Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 9th Nov 2009 21:29 UTC
Over the past few years, there have been persistent rumours that NVIDIA, the graphics chip maker, was working on an x86 chip to compete with Intel and AMD. Recently, these rumours gained some traction, but NVIDIA's CEO just shot them down, and denied the company will enter the x86 processor market.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
That's not going to happen. In GPUs if you have for instance a 16-wide SIMD unit - it will execute 16 identical scalar programs at the same time, with identical program flow, but operating on different data. There can be hundreds of these units and the programmer treats them just as if they are a single scalar unit. This does not map to x86 very well. Even Larrabee which Intel touts as x86 based does the heavy computing with such SIMD units that have little in common with x86.
Running GPU code on CPUs is nothing new. OpenGL has always had software(CPU) implementations. And they were always painfully slow - the kind of code that can run on a GPU, should run on a GPU.
The fusion of GPU and CPU will not happen anytime soon, but NVidia will have a very hard time to compete with the upcoming integrated GPU+CPU chips in the mass x86 market. They will be competitive in the hi-end gaming, CAD and scientific niche markets.
Edited 2009-11-09 22:52 UTC