NVIDIA's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang just announced Project Denver - its first CPU architecture design ever, based on ARM's ISA. This is a custom design done by NVIDIA in conjunction with ARM and targeted at the high performance computing (HPC) market.
This is a huge announcement from NVIDIA, but not entirely unexpected. Prior to Project Denver NVIDIA licensed ARM IP but developed its own IP everywhere else for use in Tegra. Going forward, NVIDIA is turning into a full fledged SoC architecture company. This is a huge step in NVIDIA becoming a major player in the SoC evolution going forward.
Update: NVIDIA provided some more details on the announcement. Project Denver is targeted at everything from PCs to HPC/servers. This is completely a high end play going after the x86 stronghold. Project Denver ties in completely with Microsoft's announcement to bring Windows 8 to ARM next year.
NVIDIA also announced that it will be licensing ARM's Cortex A15 core, presumably for use in lower end devices (e.g. smartphones). I wouldn't be surprised if NVIDIA eventually moves to its own architecture based on ARM across the board.
47 Comments
via by LeftSide on Wednesday, January 05, 2011
I'm still surprised that nvidia hasn't tried to merge with Via. It would get them into the x86 space.
LeftSide
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X86 is pretty old and its hard competing against a monopoly. Just ask AMD.
x86 definitely has a future (the K8 Opteron really helped steer Intel away from IA32/64), but x86 is much closer to saturation. The MID market, however, is still wide open. We still see competition in architecture, OS, form factor, and use/application. The margins are pretty weak though. One high-end server chip brings big revenue, well more than what an entire MID sells for. Also, I'm just not sure bringing ARM up to a high-power environment will ever be worth it. x86 has simply soared well past what the average user needs, and now lesser architectures like ARM are finally becoming able to sufficiently run things like iPads. That's what will be so big for Zacate--it will make netbooks and bargain notebooks beyond sufficient for a large portion of the market. nVidia wouldn't have enough time to produce sufficient competition from buying Via. It would be 5 years or more before a useful product came from such a purchase. Think where AMD and Intel will be then.
NV was (supposed) to get VIA around the time AMD merged with ATI - 4 yrs ago ...
But they decided to go at it the hard, er, the nVidia way.
But they decided to go at it the hard, er, the nVidia way.
agreed! it would make sense back then... but not now. this is definetively a high stake NV is doing....
It looks like NVIDIA is trying to obsolete x86 entirely, here. A single large win, like Apple or Motorola, would be huge.
Apple could certainly migrate from high-end x86 processors to high-end ARM processors without too much trouble. They've done it twice before, from 68K to PPC, and from PPC to x86. If they really wanted to migrate to ARM with emulation supporting legacy software, they can do it. It'd be a big win for nVidia, but it would have zero impact whatsoever on the x86 market beyond the lost Apple sales. Windows users don't care what architecture OS X users are on, and Linux users don't care what architecture anybody (including themselves) are on.
Apple could do it easier than some, but it'd still be a big deal.
It'd be interesting to see someone like Dell/HP do a Windows 8 + Denver notebook.
It'd be interesting to see someone like Dell/HP do a Windows 8 + Denver notebook.
Apple has the resorces and the knowhow to make its cpu\soc by itserlfs. And apple does not need HPC cpu.
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@nadamany the UX32, not the thinner UX31, has a single SO-DIMM slot. Only qualified for up to 4GB, 8GB should work but not 100% yet
Just a little Jay-Z and SSD testing, maybe even building a new HTPC for the theater
ASUS' Zenbook Prime UX21A now in Bench: http://t.co/o8WRdDKX
@JonWorrel the UX21A, the review just posted: http://t.co/LN9GNdiY
@DrPizza @mcrommert @babgvant there's progress, just not along this one vector. that will come too.
@DrPizza @mcrommert @babgvant hangon now: 19x10 in an 11.6-inch form factor, much better CPU perf, much better wifi, USB 3, etc...
@DrPizza @mcrommert @babgvant wait seriously it is?!? is that why all of my machines are running so slow? :-P
@DrPizza @babgvant @mcrommert welcome to the world of appliance computing, just upgrade again next year when you need more memory
@babgvant @DrPizza @mcrommert I agree that I would like to see more, but 4GB with an SSD is definitely usable for most client workloads
Running a cTDP battery life test on the Zenbook Prime at 13W while I prepare the V4 1.4 on the SSD testbed
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