Nvidia Mulls Cheap, Integrated x86 Chip

CWmike writes "Nvidia is considering developing an integrated chip based on the x86 architecture for use in devices such as netbooks and mobile Internet devices, said Michael Hara, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia during a speech that was webcast from the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference this week. Nvidia has already developed an integrated chip called Tegra, which combines an Arm processor, a GeForce graphics core and other components on a single chip. The chips are aimed at small devices such as smartphones and MIDs, and will start shipping in the second half of this year. 'Tegra, by any definition, is a complete computer-on-chip, and the requirements of that market are such that you have to be very low power and very small but highly efficient,' Hara said. 'Someday, it's going to make sense to take the same approach in the x86 market as well.'"

Comments

oh god, please no.

[girlintraining]

For those of us who dealt with intel's "integrated" graphic cards on laptops for the past several years now... on their behalf I just want to say PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SHINY AND SILICON, DON'T DO IT! Anything with the word "integrated" near it makes me want to cringe... it's a post traumatic stress response caused by watching a myriad of good video games shutter, blink, crash, and burn right in front of me. It's a black day indeed when Warcraft 3 can't run at full resolution on a laptop produced only a year ago.

Re:oh god, please no.

[cjb658]

It's being designed for netbooks, which aren't typically designed for gamers.

Fortunately, the one good thing that's come from Vista is that now almost all new computers come with decent graphics cards.

I hated looking for new laptops that were $800 and finding out they had integrated graphics, then being forced to pay for the "premium" product tier to get discrete graphics, which included a much more expensive processor and RAM.

With a desktop, you can just buy a $500 PC at Walmart and drop in a decent graphics card.

Re:oh god, please no.

[morgan_greywolf]

"Most people"? Please define what "most people" do. Have you seen how crappy Google Earth and Google Sketchup are on integrated Intel graphics?

Re:oh god, please no.

[White Flame]

Or you could get a 30" flat screen for your desktop, a nice audio system, and a comfortable chair and not have duplicate media setups.

For bonus points, put a couch behind your chair & move the chair out of the way when you have guests.

Re:x86?

[shutdown -p now]

x64 is a Microsoft marketing term. Please stop using it. The architecture is x86-64.

Pray tell, why not amd64 then - the way it was originally marketed by the inventor when it was released?

Last I checked, there's no definite established term for this, anyway, and x64 is the shortest while still being vendor-neutral. Even if Microsoft came up with it first (and are you sure they did, really?), so what? I don't understand how it is a "marketing term" for them, as they don't market it.

Re:x86?

[SEE]

Tell me, if they announced an intention to do a SPARC core, would you assume they meant a 32-bit version? How about POWER?

x86 is just as 64-bit as they are.

They should open the drivers first

[BESTouff]

Problem is that more and more netbooks are sold with linux, and NVIDIA drivers integration in any distro is less than stellar. Contrast that with Intel hardware where everything is well supported by all vendors.
Unless they open their drivers, this platform will be Windows-only so even their lower-end models will be hampered by the Windows Tax.
That won't go very far.