Nvidia CEO Shares Company's CPU Strategy
Not x86, it's all about ARM now.
Nvidia's been rumored to be looking to get into the CPU business, perhaps in an effort to compete better against AMD with ATI in-house, as well as Intel. But on that front, Nvidia would require an x86 license; and the graphics maker isn't on the best terms with Intel at the moment.
Despite that, Nvidia still has a CPU strategy – one that involves a completely different market.
"Our CPU strategy is ARM," Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told Cnet in an interview. "ARM is the fastest growing processor architecture in the world today. ARM supports (Google's) Android best. And Android is the fastest growing OS in the world today."
The end result is Tegra, an ARM CPU paired to Nvidia's GPU technology. The first generation Tegra is already on the market in every Microsoft Zune HD, but the second generation, dual-core Tegra 2 has yet to hit any commercial product.
As for Nvidia's chipset business, the license problems with Intel have effectively killed that division at the company.
"They (Intel) have disrupted our chipset business," Huang said. "The damage has been done. We've been out of the chipset business for well over a year, so if this got resolved we're not expecting to ramp back up the thousand engineers that we had working on chipsets."
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Onus Killed the chipset division...hmmm, does this look to anyone else like the end of SLI on AMD platforms?Reply -
meat81 i know i am beating a dead horse but i would have loved to see Nvidia's X58 chipset offering.... F-ing IntelReply -
silentq i dunno guys, i dont really feel like doubling my electrical bill... i probably would not need a furnace in the winter with couple of fermi's and nvidia cpu in my tower though...Reply -
allenpan it will be wise to merge with VIA or DM&P Electronics's "Vortex86", DNP is a much cheaper company who also own x86 lisencesReply -
L0tus silentqi dunno guys, i dont really feel like doubling my electrical bill... i probably would not need a furnace in the winter with couple of fermi's and nvidia cpu in my tower though......hell you wouldn't even need a stove/microwave...just fire prime95 up and watch those sausages sizzle. Dinner in 3 minutes.Reply
...and as for intel, they're behaviour is obviously monopolistic. Surely there are antitrust laws against that sort of crap. And when is that license expiring? -
jplarson It's a real shame that Intel is able to hold onto the x86 licensing... that effectively creates a monopoly. Granted they own the intellectual property of it, but it costs the market competition.Reply -
Pei-chen jtt283Killed the chipset division...hmmm, does this look to anyone else like the end of SLI on AMD platforms?I assume those SLI engineer will just go work for the graphic division.Reply
BTW, it make sense to target the ARM market instead of x86 consider how many things could have a simple processor inside. x86 is good for PC but the market is growing slowly.