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Nvidia Mulls Cheap, Integrated x86 Chip
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Mar 05, 2009 06:38 PM
from the putting-integration-together dept.
from the putting-integration-together dept.
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.'"
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oh god, please no. (Score:2, Insightful)
For those of us who dealt with intel's "integrated" graphic cards on laptops for the past several years now... on their behalf I just want to say PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SHINY AND SILICON, DON'T DO IT! Anything with the word "integrated" near it makes me want to cringe... it's a post traumatic stress response caused by watching a myriad of good video games shutter, blink, crash, and burn right in front of me. It's a black day indeed when Warcraft 3 can't run at full resolution on a laptop produced
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Heh, funny that you mention it.
I run WC3 on my Macbook Pro 1.5 year old and I use 1024x768, medium, high, medium, high, high, on, on, high. So medium models and textures ...
And I agree, especially in this price range :D
Re:oh god, please no. (Score:4, Informative)
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 [apple.com]
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).
Parent
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Anything with the word "integrated" near it makes me want to cringe...
But then again Apple claim the new Mac Mini with 9400M and shared RAM can run the latest games ..
Reality distortion field [checked]
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But while I'm already burning karma maybe I should point out this:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9100m_g_mgpu_us.html [nvidia.com]
So motherboard GPU GeForce 9100M G + SLI connected discrete GPU 9200M/9300M GS = 9400M.
So it seems like it's not an improved 8400m, and the 9300M GS is slower than the 8400M GS (which is slower than 8400M GT:)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9100m_g_mgpu.html [nvidia.com]
Faster than X4500 but still suck for anyone who actually need any graphics power and to claim that it will run the lat
ah gamers... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re:oh god, please no. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, because what I want to do is slot a PCIe card into my damn cell phone.
Parent
Re:Well, that is what netbooks do (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Well, that is what netbooks do (Score:4, Informative)
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 [tomshardware.com]
Parent
Re:oh god, please no. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or you could get a 30" flat screen for your desktop, a nice audio system, and a comfortable chair and not have duplicate media setups.
For bonus points, put a couch behind your chair & move the chair out of the way when you have guests.
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Anything with the word "integrated" near it makes me want to cringe...
So you don't want to use any silicon chip then?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit [wikipedia.org]
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Prediction.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Prediction.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, do you even know anything about x86?
Parent
Re:Prediction.. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Prediction.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Prediction.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, now all we need is to connect the GPU to the FSB/QPI, make it support pagetables, interrupts, DMA, CPU-style L1/2/3 coherent cache, memory controller with synchronous fencing, legacy and long modes for pointers and instructions, etc.... and then we'll have something that can possibly emulate an x86 CPU at only 99.9% performance penalty!!
Or, you know, not.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not just x86, but this guy clearly doesn't know anything about CPU/GPUs at all. Kinda like an old friend of mine, convinced he was going to design his own CPU, despite not knowing anything about computer hardware. Or even computer software. Sure could play games though, and smoke a lot of dope.
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You forgot the part about it somehow, some way, being litigated to death and never seeing the light of day.
If they bail out, then the headline will (Score:4, Funny)
read:
"Nvidia NULLS Cheap, Integrated x86 Chip "
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Netbooks? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see the point. (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:I don't see the point. (Score:5, Funny)
>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.
So much for running linux on it!
BIOS ERROR.
NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND.
THE WALRUS HAS EATEN THE PENGUIN.
hawk
Parent
Can you just imagine?! (Score:4, Funny)
They should just go with ARM (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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If they push ARM hardware heavily enough, software will follow.
(1) It doesn't matter how hard they push ARM, all the legacy x86 software won't magically work.
(2) I don't think Nvidia has what it takes to push Microsoft hard enough to get a mainstream version of Windows or Office on ARM, and without Windows goes a huge number of people who refuse to try something different.
(3) Nvidia's strength - the GPU - is best used in games. Without focus there, there is no reason to go with Nvidia's solution over Intel's or AMD's or Via's. Without Windows that just isn't go
Re:They should just go with ARM (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason to go with x86 is because ARM is just as shitty of an architecture.
Seven supervisor modes now? Horrible page table format? Have you seen what they are planning for 64-bit addressing?
Even more importantly than the CPU architecture, the ARM busses are typically very low performance. And if most of the time is dealt with memory movement, having a better bus dwarfs what's going on with the CPU.
So, in the end, you have slow cores. Intel knows how to make x86 fast. And, as they are starting to show, they can make it low power also. ARM has yet to show a fast core. They don't use that much power, but if "netbooks" are low end laptops instead of high end cell phones, a few watts is fine.
Oh, and did I mention that x86 cores are x86 compatible? That makes the software barrier to entry a lot lower.
To compete with Intel, you have to be better. A lot better. For very low end, ARM is better, because all that matters is leakage power, and after that all that matters is power for very small processing. At a higher level of performance, ARM is different, but perhaps not better. Maybe the ARM architecture has some features which make it less complex to implement than x86. But at the end of the day if nobody is making ARM cores that spank x86 cores, x86 will win. Didn't you learn this from PowerPC? Don't you realize the same thing will probably happen to ARM except at the extremely low end? And even there, if Intel decides to start licensing 386 synthesizeable cores, how long do you think ARM7 and ARM9 will last?
Parent
Re:They should just go with ARM (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the ARM architecture is horrible and slow - but it also integrates really easily with other kinds of chips.
How long have we had ARM SoCs with CPU, GPU, MMU, plus a dozen other chips all in a single chip? An ARM "CPU" (SoC) isn't just the CPU part. It also has dozens of other chips inside it for accelerating specific types of processing, and all with remarkably low power consumption.
ARM is less complex than x86. Both ARM and x86 are moving towards integrating more and more stuff on a single die. Which do you think will work better - the simpler architecture (though not vastly simpler) with rapidly improving speeds, or x86? ARM has more experience in this area. They'll win.
You say to compete with Intel "you have to be better", but your opinion on what makes a CPU better is flawed. Power6 stomped Intel for performance. Even today for FPU stuff it's still about 100% faster than Core i7(per ghz - and it scales up to +5ghz on air), and I don't see it dominating the market at all!
ARM will win for these reasons:
-Lower cost.
-Lower power consumption.
-Much smaller size. (smaller devices appeal to many people)
-Similar/better performance for specific tasks(like video decoding/recording).
-Efficient software base.
-Appealing to device manufacturers.
Yes, x86 is compatible with everything under the sun, but everything under the sun is incredibly inefficient, and designed to run on desktop dual/quad-core systems.
You're arguing about what the consumers want, but you're thinking like a techy. If you put an x86 program next to a well-coded ARM program, they'll both run just as responsively, and at the end of the day, to end users, responsiveness is what determines "speed".
x86 may "spank" arm, but consumers think Vista is "slow" because it takes 30 seconds to delete a file that took 0.5 seconds in XP, and it requires more RAM. They don't give a shit that the kernel may be 5% more efficient. :P They don't care that they have a 2.6ghz dual-core CPU rather than a 2.6ghz single-core CPU, if it feels slower than before. (because of flaws with software)
All this puts the importance on software quality rather than the hardware. But software is easy, for ARM. ARM has no super-fast desktop line that would spur the growth of inefficient crapware.
Don't you feel lucky that we are to have tons of open source developers making quality software that runs on ARM devices? And piles of device manufacturers ready to push linux/FOSS software on these devices?
Too bad there's so few x86 device manufacturers pushing linux/FOSS. More support and demand would really spur growth of efficient software for netbooks and the like - but we do have Dell, I guess. :P
Parent
They should open the drivers first (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem is that more and more netbooks are sold with linux, and NVIDIA drivers integration in any distro is less than stellar. Contrast that with Intel hardware where everything is well supported by all vendors.
Unless they open their drivers, this platform will be Windows-only so even their lower-end models will be hampered by the Windows Tax.
That won't go very far.
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Re:x86? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Re: (Score:2)
"640K should be enough for anybody", updated for 2009.
Plus, TFS specifically mentions netbooks as part of where the chips would be used, which are more likely to make that particular feature likely than handhelds/phones, as the use cases for those are pretty much those for a general purpose laptop -- but with more focus on battery life (hence, power consumption), weight, and cost. I suspect
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***WOOOOOOSHHHH***
Wow, did Chuck Norris just go by, or did you miss a joke?
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From what I can find [vzw.com], that device has 196 MB RAM and 1 GB of onboard storage (this is in addition to the 128 MB of flash for the OS and the microSD slot).
This is different than having 1 GB of byte-addressable DRAM.
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The demarcation of storage and RAM is a legacy constraint forced by hardware limitations. Ubiquitous 64-bit and SSD will blur and eventually totally eliminate this separation.
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Why botther at all? Better go straight to x64, I mean, even the lowliest of nvidia GPUs is already 64 bits, why bother with 32 bits technology?
They day an embedded system's CPU needs to address more than 4 gigs of memory (which is essentially why you would shift from a 32-bit to 64-bit CPU) is the day my shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.
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Why botther at all? Better go straight to x64, I mean, even the lowliest of nvidia GPUs is already 64 bits, why bother with 32 bits technology?
They day an embedded system's CPU needs to address more than 4 gigs of memory (which is essentially why you would shift from a 32-bit to 64-bit CPU) is the day my shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.
Is 640K enough for you still?
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Get back to him in a couple of years for something really weird.
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The iPhone packs 128 meg, as does the BlackBerry Bold. A modern smartphone packs as much ram as the average desktop did a little under a decade ago. SODIM
Re:x86? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
x64 is a Microsoft marketing term. Please stop using it. The architecture is x86-64.
Pray tell, why not amd64 then - the way it was originally marketed by the inventor when it was released?
Last I checked, there's no definite established term [wikipedia.org] for this, anyway, and x64 is the shortest while still being vendor-neutral. Even if Microsoft came up with it first (and are you sure they did, really?), so what? I don't understand how it is a "marketing term" for them, as they don't market it.
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Or, while everyone is nitpicking...
Why not refer to it by "AMD's original designation for this processor architecture, 'x86-64'"?!
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x86 is more than x64, so it's better right?
Re:x86? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But what ever happened to Moore's law? Are we already outside of its prediction? Has the chain been broken?
Effectively, yes. The problem is not cost per gate and wafer real estate per gate, which continue to decrease. It's heat dissipation per unit area. I've been to semiconductor talks where there are charts of increasing heat dissipation with lines marked "room temperature", "soldering iron", "nuclear reactor", and "surface of sun". The trend is clear and not encouraging.
The effect is that comput