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Nvidia Firmly Denies Plans To Build a CPU
Barence writes "A senior vice president of Nvidia has denied rumours that the company is planning an entry into the x86 CPU market. Speaking to PC Pro, Chris Malachowsky, another co-founder and senior vice president, was unequivocal. 'That's not our business,' he insisted. 'It's not our business to build a CPU. We're a visual computing company, and I think the reason we've survived the other 35 companies who were making graphics at the start is that we've stayed focused.' He also pointed out that such a move would expose the company to fierce competition. 'Are we likely to build a CPU and take out Intel?' he asked. 'I don't think so, given their thirty-year head start and billions and billions of dollars invested in it. I think staying focused is our best strategy.' He was also dismissive of the threat from Intel's Larrabee architecture, following Nvidia's chief architect calling it a 'GPU from 2006' at the weekend."
nVidia are building a CPU, a Cortex A9 derivative with a GPU on-die and a load of other nice features. The summary states that they're not building an x86 CPU, but this is not what the headline says.
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Is anyone actually surprised that the CEO is denying this? Even if the rumors were true, letting news out to market about it would give Intel time to prepare a response (and legal action).
I mentioned tinker-toys once in a post - now I'm modded down for life.
When hell freezes over, they could release a GPU where the instruction set is itself microprogrammable with open-source design, and then end users could decide whether they want to load the GPU's microcode with an x86 instruction set, a dsp set, or whatever.
Scroogle
Yeah, they've stayed focused on graphics chips, that's why there are so many motherboards with nVidia chip sets .. *sigh*
The only reasons that they may build a chip for x86 (64-bit or not) would be to either use it for a special application or as a proof of concept.
A GPU and a CPU are different, but it may be a way to test if a GPU architecture can be applied to a CPU with a classic instruction set. The next step is to sell the knowledge to the highest bidder.
To compete with Intel would just be futile.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If you're 30 years behind them in their market, and they're 2 years behind you in yours, maybe it's not wise to be "dismissive of the threat" ?
rather handy that this rumour gives nvidia, a GPU company, the chance to point out how futile it would be for them to try and enter the CPU market... then point over to intel, a CPU company, trying to make a GPU...
Microcode-upgrade are possible for CPU that have a huge big complex reprogrammable pipeline like the current top of the line CPUs, or CPU where the pipeline is handled in software (like the Transmeta chips).
GPU, on the other hand, have a very short and simplistic pipeline which is hard-fixed. They draw their tremendous performance, from the fact that this pipeline drives ultra-wide SIMD units which process a fuck-load of identical threads in parallel.
But there nothing much you could reprogramm currently. Most of the die is just huge cache, huge registry files, and a crazy amount of parallel floating point ADD/MUL blocks for the SIMD. The pipeline is completely lost amid the rest.
(Whereas on CPU, even if the cache dwarfs the other structure, there are quite complex logic blocks dedicated to instruction fetching and decoding).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Currently nVidia is partnering with VIA for small form factor x86 boxes. And they have made several presentation about a combination of (VIA's) x86-64 Issaiah and (their own) embed GeForce.
Touting that the platform would be the first small form factor able to sustain Vista in all DX10 and full Aero glory.
Maybe that is where some journalist got mixed and where all this "nVidia is preparing a x86 chip" rumor began ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Remove their heads from their collective rectum and correct the damn problems they have with their video cards and motherboard chipsets.
I've been a loyal nVidia customer since the good old days of the Diamond V550 TNT card through the 8800GTX but they have really hosed up lately.
My 780i board has major data coruption problems on the IDE channel and my laptop is one of the ones affected by their recall so I am not too pleased with their ability to execute lately...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I wouldn't mind seeing more players in the computer processor industry. The headlines really make it sound like it would be a bad thing. Maybe I'm getting the headlines wrong, but having Nvidia presenting new alternatives to a market almost exclusively owned by Intel and AMD would be interesting.
"A GPU from 2006" sounds a lot like famous last words.
I wonder if anyone at DEC made comments in a similar vein about Intel CPUs, when the Alpha was so far ahead of anything Intel was making? NVidia's architect should not underestimate Intel, if he does, he does it at his company's peril.
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Actually nvidia doesn't own any fabs, they contract out all their chips to TSMC, same as ati. Although now ati/amd are going to be making their fusion chips at TSMC, so they will definitely have the expertise to make x86 chips in the near future(TSMC will).
thisnukes4u.net
3DFx was the first company to publish Open Source 3D drivers for their 3D cards. nVidia sued them, then bought them at a discount, and shut down the operation. So, we had no Open Source 3D for another 5 years.
That's not "staying focused". It's being a predator.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Not just Intel and AMD. There was a time when you could use an Intel, Amd, Cyrix, IDT, or a Rise (and I'd bet even a couple more) CPU all in the same motherboard. Back then I didn't even DREAM of building a machine with an Intel chip - Cyrix and AMD were less than half the cost (close to 1/3rd the cost in some areas). And when those costs were in the hundreds of dollars for entry level stuff (rather than the $35 that you can get a budget CPU for now), it really made a difference.
Of course, that was when the clone chip makers were really just going mainstream. These days the price of all the chips has come down, and Intel is much more competitive. You can thank AMD for that. If not for them we'd all still be paying through the nose for Intel.
Nvidia seems to not be going the route of offering an x86 chip, but I hope to goodness that AMD pulls through their current bit of trouble or another contender takes the reigns, as the market will revert back to the old status if no one does.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
They are very good at doing research in making their chips very cheap to make and own the whole stack of production from start to finish. This is how they have managed to make it despite many many misteps along the way.
nVidia doesn't own the factories that they use to make their chips, they just design them and use factories like TSMC. nVidia would be stupid to compete with intel in the same space (x86 CPUs) until they own and can efficiently build chips like intel can.
AMD was the only ones doing it as they tried their best to own all their own fabs, however they are running in the red and are trying to sell some of them now. We'll see if they can pull it together but still they are one of the only other companies out there that actually tries to build the chips from start to finish.
Intel's latest graphics offering is going to fail, not because they don't have the hardware (actually their new larabee looks really fast). but because their graphics drivers have always stunk and there is little evidence to suggest that they will be able to make a leap forward in graphics driver quality that will make their solution better then AMD or nVidia. They have to write full DX9, DX10, and OpenGL drivers to really compete with nVidia, then they have to optimize all those drivers for all the popular games (cause nobody will re-write Doom, HL, UT, FarCry, etc.. just for this new graphics card).
It could happen, but will it?
I do hope that larabee turns out to be an awesome coprocessor for other tasks. We'l just have to see if people actually port their code to it.
I don't see an unequivocal denial in the quotes. Just an implied no, and then answering a question with a question. If I was defining products at Nvidia, I would propose an updated Via C7 (CPU+GPU) product anyway, not a simple standalone CPU.
"That's not our business. It's not our business to build a CPU. We're a visual computing company, and I think the reason we've survived the other 35 companies who were making graphics at the start is that we've stayed focused."
"Are we likely to build a CPU and take out Intel?"