Project Denver

[tokie]

Wow, wasn't expecting this today. It is the biggest hardware announcement in years IMO. Will be interesting to see the details.

Couple this with todays announcement that Windows 8 will feature ARM support, and begun the tech wars have.

 

[notty22]

Nvidia's stock is soaring. I knew when it bottomed out around 8 that it was mostly based on Fermi being late, and it was going to rebound.
This is ambitious future, but should make the tablet, smart phone landscape all the better.
With some families that had one shared desktop getting multiple ipads for family members, investors see dollar signs.
Tablets for everyone

 

[tokie]

This is ambitious future, but should make the tablet, smart phone landscape all the better.

It's not just that though.

NVIDIA provided some more details on the announcement. Project Denver is targeted at everything from PCs to HPC/servers. This is completely a high end play going after the x86 stronghold. Project Denver ties in completely with Microsoft's announcement to bring Windows 8 to ARM next year.

This is a huge move going after x86 in the PC space. The announcement of Windows on ARM also means that Qualcomm and TI, as well as Nvidia, are brought in as competitors to Intel and AMD in the traditional x86 space.

 

[tviceman]

Hell yes! Bring on the competition! If anyone can seriously threaten to dethrone Intel's monopoly on the desktop scene, it's Nvidia. And with AMD finally getting Fusion out, it will be nice to finally see Intel's profit margins shrink for once.

 

[cbn]

Wow, wasn't expecting this today. It is the biggest hardware announcement in years IMO. Will be interesting to see the details.

Couple this with todays announcement that Windows 8 will feature ARM support, and begun the tech wars have.

Yep, this is an amazing development.

Looking forward to seeing how this will affect Intel and AMD's strategy.

 

[mnewsham]

After watching the sandy bridge talks about IGP and such, i couldnt help but thinking about an integrated Nvidia or AMD GPU, with Nvidia about to enter the x86 market do you think we could see Nvidia ARM mixed with some Nvidia GPU?

 

[tokie]

After watching the sandy bridge talks about IGP and such, i couldnt help but thinking about an integrated Nvidia or AMD GPU, with Nvidia about to enter the x86 market do you think we could see Nvidia ARM mixed with some Nvidia GPU?

I would imagine that an Nvidia ARM processor would be fully integrated with some GeForce GPU. Basically, imagine a desktop platform based on AMD Fusion. I would bet it would be some type of "Fusion" APU product.

 

[cbn]

After watching the sandy bridge talks about IGP and such, i couldnt help but thinking about an integrated Nvidia or AMD GPU, with Nvidia about to enter the x86 market do you think we could see Nvidia ARM mixed with some Nvidia GPU?

Definitely we would see nvidia's Custom ARM A15 core mixed in with GeForce for a desktop/laptop SOC.

P.S. I'd imagine it won't be long till we see an announcement from AMD on their own A15 based Fusion SOC as well. This should make the hardware comparisons even more interesting from this point out. AMD vs Nvidia? Who will make a better ARM A15 CPU? A better platform?

 

[tokie]

A new blog post from an Nvidia scientist with more details about Project Denver:
http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/01/project-denver-processor-to-usher-in-new-era-of-computing/

 

[Nintendesert]

Good to see more competition and more variety in the computer world. I miss the days of competition. It will be interesting to see how this turns out in the years to come or if this turns into another dud like Nvidia's chipset attempts.

 

[cotak13]

I think mentioning HPC is a very important part of their announcement.

Directly hitting the desktop is risky. Too much legacy code. HPC is a better start for them where applications are more custom and if they can offer performance advantage people might be willing to migrate.

I think windows 8 for ARM wasn't created with nvidia's Denver being the sole reason. Nvidia talks HPC for ARM which is untested. MS isn't betting that much resource on an untested platform. Besides most HPC install I think you'll find runs a non MS OS. IMHO MS is pushing windows for ARM as a beach head into tablets and such.

Still this is just news right now. Whether it turns out to be good for them or not it'll take a good while to find out.

 

[Eckstein]

What in hell makes them believe that they can compete with x86-64 when even IBM can barely hold it's own with their Power processors in a niche market?!

The only reason why the ARM architecture became so successful is because of the rise of the smartphone market. However the complexity for those CPUs/SoCs has almost reached the point where the advantages of a RISC design has become negligible already.

There is absolutely ZERO known fact to support the believe that ARM/Nvidia will be able to deliver a competitive product in the high performance CPU market.

 

[Wreckage]

So this chip should be able to run Windows 8, Chrome, iOS and one would suspect Linux as well. It's amazing how fast these markets can turn around. NVIDIA could be bigger than Intel in less than a decade.

 

[cbn]

So this chip should be able to run Windows 8, Chrome, iOS and one would suspect Linux as well. It's amazing how fast these markets can turn around. NVIDIA could be bigger than Intel in less than a decade.

We'll have to see how well the Cortex A15 benchmarks.

Single thread peformance
Overclockability
Power management/Power consumption
Cost

Does ARM A15 have enough built in advantage to go toe to toe with Intel's premium priced x86 designs? Will Nvidia be able to force Intel to drop prices more than they expect in the future?

Or will it be Qualcomm/TI that actually are able to put the most pressure on Intel in the desktop/laptop market? Most people really don't care about extra graphics at this point (barring some breakthrough in Heterogenous computing)

 

[RavenSEAL]

Wow, nVidia jumping into the field now...this could get very very interesting. I wonder how they'll compare to Sandy/Ivy.

 

[Eckstein]

So this chip should be able to run Windows 8, Chrome, iOS and one would suspect Linux as well. It's amazing how fast these markets can turn around. NVIDIA could be bigger than Intel in less than a decade.

How does this turn around anything?

There are exactly ZERO applications for an ARM Windows.
There are exactly ZERO facts which support the believe that ARM/Nvidia can deliver a high performance CPU that is competitive to modern x86-64 CPUs.

The fastest ARM CPUs today are many times slower than low-end x86 CPUs and can't even address more than ~2.5 GByte of RAM!

 

[cbn]

How does this turn around anything?

There are exactly ZERO applications for an ARM Windows.
There are exactly ZERO facts which support the believe that ARM/Nvidia can deliver a high performance CPU that is competitive to modern x86-64 CPUs.

The fastest ARM CPUs today are many times slower than low-end x86 CPUs and can't even address more than ~2.5 GByte of RAM!

Well this what ARM is claiming for their Smartphone line-up. (The ARM A15 listed there is only a 1-1.5 Ghz version)

It will be interesting to see how close the actual CPUs come to those claims. ~100% IPC increase (between A9 and A15) sounds pretty amazing to me.

 

[Wreckage]

There are exactly ZERO applications for an ARM Windows.

How long did it take the iPhone to hit 100,000+ applications? The tech market can and often does turn on a dime.

 

[Eckstein]

Well this what ARM is claiming for their Smartphone line-up. (The ARM A15 listed there is only a 1-1.5 Ghz version)

It will be interesting to see how close the actual CPUs come to those claims. ~100% IPC increase (between A9 and A15) sounds pretty amazing to me.

It will still be several times slower than low-end x86-64 CPUs.

How long did it take the iPhone to hit 100,000+ applications? The tech market can and often does turn on a dime.

That's only because the smartphone market emerged.
We are talking about complex software here, not some worthless garbage apps which comprise to 95% of this number.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Like they have a choice. With Intel and AMD putting graphics on-die now how's nividia going to get a slice? Though I wonder how serious this is... you gotta have some big balls to think you can compete with the likes of AMD & Intel. I mean this is nvidia afterall. They had better have some solid ground for this endeavor to succeed.

 

[cbn]

It will still be several times slower than low-end x86-64 CPUs.

I thought Cortex A9 was roughly equal to Intel Atom (in terms of single thread performance)?

Therefore wouldn't it be safe to assume 2.5 Ghz A15s would keep some pretty fast company?

I could definitely be wrong, but I just can't imagine MS porting Big Windows if this chip didn't deliver the necessary Metrics? Why not make Windows Phone the Tablet OS if ARM is only capable of lower power/low performance?

 

[Wreckage]

That's only because the smartphone market emerged.
We are talking about complex software here, not some worthless garbage apps which comprise to 95% of this number.

5% is still 5000 good apps.

Besides there seems to be an emerging tablet/nettop/smart TV market.

This CPU does not have to beat the i7 it merely has to compete with the i3.

 

[cbn]

5% is still 5000 good apps.

Besides there seems to be an emerging tablet/nettop/smart TV market.

This CPU does not have to beat the i7 it merely has to compete with the i3.

We also have to consider the possibility that this chip (or chips made by TI or Qualcomm) could affect Intel's expensive laptop offerings? (I don't know the sales figures, but I do realize the CULV chips carry a good mark-up).

 

[extra]

I'm sure Intel and AMD are quaking in their boots (sarcasm)

 

[tokie]

One thing to keep in mind is that, according to benchmarks, a dual-core Cortex A9 is roughly comparable in performance to a single-core Atom at the same frequency.

Give it ~2 years for the Cortex A15, which would increase frequency, core count and IPC. At that point I can see ARM giving Intel and AMD a spanking in the budget PC category.