i dont know how denver will turn out but it looks like nvidia will have the preferred chip for all the tablets coming out in the near future.
I recall all of that talk back in the 90's. Anyone remember Larry Ellison's "network computer?"
Every year people call for the death of the PC and every year the market gets larger.
Nvidia's "Project Denver" will build ARM processors for desktops, servers, and supercomputers
Ok why in the world would anyone be stupid enough to think being Apple means building your own desktop ARM cpu? Especially considering Apple doesn't do that. Which CEO is seriously thick enough to spend millions of dollars in developing an unknown when you can just buy a damn chip from Intel or AMD that works perfectly with their existing software?
i dont know how denver will turn out but it looks like nvidia will have the preferred chip for all the tablets coming out in the near future.
From what I read "Project Denver" is a desktop chip that will target the PC market.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20027468-64.html
This chip is not to kill the PC, but challenge the x86 monopoly.
are they really proposing an all new pc platform? id really be skeptical about that, even if it had great multimedia, most pc's are used for doing work and i cant those people having any reason to change platforms.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Apple has shown what vertical integration can achieve. They were statistical noise 10 years ago, on the verge of bankruptcy, about to become another forgotten company like Commodore. But then Jobs got an idea, and now Apple is making computers, phones, media players. Its designing the cpu's that go in most of them (only a matter of time before Macs and macbooks get a Apple designed A5 or A6 CPU), building the OS's for them, building much of the software, selling the content that is consumed on their devices (3rd party software, music, movies, books).
Did it work? Well, rather than going bankrupt, they are now bigger than Google, bigger than IBM, bigger than intel and bigger than Microsoft. I think it worked. What CEO is NOT looking at apple to see what they got right? Everyone is mimicking Apple.
Take Google; search and advertising giant, right? Thats how they got big, but for some reason they are getting in to all kinds of software, in operating systems, they start selling content, they start selling hardware like phones and soon tablets and even netbooks. Different accents, but not that different from Apple.
Coincidence? Maybe. Lets look at Intel. CPU chip company right? With some hobbies like storage devices and networking. And they spend billions trying to get in to graphics, they recently spent billions on buying software companies. Maybe you missed it, they bought Wind River. They bought McAfee. Then they spent a small fortune getting in to operating systems (Moblin/Meego). They are rumored to start selling/renting movies with those new DRM features in SB. Not quite as integrated as Apple or even Google, but heading that very same way.
Need more? Microsoft. Software company, right? Windows and Office. Only then they started selling game consoles, then they got involved in the CPU design of those consoles, they copied apple trying to sell music players (zune, remember?) They recently started selling microsoft branded phones, were working on their own tablets, are trying very hard to get in to selling content (music, movies through xbox live). Oh, and they got a CPU architecture licence, coincidental the same one Apple has. Vertical integration, might have heard of it
I could name Amazon, nVidia and so many others, *everyone* is looking at apple and doing what apple is doing. I wouldnt be surprised in 10 years you can buy a pc , tablet or phone from Apple, or microsoft, google or intel, and they will build their own hardware, all run their own OS, their own appstores, and they will all try to sell you their content.
I think you over look a lot of things in your simplistic analysis of "vertical integration". All your talk about vertical integration forgets one thing. It has very little to do with the specifics of the hardware. You thrash around a lot brandishing the example of apple. However, you seem to have a pretty short memory. Apple didn't jump into making the A4 chip. No, the genesis of the iphone happened with the ipod which was pretty much off the shelf parts thrown into a nice package. From there came the iphone which the first generation also didn't have an Apple specific chip in it.
Apple's empire today is more about it's design, software, user eco-system and developer eco-system than the guts inside the devices it sells. If the iphone5 uses an Intel chip or nvidia chip it would still be an iphone. It would still sell just as well as long as Apple hasn't fallen behind in innovation and design.
For microsoft to go vertical first of all it's a big question mark of why kill your existing cash cow.
And secondly, if they do do so why risk it all on designing your own chip for "desktops" when they can buy one that works with all their software already.
And all this wild speculation about how nvidia's move is so big really forgets one big thing. Nvidia is building mobile ARM yes and seems quite successful at winning designs. However, don't forget Nvidia doesn't own it's own baseband and RF technology. Intel does. And moving forward for mobile devices I think you'll find that unless nvidia spends a lot of cash buying it's own RF/baseband firm it's going to find it harder to fight chipzilla.
i dont know how denver will turn out but it looks like nvidia will have the preferred chip for all the tablets coming out in the near future.
From what I read "Project Denver" is a desktop chip that will target the PC market.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20027468-64.html
The problem with that is ARM will not run anything beyond Windows & Office. Games won't run on it nor will production software suits. Apple OS (not the same as iOS) will not run on this either. It will take time & comitment for companies to port their software over. And most won't bother to do it, especially in the business world.This chip is not to kill the PC, but challenge the x86 monopoly.
That's only for their portable devices. And the answer is simple, Jobs is a control freak.You are just proving my point. Why is Apple now designing their own cpu's you think?
Why does MS want to design the CPU for the xbox? They started with an off the shelve Intel cpu, discovered it didnt work nearly as well as what sony was doing. So they put together a hardware engineering team and codesigned a custom one for the 360. It did far better, but apparently they where still not satisfied, as they now got their own cpu license from ARM. You really dont see where this is going or why?
So again, why did apple stop buying off the shelve SoC's ? Why splash out $120M to buy intrincity and $280M for PA semi, if you think it wouldnt change anything?
Same reason as apple. Tell me, do you think apple is going to keep relying on intel for devices like the Mac mini or macbook air or imacs ?
The problem with that is ARM will not run anything beyond Windows & Office.
I could name Amazon, nVidia and so many others, *everyone* is looking at apple and doing what apple is doing. I wouldnt be surprised in 10 years you can buy a pc , tablet or phone from Apple, or microsoft, google or intel, and they will build their own hardware, all run their own OS, their own appstores, and they will all try to sell you their content.
See? Some people still living in denial and thinking the PC is all that. Given a choice between a $500 phone and $1000 laptop, most people would choice the former.
Developers are ditching the PC platform and switching to phones. Pretty soon we'll even be running all our apps from our phones. Ever heard of remote desktop or cloud computing? The real ballers who roll in money and spend 10 grand a night like it's nothing will use their phones to do all their work and stay connected, while you stay in the basement of your parent's house cutting your fingers on the CPU fan and waiting for your Mom to come down with a bucket so you can defecate (like Cartman in that South Park episode).
Seriously, the only time the PC has been remotely close to cool is when Microsoft puts so-and-so celebrities in their Windows ads.
Mind telling me when I ever said that? Stop putting words in people's mouths.Yeah because games can only run on x86 windows
Once again when I did I say anything like that. I openly talk about consoles being Power PC. Your comment about Mac is just stupid.I suppose the major consoles are all running x86? I suppose the Mac is windows based?
If the software they want/need to use isn't configured to run on ARM they certainly will care very quickly.Denver running Windows 8, will probably be transparent to most users. As they don't give 2 poops what chips are inside.
Samsung? Really?
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/samsung-nvidia-tegra-cell-phone,news-4316.html
Also the Galaxy Tab is running a Tegra chip already.
The phones are looking pretty strong now and I do agree we might be on the verge of the average person be able to do all their work on one.
You are just proving my point. Why is Apple now designing their own cpu's you think?
Why does MS want to design the CPU for the xbox? They started with an off the shelve Intel cpu, discovered it didnt work nearly as well as what sony was doing. So they put together a hardware engineering team and codesigned a custom one for the 360. It did far better, but apparently they where still not satisfied, as they now got their own cpu license from ARM. You really dont see where this is going or why?
So again, why did apple stop buying off the shelve SoC's ? Why splash out $120M to buy intrincity and $280M for PA semi, if you think it wouldnt change anything?
Thats a good point, and indeed MS is trying not to. They do try to have it both ways, sell their own MS branded phones and convince OEMs to ship competing phones with windows on them. But what do you do when you can no longer convince OEMs to ship windows on phones ? On tablets? Or when they start shipping ChromeOS on eeepcs? When servers are increasingly being sold with Linux rather than windows?
Same reason as apple. Tell me, do you think apple is going to keep relying on intel for devices like the Mac mini or macbook air or imacs ?
Seems like you are forgetting project denver mentioned in the thread title is not about phones or tablets. Its not going to need baseband. Tegra will however.
Ok one thing at a time.
Why did apple went with it's own SoC for Iphone 4 and Ipad? Control and optimization. If you read about the SoC company (Intrisity) that they brought, you'll see they aren't just another chip company. While AMD and Intel both have mulit ghz small process chips, Intrisity is the first (and still only?) to make a 2 Ghz chip on a 130 nm process (dissipating 15 watts). They have patents on various technologies that enable feats like that. Apple didn't buy Intrisity to be vertically integrated. They brought them to keep the technology from their competitors.
They co designed it with IBM, and if you think Xenon is off the shelve, you are very very wrong. BTW, the design of Xenon was mostly done by IBM but with substantial input from MS. The later shrink and integration of the xenon with the gpu was all done by MS. They made a fusion chip before AMD did. Anyway, you cant see the pattern from off the shelve -> codesign -> inhouse redesign -> ISA license for full custom core ?Microsoft didn't design their own xbox 360 cpu. They took off the shelf PPE from the design IBM did for Sony's Cell, stick 3 of them together to make a 6 way SMT CPU. Back when the Xbox launched where can you buy a single chip ASIC that does 6 threads? Again note they didn't designed it themselves.
Now that is very, very true. And that is why the examples above are not coincidence, the decission to make your own cpu is absolutely a strategic one, not an opportunistic one. The costs and risks are far too big. Apple didnt just happen to one day have a CPU design team building socs, and neither did MS or nVidia.Making your own chips isn't cheap.
Yes, but then they already controlled the rest of the hardware platform, and the OS, and much of the app stack, the media and the distribution. That is what made them successful, and they seem to think pushing it even further will help them.At anyrate I still think you are missing the point that Apple's competitive advantage didn't came from making their own hardware. They were successful before they decide to make their own SoC.
No, not really, intel is catching up with the ARM guys who have been integrating gpu's, broadband and other stuff for over a decade. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and I agree nVidia is behind on the cellular part, intel is behind on the software, on the GPU side, the power consumption of their core still isnt competitive for handheld, the uncore is a total mess that needs a half dozen supporting chips. No one has the perfect chip, but the race is wide open and intel isnt exactly leading the pack.At where it stands even if Nvidia buys it's own baseband it's going to be slower than Intel to integrate. Since Intel already started the process.
I think its very clear what it means. What isnt clear is who will win and who will lose, but without wanting to tooth my own horn, whats happening now I predicted over 5 years ago. Id toss you the links if the old aces forum where still up.So look guys my point is lets not jump to crazy conclusion. Often these new stores are just news. What they mean isn't going to be clear until some over weight female homo sapiens make some noise.
That's only for their portable devices.
Oh, so Apple strategy is just a byproduct of Jobs' character, and that it worked so well is coincidence ? Using Dell's strategy they would have done as well you think?And the answer is simple, Jobs is a control freak.
See my post above for the xbox. As for what MS is doing with their expensive architecture license, I guess you will be surprised if the next xbox is designed around an MS developed ARM SoC, but I wont. But even if Im wrong, and if its not for xbox, then its for tablets, for phones, for PCs, for TVs or for servers. The point is still the same. Unless you think they bought that license for no reason.You don't know what MS is doing CPU wise. On top of that MS did not design the original xBox. And the use of Power PC has actually worked out well for them with the 360.
Sure, I didnt say Apple would toss out intel from all its products in favor of its own chips this year. Or even the next. One step at the time. The next step is likely a netbook like computer, whether you want to call it an ipad with a keyboard or a Mac air with a Apple SoC.Apple buys actual CPUs from Intel and now they're buying Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs that are in fact SoCs. Apple has already said the low end 13" MBPs will use Intel's IGP instead of a discreate GPU.
iOS is essentially a stripped down OS-X. Its the same OS underneath, same Mach kernel and for the most part, the same middleware and they share a lot of the same toolchains. That part is easy.The only problem here is that Apple would need to redesign their entire OS again if they switched away from x86/x64. Apple also has the option to go with AMD Fussion setup next year. They could not use Intel without having to rework all their software again.
From what I read "Project Denver" is a desktop chip that will target the PC market.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20027468-64.html
This chip is not to kill the PC, but challenge the x86 monopoly.
Look at the lack of success for linux on the desktop. People didn't want to change the iterface or change the software they already knew how to use.
You can challenge (successfully) the desktop market with new devices, and that will happen. but to take on the desktop/notebook market you need to be able to meet the expectations of what a desktop or notebook will be in the customers' mind.
The Galaxy Tab is running a Samsung Hummingbird SoC whcih contains a modified ARM Cortex A8 cpu core clocked at 1ghz and a PowerVR SGX 540 gpu. Doesn't look like Tegra to me.
The reality is that the x86 PC market is about the software and applications, not the silicon. If it was all about the silicon and hardware, the market would continually be changing, but software (and software compatibility) is what keeps the market going.
Challenging the hardware is easy, getting customers to flock to your platform is very difficult when you can't run their software or tell them that there is a "better" alternative (how many times have you heard some one tell you GIMP is "just as good as photoshop"?)
Look at the lack of success for linux on the desktop. People didn't want to change the iterface or change the software they already knew how to use.
You can challenge (successfully) the desktop market with new devices, and that will happen. but to take on the desktop/notebook market you need to be able to meet the expectations of what a desktop or notebook will be in the customers' mind.