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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?
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.
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.
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.
Well, if it was wrong last week, it's probably still wrong.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
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.
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
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
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.
NVidia has an x86 processor. http://www.nvidia.com/page/uli_m6117c.html
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.
Okay so did transmeta and Via have licences?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
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...
Spooky, Mulder. Just spooky.
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.
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.
Intel (and everyone else) has been doing this, to an increasing degree, since the 486. It's one reason for the long long Pentium pipeline.
Transmeta made the JIT translator software. That turned out to be not such a good idea, with one core trying to execute translated code and translate new code at the same time. With multiple cores (and nVidia has a lot of experience with heavy parallelism like that) this could actually work well.
My comment here was idle speculation along these lines. But apparently nVidia has been speculating less idly: they've licensed the Transmeta technology.
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.
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.
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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.
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