bits. Since the "standard" only allowed for 33Mhz busses, most board manufacters made boards that ran at 33Mhz... maybe 33.1 but certainly not 40 or 50Mhz. So since nearly all chips coming from places other than Intel used the faster bus rates, system stability was getting to be worse than shit.
This era nearly destroyed the x86 world since the concept of name brand motherboards and video cards was only for rich people. Micronics and DFI (the only players at the time) charged $350 for their motherboards while everyone else was asking about $100-$120. I can assure you, having worked in a computer store at the time, the quality difference was worth every penny. But back then, $200 was considered a lot of money for a hobbiest to lay out. The price difference for reliable name brand memory (only Kingston existed back then) was more than double that.
Intel began sueing everyone over the x86 license. In fact, I even liked the idea since nearly half the machines I was shipping out with 40Mhz busses were coming back over and over again with serious failures. The store I worked for tried a niche market which was "reliable clones" where we tried real hard to only use parts that were quality. After losing our asses over it since noone wanted to pay $2000 for a machine when the other stores only charged $900, we dumped that business... and it didn't matter, the 40Mhz FSB motherboard were still coming back broken all the time.
Intels choice to button up the market was ideal since in a way it was non only protecting its own assets and IP, but also trying to take the crappy clone chip makers off the market. And most of them did fall off the market. Many consolidated, many disolved. But in the end it left us with Cyrix and AMD. I think I remember Cyrix being purchased by VIA or someone else.
What's important about this consolidation is that even though Intel squashed a ton of companies, the companies that remained were the companies who had managed to gain a good enough reputation duing the x86 war to make enough money to not only su
So on this thread I read that Nvidia and VIA recently announced a technical partnership and that VIA is getting out of chipsets.
Nvidia makes chipsets but not CPUs, VIA makes CPUs, mobos, not chipsets and only lowend? GPUs. Sounds like a very compatible mix, and mirroring AMD/ATI ?
s/proceeded/preceeded/g
At least make some damn effort - I'm seeing more of this type of errors than is acceptable. Also, it is not for all instensive purposes.
If you're going to act profound, at least get your fucking language right.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
My guess is that Nvidia would be much more likely to release a non-x86 processor than an x86 one.
Maybe an ARM if they want to get into the mobile devices market, or a PPC-based part for future game consoles ?
The x86 article on Wikipedia states that the 8086 with x86 instruction set was created in 1978. I asusme that the patents are from that year too.
Don't you see any coincidence in the 30 years period to now? Is it not that Intel's patents (if any)on the x86 instructions and design are now expiring and that the x86 is now becoming public domain?
I find it quite fortunate that NVidia is trying to launch something precisely in the 30th year since creation.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
I seriously doubt they would try to enter the x86 market. Perhaps it's just this that people are mistaking it for. That's frankly a bigger market than anything x86 based.
Interesting idea... Using a generic CPU as "chipset" will turn the motherboard more flexible with a bigger BIOS (update the BIOS and the motherboard gain new functions).
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
nVidia is in a good position to make a high-risk move. Their current GPU's aren't performing excellently, and their failure rates are high. If AMD keeps giving them trouble they'll have to reach out to make more money. Both Intel and AMD make their own chipsets now, so nvidia won't make a big profit in that department either.
I don't think this is a case of nvidia wanting to build x86 chips, but needing a new cash flow.
Make it a Field-programmable gate array,
You don't mean an FPGA - it's a programmable part and too big and expensive. You can do your prototyping in FPGA before you design the production part, though. :)
you had me at #!
Fix you fab process first before going into x86, nVidia. Nobody is going to want to buy broken x86 silicon that has a life expectancy of about one year of full use.
Here be signatures
NV is basically locked out unless Intel and AMD both decide to be magnanimous, and we would not recommend holding your breath waiting for this to happen
That deserves kudos for the american patent system: granting jet another time fair competition and technical advancements in the field of computing...
Imaginary property is a really bad thing.
Nvidia is readying an X86 chip that can do graphics and is hosted on the graphcis board thereby letting the OS use both the main X86 cpu and the graphics card's x86 cpu for general purpose processing. The net result is a dual head x86 machine for just about every new desktop.
This is all speculation but it makes sense since microsoft at one time was/is considering providing a general purpose way to run normal processes on the graphics processor (in the next release after windows vista).
No, it's still true. AMD combined their x86 with NexGen's and kept their reliance on Intel.
Plus, AMD and Intel have a continuing technology-sharing agreement. It also keeps AMD from being able to sell its CPU business or even to stop making CPUs, either of which would end AMD's or the buyer's right to use Intel IP but would grant Intel full, irrevocable rights to use the AMD IP it now uses.
AMD might be able to sell the NexGen IP, but by now that's a few % of the value in any x86-compatible CPU.
AMD is pretty much tanked anyway. It's selling off bits and pieces to keep the lights on (its loans are called if its cash drops below some huge number, so even though they have over a billion dollars in the bank they are acting like they're nearly broke). But by the time it's done it will have to realize it can't ever be profitable at the CPU business. It's too far behind in both circuit and technology to compete at a profit in mainstream or high-end, and Intel isn't leaving it the low-end markets any more. AMD doesn't even have a chip to play in Atom's space. They're done for.