Rumor: Nvidia Assembling x86 Team
PrintGraphics chip maker Nvidia appears to be interested in talent from Transmeta, and that could mean only one thing: they're moving into the x86 market, says AmTech analyst Doug Freedman.
Freedman's theory is at least plausible. During a Q&A session at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Nvidia acknowledged it would eventually try its hand at the x86 business, saying it was a matter of "when," not "if."
If Nvidia's looking for the right time, now might be it. The chip maker continues to be at odds with Intel over continued licensing disputes, the latest of which has bumped Nvidia out of contention with Nehalem. And because AMD owns ATI, the chip maker finds itself between rock and a hard place.
That's not good, considering over 30 percent of Nvidia's revenue comes from chipsets. Backing out, even if temporary, puts a lot of pressure on the company's graphics business to hold the fort while licensing disputes are worked out.
It's worth noting that Nvidia probably wouldn't go after the high performance sector, where Intel's Core i7 pretty much stands alone. But the market is wide open in the low performance segment. An Atom alternative combined with the chip maker's Ion platform could conceivably shake things up and give Intel's Atom platform some serious competition.
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Wildebeast
November 05, 2009 at 10:39pm
I'm still holding onto my dream of a Vector computer system (with x86 or x64 compatibility mode?)
It would be wicked cool, especially if you could have an nVidia board and use ATI or other brand cards for the actual video card(s).
I'd be surprised if nVidia can afford to pull that miracle off, though ---as a regular consumer machine (not deep enough pockets).
I'd just like to see more of the Genuine Innovation that things like the Atom chip show can work and sell...
dc10ten
November 04, 2009 at 5:25pm
I can't tell you how many times i have been talking about and hoping for 3 platforms.
Intel
AMD/ATI
Nvidia
None of those companies are going away anytime soon. and more competition is just going to be better for the consumer.
interesting how AMD had mentioned "platforms" a couple years back. I think it is starting to mean something now.
UndeniablyPC
November 04, 2009 at 10:50am
If any chip company alive today can do this, Nvidia can. If and this is a big "if" Nvidia has been looking at this market for the last couple of years, then given the introduction of the Fermi architecture coupled with a new x86 chip, Nvidia might have some significant advantages over Intel as far as the 3D modeling and physics department is concerned. So given this news I hope that Nvidia can pull this off because they are in my honest opinion the leader in graphics innovation today and hopefully soon to be the x86 innovators of tomorrow.
ChuvelxD
November 04, 2009 at 8:07am
Pfft, I bought my GTX 275 2 months ago and it's still pushing some of the highest performance i've seen.
NVIDIA is keeping itself around by diversifying. People criticise them for not having a DX11 GPU out yet, but I'm running Windows 7 and have not needed DX11 by any means. Yes the 5870 is faster than the GTX 295, but this is only temporary. It's been 1 month since the 58xx series has been out and people are saying NVIDIA is done for....anyone who knew anything about anything would know that there's a reason NVIDIA's market share is higher than ATI. And why CUDA is being taught in colleges around the world. Is there any ATI exclusive computing architecture being taught in schools? No.
You can make as much ATI hoopla in the end of the day, but the fact remains that ATI will soon be left in the dust. NVIDIA is competeing with the big boys like Intel now, ATI can keep its 3 month lead.
Gailim
November 05, 2009 at 5:19am
nvidia has a marketshare advantage only because the radeon 2 and 3 series were garbage and the Geforce 8 and 9 series can still game pretty well.
ever since radeon 4 launched team green has been on the defensive. right now an equivelently performing nvidia card costs nearly $20 more than it's radeon competitor. this is a situation that has persisted for months. nvidia's large die sizes mean they can compete with ATI on price. and Fermi is very late.
as for GPGPU, CUDA was only a stopgap, now that OpenCL is here it will quickly be abandoned. after all, who wants to program for a proprietary system that only works on one companies GPU's when they can have one that works on both equally well? proprietary API's like Cuda and PhsX are only dead weight now that open source alternitives are availible to everyone
nvidia is in trouble because there huge die sizes cost too much money to compete, ATI is doing more with less right now. they made a company wide gamble with Radeon 3, and it payed off with Radeon 4. now with Radeon 5 out they are the standard for DX11.
Nvidia's problem is far more dire than not having Fermi out, there are real questions as to whether they can price Fermi competitavely and still make a profit. Nvidia needs to abandon it's strategy of producing huge, monolithic GPU's or it may soon find itself priced out of the market by a resugent ATI and and Intel that is out for it's head
punditguy
November 04, 2009 at 7:43am
The graphics business needs to hold the fort? The only thing working in Nvidia's favor right now is the lack of ATI's 58xx parts in the channel.
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