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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.
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.