WE MANAGED to confirm that Nvidia has started to develop a CPU.
Charlie wrote about the interesting implications of Nvidia’s good fortune in acquiring some folk from Stexar, a company that was known for its X86 marchitectural expertise.
And now we hear that development is underway at Nvidia’s just-announced Portland, Oregon, Design Center, where chip folk are beaving away on 45 nanometre designs.
The project should bear fruit sometime in 2008, as Nvidia prepares plans to compete with Intel and AMD on the blended graphic and CPU concept.
This is what OEMs want in 2008. Sixty-five or 45 nanometre processes make this possible and AMD and Intel are going to do it, so Nvidia doesn’t have much choice.
It seems Nvidia might remain a feisty player in the years to come, unless someone fanatically swallows it.
More on the Intel/Nvidia merger rumors here.
It appears that Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon and has formed a CPU architecture team.
According to the NY Times today, Microsoft will start a Computer Architecture Group, headed up by a man who runs the Silicon Valley campus.
Sounds like a good idea for Nvidia, but personally I think they should buy Transmetta and see where that gets them with Intel. It would certainly be a big boost…..
Write this down – NVidia will be acquired by Samsung.
Samsung wants to be the dominant semiconductor player. NV memory (NAND) will not quite them there and they need to get into logic. This is the play.
It is highly unlikely Intel will buy Nvidia – they don’t need them and their market cap is way too high (it’s gotten even bigger since ATI-AMD merger).
Intel’s second largest concentration is also in the suburb’s of Portland. Interesting that Nvidia moved so close.
Nvidia buys VIA, and G.W. gets a brain.
With high end cards aren’t the gpu’s beginning to rival the cpu’s anyway?
the problem with the GPU is that it only takes the data from the CPU after its been rendered/decompiled,,,
‘With a CPU on the card it can do the work, and free up about 80% of processing, IF they encode the drivers on the card…
rctaylor – No. Not at all.
GPU’s are a specialized chip, CPU’s aren’t. Different jobs. GPUs are better at the special operations they are designed for, that’s it.
“It appears that Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon and has formed a CPU architecture team.”
So this means that M$ is going to develop a self rebooting cpu?
I say go for it. The more, the merrier. The Intel vs. AMD status quo is getting old. It’s time for some new blood.