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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.'"
Nvidia develops a very basic x86 CPU thats tightly coupled to one of their embedded GPUs that doesn't implement any x86 technology that's still currently patent-protected. The basic x86 CPU acts as a shim for software that expects to talk to an x86 CPU and offloads as much as possible to the significantly more advanced GPU running the bulk of the load. The end result? An x86-compatible embedded system that vastly outperforms anything currently on the market that doesn't violate anyone's active x86 patents.
read:
"Nvidia NULLS Cheap, Integrated x86 Chip "
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
You aren't allowed to call them netbooks, didn't you get the subpoena?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
x64 is a Microsoft marketing term. Please stop using it. The architecture is x86-64.
My Intel 855GM handles xterms very well, recently they have become very wobbly slimey when I drag them around in Gnome, other than that everything is fine with my integrated chip.
Yes, because what I want to do is slot a PCIe card into my damn cell phone.
not only that but what exactly do you think your handheld/phone is going to do with more than 4 gig of ram per process?
Nothing as 640k is enough for any phone.
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.
Surely a better design is to produce a series of very small, highly specialized, very fast cores on a single piece of silicon, and then have a layer on top of that which makes it appear to be an x86, ARM or whatever.
One reason for having a bunch of specialist cores is that you don't have one core per task (GPU, CPU or whatever), but rather one core per operation type (which means you can eliminate redundancy).
Another reason is that having a bunch of mini cores should make the hardware per mini core much simpler, which should improve reliability and speed.
Finally, such an approach means that the base layers can be the same whether the top layer is x86, ARM, PPC, Sparc or a walrus. NVidia could be free to innovate the stuff that matters, without having to care what architecture was fashionable that week for the market NVidia happens to care about.
This is not their approach, from everything I'm seeing. They seem to be wanting to build tightly integrated system-on-a-chip cores, rather than having a generic SoaC and an emulation layer. I would have thought this harder to architect, slower to develop and more costly to verify, but NVidia aren't idiots. They'll have looked at the options and chosen the one they're following for business and/or technical reasons they have carefully studied.
If I was as bright as them, why is it that they have the big cash and I only get the 4 digit UID? Ergo, their reasoning is probably very sound and very rational, and if presented with my thoughts could very likely produce an excellent counter-argument to show why their option is logically superior and will produce better returns on their investments.
The question then changes as follows: What reasoning could they have come up with to design a SoaC unit the way they are? If it's the "best" option, although demonstrably not the only option, then what makes it the best, and what is it the best at?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A Beowu.... aww fuck it.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
They should just push ARM heavily. ARM is doing great right now. Companies like Texas Instruments are pushing the architecture heavily, and there's high demand.
Linux ARM support is blasting ahead, thanks to projects like the Beagleboard.
On top of that, a while ago Microsoft said they were developing an ARM version of Windows. Although we won't see it right away, in a couple years that'll open up even more options.
If they push ARM hardware heavily enough, software will follow. Heck, the software is already coming along, so they just have to market the hardware properly.
Most people won't know the difference between a linux MID and a windows MID. Both have "Email", "Instant Messenger", "Calendar", "Web Browser", etc., and if you need a new program you just download it... Nobody would even think of installing software off a CD, so most "Why won't this work?" scenarios won't even come up. It'll just look slightly different.
And once a couple game devs follow - or heck, a program like Google Earth - it won't be long before oodles of software is being ported, and the ARM-x86 barrier breaks down.
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.
Or external PCIe. I've been waiting for that. The PCIE standard has it specified, just nobody wants to make stuff for it. Think of it this way, you come home, you plug in a box (with its own PSU) into your laptop, and you can now game on your laptop with whatever cards you had put in that box. When you're done, unplug everything, switch your resolution/drivers if necessary, and go.
Um, wat? I have the same model you do (it's the santa rosa MBP with the 8600m GT yes?) and it has no problem running WC3 at full res and everything maxxed. Anything less and your computer probably has something wrong with it.
I can run WoW in dalaran (for those not familiar with the game, the busiest city) on a packed server or do a full 25 man raid with everything but view distance maxxed and view distance at around 1/3 of max and still average ~30+ FPS. If I go any higher on distance I need to lower most other settings, as I think thats when all the various armor/player/model/building/etc textures start causing the 256 mb of graphics ram to have to swap out and things start getting shitty. WC3 is much less graphically intense than that even if you've got two huge armies going at it.
Maybe an early sign of this: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377
I got that but Apple fixes it for free warranty or not since its Nvidia's manufacturing problem (my understanding is its the same problem (conceptually) as the RRoD only on your laptop).
Dude, external PCIe is available in laptop for years, it is called ExpressCard. And suprise, it's even used for external graphics: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vidock-expresscard-graphics,1933.html
:wq