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Nvidia Is Trying To Make an x86 Chip
Slatterz writes with a story from PC Authority which says that "Word has reached us that Nvidia is definitely
working on an x86 chip and the firm is heavily recruiting x86 engineers all over Silicon Valley. The history behind this can be summarised by saying they bought an x86 team, and don't have a licence to make the parts. Given that the firm burned about every bridge imaginable with the two companies who can give them licences, Nvidia has about a zero chance of getting one."
What does that mean, "they don't have a licence to make the parts"? Are they not designing it from the ground up? Are chips typically made up of a bunch of simpler elements, designed by a third party?
Maybe they just want to run Quake 3 raytracing at 5fps. I mean who wouldnt?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Nvidia are going to challenge the concept of licensing an instruction set, and they know they are going to win.
That will be a great day for all the technology industry and herald a massive price crash in processor power.
how does pcauthority.com.au get away with re-posting others articles without even linking back to the original source (yes, I know that they credit theinquirer.net at the top, however it just links to all articles stolen from theinquirer.net).
What about Via?
I can think of a few reasons why nVidia might want a bunch of x86 engineers on-board, and they're not all "to design an x86 chip". nVidia have been pushing the GPGPU model for a while so having people around who know CPU architecture would be very useful, especially if they're looking at ways to emulate x86 assembler on their GPU architecture (which, for a few apps, would be an awesome feature).
The article is full of assumptions and conjecture. And it comes across as incredibly bitter toward nVidia. Did they turn the author down for a job or something?
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Why does a firm wishing to enter the x86 market need to buy licenses
They're probably alluding to possible patents held. Of course, NVidia has them in the graphics part and could leverage that anyway. Just another reason why patents need to be scrapped and replaced with a non-exclusive system of financial incentive, if we need one at all.
however did AMD come to own any
Ancient history. AMD got into the x86 market in the 80's when the USG required multiple sources for many components, so Intel was more or less forced to let them in if they wanted USG business. Once they were established they've worked on improvements themselves which they license to Intel, etc.
Shame about that, at least try and find some additional information and link to the original article. I didn't know that the INQ has become a news agency of sorts. They certainly don't have the credentials for that. And the author of this article even less.
Then again, we can discuss the idea that nVidia is apparently (no proof whatsoever of the hirings) going for x86 without having the licenses to do so. As I understood, AMD and Intel (and VIA) let each other use patents and designs for x86, so I assume this is about letting nVidia in or not on that scheme.
Personally I'm wondering why nVidia and VIA don't fuse. One just has created a neat little x86 CPU and low power parts the other has neat GPU's. And I heard that VIA is going out of the chipset business anyways.
See, I've started up the discussion for you. If you don't like it you can order up another if you don't think it's any good.
PC Authority ripped off this story, word for word, from The Inquirer. The author at The Inquirer, Charlie Demerjian, ought to sue their pants off for copyright infringement.
The PC Authority site got slashdotted, but this sounds terribly like Charlie Demerijan's article from 2 days ago.
And while Charlie's articles are terribly fun to read, they don't quite qualify as news. Call them rants, speculation, whatever you wish, but not news. At least unless they get picked up blindly by other publications...
Intel and AMD has been using hardware x86-emulators running on top of specialized instruction sets since Pentium Pro and Athlon. The last native x86-chip in production was the AMD Geode, and that one is dead now.
But GPU and CPU is still very different things. Performance on CPUs is very dependent on branch, and random-memory access performance. GPU's don't have real-branches and only reads memory linearly. NVidia is going to need a completely new architecture, and can only reuse some of the algorithmic implementations (fast float-point operations, etc.)
Perhaps they could be making GPGPU that with a translation layer for x86 instructions, like the Transmeta Crusoe did in VLIW, or maybe they are enhancing a Via Nano CPU design with on die GPU (rather like they did with the Tergra ARM11 chip). Either way this won't be a desktop CPU, and it won't be serious competition for Intel, but could be targeted at the growing netbook market.
Intel could step in and try to block them, but they have lost against Via and Transmeta in the past, and they would also put themselves in a difficult situation, since they are being watched in the US, EU and Asia for antitrust violations. This would look quite bad for them.
... sortof. NVIDIA has a 386(!) SoC from the acquisition of ULI.
I'm skeptical about a new entrant like NVIDIA gaining any traction in the x86 market, they would have better luck pushing out their ARM chips.
If you have the cash, intel doesnt need cash AMD does.
They may have the base architecture available, but not any of the fancy simd or 64-bit instruction sets.
First appearances (not necessarily patent dates):
MMX - 1997
3DNow! - 1998
SSE - 1999
SSE2 - 2001
AMD 64 - 2003
Intel 64 - 2004
SSE3 - 2004
SSE4 - 2006
Of course, most software doesn't use any of these extensions, but Intel and AMD can use this as a weapon in a possible FUD campaign.
Back in the day, many purchasers demanded that manufacturers of electronics had a secound source of components so you wouldn't get stuck with a product line you could no longer build. AMD was Intel's second source provider. This agreement went to court http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n1961_v39/ai_13734404 and the result was a forced agreement that meant AMD had access to Intel intel.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
C allows for things that just don't make sense on GPUs. Arbitrary branching, pointer aliasing, etc. are poisonous for GPU performance.
GPUs excel at tasks that map N input values to one output value, with a minimum amount of unpredictable branches. If a task fits in this well, it is likely being accelerated already, via CUDA, Stream, CTM. If it doesn't fit, forcing it on the GPU is a waste of time.
What you want to look at are things like C++ DSELs, which create expression templates out of compile-time defined language specifications. This way, you can have a "shader language" that is evaluated at compile-time, either to a "real" shading language, or to plain old C++ code for the CPU.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
I think we're at the point where x86 licensing is honestly kind of silly. For the sake of competition, I believe nVidia will find the right buttons to press and get at least enough breathing room to build parts.
Saying that x86 is a technology that allows Intel or AMD chips to run very powerful software is completely off-target. x86 is a vast software market, which chip makers continually convoluted their designs in order to have the ability to serve.
In other words, it's quite clear that x86 is not a technology anymore and has become more like a standard, which all companies should have some fair access to.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
Or are you implying that every office in the world has their own fab plant and I didn't know about it?
Yes. You didn't get yours? It should have arrived last month.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Ancient history. AMD got into the x86 market in the 80's when the USG required multiple sources for many components
You know, in hindsight, keeping up this policy would have been a vastly more effective way of reigning in Microsoft than that ineffectual antitrust suit.
Actually I was speaking on a much less technical, and more human level. My point was that something that we all use and that has become a backbone of our society has essentially become public domain by nature of its own success.
That's not how patents work. The McCoy automatic oiler saved milions of dollars in labor back in the age of steam locomotives. The fact that just about every locomotive had an oiler and that railroads were the backbone of our transportation system in the 19th century in no way affected McCoy's patent on it.
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