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Nvidia Firmly Denies Plans To Build a CPU
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 27, 2008 09:39 AM
from the this-time-we-mean-it dept.
from the this-time-we-mean-it dept.
Barence writes "A senior vice president of Nvidia has denied rumours that the company is planning an entry into the x86 CPU market. Speaking to PC Pro, Chris Malachowsky, another co-founder and senior vice president, was unequivocal. 'That's not our business,' he insisted. 'It's not our business to build a CPU. We're a visual computing company, and I think the reason we've survived the other 35 companies who were making graphics at the start is that we've stayed focused.' He also pointed out that such a move would expose the company to fierce competition. 'Are we likely to build a CPU and take out Intel?' he asked. 'I don't think so, given their thirty-year head start and billions and billions of dollars invested in it. I think staying focused is our best strategy.' He was also dismissive of the threat from Intel's Larrabee architecture, following Nvidia's chief architect calling it a 'GPU from 2006' at the weekend."
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Technology: Nvidia Claims Intel's Larrabee Is "a GPU From 2006" 278 comments
Barence sends this excerpt from PC Pro:
"Nvidia has delivered a scathing criticism of Intel's Larrabee, dismissing the multi-core CPU/GPU as wishful thinking — while admitting it needs to catch up with AMD's current Radeon graphics cards. 'Intel is not a stupid company,' conceded John Mottram, chief architect for the company's GT200 core. 'They've put a lot of people behind this, so clearly they believe it's viable. But the products on our roadmap are competitive to this thing as they've painted it. And the reality is going to fall short of the optimistic way they've painted it. As [blogger and CPU architect] Peter Glaskowsky said, the "large" Larrabee in 2010 will have roughly the same performance as a 2006 GPU from Nvidia or ATI.' Speaking ahead of the opening of the annual NVISION expo on Monday, he also admitted Nvidia 'underestimated ATI with respect to their product.'"
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Inaccurate headline (Score:5, Informative)
x86 rumors origin ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently nVidia is partnering with VIA for small form factor x86 boxes. And they have made several presentation about a combination of (VIA's) x86-64 Issaiah and (their own) embed GeForce.
Touting that the platform would be the first small form factor able to sustain Vista in all DX10 and full Aero glory.
Maybe that is where some journalist got mixed and where all this "nVidia is preparing a x86 chip" rumor began ?
Parent
Re:x86 rumors origin ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that is where some journalist got mixed and where all this "nVidia is preparing a x86 chip" rumor began?
This is what happens when technical information is filtered through the brain of a salesperson, manager, or executive. It comes out completely mangled on the opposite side or, even worse, it morphs into something which while technically correct is NOT the information that the non-technical person thought they were conveying (i.e. they have unknowingly modified the requirements specification in a way that is logically consistent from a technical standpoint, but will result in the wrong product being built).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. It is a lot easier to go into the mobile space than X86.
Anyone Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is anyone actually surprised that the CEO is denying this? Even if the rumors were true, letting news out to market about it would give Intel time to prepare a response (and legal action).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if the rumors were true, letting news out to market about it would give Intel time to prepare a response (and legal action).
I don't get the legal action part. Is the x86 architecture patented by Intel? Even if it is, wouldn't the patent have expired by now? After all, its more than 30 years old. Do AMD, VIA etc. pay licensing fees to Intel for building processors using the x86 architecture? If so, why cant NVidia?
Re:Anyone Surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't get the legal action part. Is the x86 architecture patented by Intel? Even if it is, wouldn't the patent have expired by now? After all, its more than 30 years old. Do AMD, VIA etc. pay licensing fees to Intel for building processors using the x86 architecture? If so, why cant NVidia?
Yes. Various pieces of parts of the x86 architecture that have been developed within the last 20 years (noteably, stuff related to the IA32 architecture of the 386, 486 and Pentium and later lines) are all still under patent.
Patents filed before June 8, 1995 get the greater of 17 past the patent grant date or 20 years total, whichever is greater.
Parent
Re:Anyone Surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Is anyone actually surprised that the CEO is denying this? Even if the rumors were true, letting news out to market about it would give Intel time to prepare a response (and legal action).
The original story came from Charlie at The Inquirer. Charlie and NVidia hate each other.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The original story came from Charlie at The Inquirer. Charlie and NVidia hate each other.
Possibly related to Charlie's vast holdings of AMD stock...
Re:Anyone Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. As you say, he would have denied it even if NVidia WAS planning a CPU. What actually speaks volumes IMHO, is the vehemence with which he denied it. Any CEO who's cover-denying a market move is not going to close his own doors by stating that the company could never make it in that space. He would give far weaker reasons so that when the announcement comes the market will still react favorably to their new product.
In other words: stick a fork in it, because this bit of tabloid reporting is dead.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Because any CEO who immediately kills the market he's about to enter with his own statements is a fool.
If you want to get into the market of competing with Intel, you don't say that you could never make a CPU as good as Intel can.
Reprogrammable GPU? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Reprogrammable GPU? (Score:4, Funny)
And I want a microwave than can be customer bludgeoned into a bicycle. Where do you people get the idea that you can do hardware in software?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Would such a GPU be faster? It might be faster for some custom cases, but is it going to be faster at popular stuff than a GPU that's been optimized for popular stuff?
The speed nowadays is not so much because of the instruction set, it's the fancy stuff the instruction set _control_ e.g. FPU units, out of order execution, trace cache, branch prediction e
Re:Reprogrammable GPU? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said price is the most interesting issue? I'd definitely choose the versatility of an open-source microcode GPU that could be dynamically reprogrammed to have any of several different instruction sets.
As long as they're Turing complete, any of them can in principle do anything. Yes, then at least to me it comes down to price - if it's cheaper to have a car, boat and plane than making a tranasformer that can do all three at it, suck at all three and cost a bajillion more I'll go for traditional chips, thank you very much.
Parent
Re:Reprogrammable GPU? (Score:4, Insightful)
Transmeta tried that. It was slow, expensive, and inconsistent. Also, nobody ever used any other 'instruction sets' besides x86, mostly because that's the most-common-denominator in the computing world.
It sucks, it's not the -best- way to do it, but it's the way the market seems to favor. Just ask Apple, Sun, DEC, and HP.
Parent
Difficult (Score:4, Informative)
Microcode-upgrade are possible for CPU that have a huge big complex reprogrammable pipeline like the current top of the line CPUs, or CPU where the pipeline is handled in software (like the Transmeta chips).
GPU, on the other hand, have a very short and simplistic pipeline which is hard-fixed. They draw their tremendous performance, from the fact that this pipeline drives ultra-wide SIMD units which process a fuck-load of identical threads in parallel.
But there nothing much you could reprogramm currently. Most of the die is just huge cache, huge registry files, and a crazy amount of parallel floating point ADD/MUL blocks for the SIMD. The pipeline is completely lost amid the rest.
(Whereas on CPU, even if the cache dwarfs the other structure, there are quite complex logic blocks dedicated to instruction fetching and decoding).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Difficult (Score:4, Informative)
Let me guess: you've never read anything about microprocessor engineering, have you ?
What you describe is what every non-engineer dreams of. You want a chip that any idiot can reprogram, without knowing the "less simple" ways of FPGAs. That's kind of like saying you want a car that gets 200 miles to the gallon, can park in a shoebox and carry 20 kids in the back seat - oh, and it drives itself automagically so your kids can take themselves to soccer practice without bugging you.
The reason why no one ever builds such monstrosities is because there is simply no point to it, when you can have purpose-built chips designed and fabbed for a fraction of the cost. People don't stop breathing just because their device needs 2 distinct chips instead of one jesus-truck.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What you are describing is a pipe dream. Even *if* they managed to do something like that, performance would be utter crap, die size would be huge, and the odds are it just plain would suck.
Re:Reprogrammable GPU? (Score:5, Funny)
If hell froze over they wouldn't have to worry about the cooling on their chips.
I guess that's a plus.
Parent
Focused (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Yeah, they've stayed focused on graphics chips, that's why there are so many motherboards with nVidia chip sets .. *sigh*
Of course, if you want to deliver integrated chipsets, you know the other much higher volume market for graphics chips, then you have to be able to build the rest of that chip as well or it wouldn't be integrated. Seeing as how the graphics capability become more and more important while the other features seem quite stable, it's be much stranger for them *not* to be in that market IMO.
Only reason (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reasons that they may build a chip for x86 (64-bit or not) would be to either use it for a special application or as a proof of concept.
A GPU and a CPU are different, but it may be a way to test if a GPU architecture can be applied to a CPU with a classic instruction set. The next step is to sell the knowledge to the highest bidder.
To compete with Intel would just be futile.
Re: (Score:2)
To compete with Intel would just be futile.
Hopefully we won't be saying the same about AMD in another few years.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How is a "GPU" different from a "CPU"? If you take them to be the SAME, you end up with Intels LARRABEE. If you take them as somehow DIFFERENT, you end up with nVidias proclamation.
If they are considered the SAME, but with different performance tunings, other applications begin to open up.
As an example: it is currently true that the "GPU" is given an exorbitant amount of resources to do one thing -- create visuals for games.
And that's it. It contains a significant amount of the system memory, and processing
Re:Only reason (Score:4, Informative)
How is a "GPU" different from a "CPU"?
The GPU is a specialized (vector) processor, while the CPU is a general purpose one. What the GPU does, it does great. But its reach ends pretty much there.
The nVidia is programmed with a specific higher-order assembly language, We rely solely on the hardware vendor for tools. I think that this is UNIQUE in the (mass-market) processor world. And this is why Intel, with an x86 compatible GPU is such a threat.
You're confused. Intel is not working on a "x86 GPU". Intel is working on a new GPU design - the kicker being that this is a relatively high performance one, instead of the kind of GPUs they offered so far (feature packed, but lacking in performance). The x86 instruction set has nothing to do with it, and in fact, has nothing to do with GPU programming, which is a completely different beast.
Can anyone else produce an OpenGL shader compiler for the nVidia? Or, better yet, extend it to do NON-shader tasks. How about for the AMD?
If i'm no mistaken, nVidias CG compiler is now open sourced. So yes.
Parent
Confident ? (Score:2)
He seems rather confident with a two year head start on a company that has "billions and billions of dollars."
Just a thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
wouldn't this be a good thing? (Score:2)
If more companies entered the same market that would give us more choices and better prices. I say go for it Nvidia make a cpu and see how you do against Intel and AMD.
I really wish that we could have the same socket in the motherboard for a CPU from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, . That would rock and give a real head to head test of which CPU is best for what you are doing. Never happen, but it would be cool to see.
Re: (Score:2)
If more companies entered the same market that would give us more choices and better prices. I say go for it Nvidia make a cpu and see how you do against Intel and AMD.
No, I do not think that would be a good thing. The up-front R&D cost for making CPUs is huge. Fabricating them ain't cheap either. Sure, NVIDIA has a lot of talent and would have a big jump on the R&D. And they have fabrication facilities that could be retuned for CPUs instead of GPUs. But I think that the end result of NVIDIA attempting to compete with Intel/AMD on the x86 CPU front would be death or serious damage to NVIDIA and we'd lose competition on the graphics card market rather than gai
Re:wouldn't this be a good thing? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely correct. Perhaps I should have said 'access to fabrication facilities' or 'fabrication relationships'. The point is that they have no resource issues barring them from the game, just a lot of catch-up work, stiff competition, and the good sense to lack motivation.
'Decide what you're going to do and focus on doing it well' is a good business model and, whether you're an NVIDIA fan or not, that's certainly what they're trying. And, so far, it's working out a lot better for them than a lot of the
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The real losers would be Via and AMD. If NVidia made a big entry into the x86/x86-64 space, they would take as much ore more market share from the smaller players as from Intel. NVidia would be poorly served by knocking Via out and especially by knocking AMD out. Even though those companies compete for graphics dollars, they give NVidia somewhere to put its graphics and chipsets other than on Intel-CPU boards.
Re: (Score:3)
Not just Intel and AMD. There was a time when you could use an Intel, Amd, Cyrix, IDT, or a Rise (and I'd bet even a couple more) CPU all in the same motherboard. Back then I didn't even DREAM of building a machine with an Intel chip - Cyrix and AMD were less than half the cost (close to 1/3rd the cost in some areas). And when those costs were in the hundreds of dollars for entry level stuff (rather than the $35 that you can get a budget CPU for now), it really made a difference.
Of course, that was when
rumour machine (Score:3, Insightful)
rather handy that this rumour gives nvidia, a GPU company, the chance to point out how futile it would be for them to try and enter the CPU market... then point over to intel, a CPU company, trying to make a GPU...
What they need to do is (Score:2, Insightful)
Remove their heads from their collective rectum and correct the damn problems they have with their video cards and motherboard chipsets.
I've been a loyal nVidia customer since the good old days of the Diamond V550 TNT card through the 8800GTX but they have really hosed up lately.
My 780i board has major data coruption problems on the IDE channel and my laptop is one of the ones affected by their recall so I am not too pleased with their ability to execute lately...
And why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't mind seeing more players in the computer processor industry. The headlines really make it sound like it would be a bad thing. Maybe I'm getting the headlines wrong, but having Nvidia presenting new alternatives to a market almost exclusively owned by Intel and AMD would be interesting.
From 2006 (Score:5, Insightful)
"A GPU from 2006" sounds a lot like famous last words.
I wonder if anyone at DEC made comments in a similar vein about Intel CPUs, when the Alpha was so far ahead of anything Intel was making? NVidia's architect should not underestimate Intel, if he does, he does it at his company's peril.
Re:From 2006 (Score:4, Interesting)
The alpha failed because the motherboards were $1300.00 and the processors were $2600.00 nobody in their right mind bought the stuff when you could get Intel motherboards for $400 and processors for $800.00 (dual proc boards, high end processors)
DEC died because they could not scale up to what the intel side was doing. you had thousands of motherboards made per hour for Intel with maybe 4 a day for Alpha. It's game over at that point.
I loved the Alphas, I had a dual alpha motherboard running windows NT it rocked as a server.
Parent
How nVidia "Survived" (Score:5, Insightful)
3DFx was the first company to publish Open Source 3D drivers for their 3D cards. nVidia sued them, then bought them at a discount, and shut down the operation. So, we had no Open Source 3D for another 5 years.
That's not "staying focused". It's being a predator.
Bruce
Re:How nVidia "Survived" (Score:5, Insightful)
What on earth are you talking about? 3DFx died because it was horribly mismanaged and ran out of money. There were lawsuits, but 3dfx sued NV first in 1998 and then in 2000 NV counter-sued (source [bluesnews.com]). True NV's countersuit was right before 3dfx died, but a simple lawsuit that's gone nowhere in the courts yet doesn't cause a company to go bankrupt overnight.
Personally I'll believe one of my (ex-3dfx Austin) friend's explanation for their downfall: the fully stocked Tequila bar that was free to all employees. Or there's a whole list of problems leading to their decline on wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re:How nVidia "Survived" (Score:5, Interesting)
3dfx's problem was they could never figure out how they sold their cards. they flipped flopped from themselves to having others make the cards like Nvidia does. after so many times no one wants anything to do with you because it's bad for business planning.
nvidia has had it's current selling model for 10 years and only its partners have changed. if you want to sell video cards you can trust that if you sell cards based on nvidia's chips they won't pull the rug out from under you next year and decide to sell the cards themselves
Parent
Re:How nVidia "Survived" (Score:4, Interesting)
It does look like 3DFx bought the wrong card vendor. They also spun off Quantum3D, then a card vendor, which is still operating in the simulation business.
Parent
Nvidia has denied... not really. (Score:3, Interesting)
"That's not our business. It's not our business to build a CPU. We're a visual computing company, and I think the reason we've survived the other 35 companies who were making graphics at the start is that we've stayed focused."
"Are we likely to build a CPU and take out Intel?"