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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."
it means that intel+amd have over 9000 patents on integral parts of an x86 cpu
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).
Except that Intel and AMD hold vital patents to the set of technologies that are part of the x86 architeture.
You realize patents only last 20 years, right? Some of those "vital" x86 components must have expired or be pretty close.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Sounds like pretty weak speculation.
You can't, at least officially, patent an aspect of the instruction set itself. In terms of more general patents over processes useful in producing the chips, there's no reason why NVidia couldn't have acquired equally 'vital' patents themselves. Plus Intel and AMD are both in the graphics business too - do they already have suficiently broad cross licensing agreements with NVidia? I don't know and I suspect you don't either.
The question in these situations often comes down to whether companies are really willing to go nuclear and risk having the courts reject a lot of the crap with which they would otherwise intimidate smaller companies. If NVidia are willing to call their bluff then there's every chance they'll succeed. Being seen to use patents to prop up a duopoly isn't necessarily anything that Intel wants to be seen doing anyway.
Maybe they cross license with each other.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
You think it's funny until you see my Wolfenstein 3D benchmarks.
What would happen if you pushed turbo on THAT thing?
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.
So why not just buy Via? They have the license to make x86, and more importantly they have low power CPUs that are ready to go, and with Netbooks and Notebooks taking a big chunk out of the market this would give them a BIG advantage in the market. If they were to buy Via they could join the Via Nano and the Ion GPU and have bad ass low power Netbooks and Notebooks ready to hit the market.
So can someone tell me what the point of doing it the hard way by starting from scratch is? Because IMHO it seems like a giant waste of resources when Via is ripe for the picking and the Nano CPU from what I have seen is a nice mix of low power with decent performance for Netbooks/Notebooks. Paired with the Ion GPU I think they would have a combo that would kick some serious ass in the Netbook and Notebook markets with little effort. Then later on if they desired they could always do a Fusion style joining of the CPU/GPU to get even better power to performance ratio. So why are they trying to reinvent the wheel?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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
Yeah, well the "It Stopped Being Funny The First Time It Was Used" meme stopped being funny the first time it was used.
No, the above post really overstates what goes on inside today's x86 chips.
It is true that Intel and AMD internally break up x86 into simpler "micro-ops" to simplify the internals of the chip. However, the specific micro-ops uses are tailored explicitly for x86 instructions, and many match up with x86 instructions one-to-one. The mapping really isn't that programmable, either. Most of the mapping is hard-coded and highly optimized. It would not be trivial to support another ISA such as PowerPC, even for just user-mode instructions. If you then consider all the privileged instructions, virtual memory, and virtualization stuff, you have a real mess. It would likely be easier to start from scratch rather than try to retrofit a current x86 to be anything other than an x86. Sure, you could reuse some of the arithmetic units and memory controllers perhaps, but the core would have to change pretty dramatically.
That said, Transmeta (RIP) did have technology that would likely make it easier to run non-x86 code on its processor, and the translation was done in software. But even its internal instructions were likely closely match to specifics of the x86 ISA.