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Nvidia to make Arm-based PC chips - We knew this was coming

In the world of "oh that is obvious" we have reports of NVIDIA working on their own CPU design based on the ARM architecture. 

Unless you have been living under a rock you will have heard that NVIDIA tried to buy ARM last year for a respectable amount of money.  However, the sensitive regulators in the UK blocked the sale and what would have eventually become a company bigger and more powerful than Intel and AMD.  (IMO)

NVIDIA is not a company to abandon their plans and continued on.  Before the ARM buyout there was a system called GRACE.  GRACE was a data center product using a low powered ARM based CPU coupled with a powerful NVIDIA GPU designed to create a massively scalable compute module which was basically what crypto miners were building in their basements using off the shelf components, minus the ARM Processor.

Had NVIDIA been able to complete the purchase they would be able to build their new CPU designs at a fraction of the cost while still getting income from Qualcomm (and others) due to the current ARM licensing agreement.

Licensing and traditional architecture aside the ARM based CPUs RISC based processors and are extremely power efficient leading to their adoption into mobile devices and several Apple based laptops.  The power of the CPU comes in the form of multithreading and by adding more cores to the CPU they can easily scale past the power of current desktop CPUs without producing as much heat.

Combine that with an NVIDIA GPU and you have an extremely powerful all-in-one system that could replace every x86 based notebook with better battery performance and lower temperatures.

Exclusive: Nvidia to make Arm-based PC chips in major new challenge to Intel

 

 

Oct 23 (Reuters) - Nvidia (NVDA.O) dominates the market for artificial intelligence computing chips. Now it is coming after Intel’s longtime stronghold of personal computers.

Nvidia has quietly begun designing central processing units (CPUs) that would run Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) Windows operating system and use technology from Arm Holdings(O9Ty.F), , two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The AI chip giant's new pursuit is part of Microsoft's effort to help chip companies build Arm-based processors for Windows PCs. Microsoft's plans take aim at Apple, which has nearly doubled its market share in the three years since releasing its own Arm-based chips in-house for its Mac computers, according to preliminary third-quarter data from research firm IDC.

It will be interesting to see what actually comes out of the NVIDIA camp and if puppetmasters controlling ARM actually allow them to compete in the market. 

I am expecting big things and so far, the NVIDIA track record for new ventures has been extremely positive, even when they exit the new segment several years later.

To read more about this "exclusive" story as reported by Reuters, check out the link below.

Related Web URL: https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-make-arm...