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

reuters.com

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

#21

Post by mattpavelle »

timschmidt wrote: post #18
bhouston wrote: post #3

Given how much I love my MacMini M2 Pro - its perfectly silent operation and its incredibly small form factor combined with great graphics performances, I can imagine that having similar machines available for Windows and Linux would be very attractive.

We've had them direct from Intel since at least 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing

Except OP said, "combined with great graphics performances" - the NUCs never had good graphics performance ... and their CPU performance was actually not that great either.

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

#22

Post by guerrilla »

ZiiS wrote: post #15
guerrilla wrote: post #7

I hope so. Then I can put some weird OS on it that nobody uses because I really miss the security-through-obscurity I got back in the day running Linux on PowerPC before either were popular. Nobody was going to bother writing shellcode for that shit back then :P

A linux kernel on Arm is by far the widest deployed pairing in history.

Indeed, it is not "some weird OS [] that nobody uses." :D

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

#23

Post by huijzer »

pseudosavant wrote: post #8

I hope these ARM chips are Apple-level ARM designs. Apple has an ARM license that allows them to completely design their own cores. Only Apple's ARM designs have cutting edge performance. Everyone else (Qualcomm, Samsung, etc) uses stock, or nearly stock, ARM designs off-the-shelf that, performance-wise, aren't at all competitive with AMD/Intel. I'd love a Surface Pro with an M1/M2 chip, but the Qualcomm ARM chips ar…

Everyone keeps going on about ARM, but isn’t the difference mostly memory latency and throughput? Less waiting for memory means less wasted clock cycles. And probably also hardcore engineering in choosing the right tradeoffs? The x86 "penalty" seems to be mostly a few precent from what I’ve read. Yes x86 wastes some transistors on legacy instructions, but it doesn’t fully explain the year long difference between Apple and Intel and AMD. (Although AMD seems to catch up now and Intel also a bit with their HBM2 chips.) It’s also TSMC and Apple working together on designing a great chip.

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

#24

Post by timschmidt »

mattpavelle wrote: post #21
timschmidt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had them direct from Intel since at least 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing

Except OP said, "combined with great graphics performances" - the NUCs never had good graphics performance ... and their CPU performance was actually not that great either.

The same can literally be said about M1/M2 Macs. Graphics performance compared to anything discrete is terrible. My 3090Ti wipes the floor with an M2, despite being last generation's model. M2's CPU performance only looks good when divided by power consumption. Whole categories of Intel and AMD chips outperform it, just at higher power usage.

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

#25

Post by xh-dude »

bhouston wrote: post #5
EternalUsenet wrote: post #2

I do wonder if we will see these chips available for purchase to install in standard form factor ATX style systems? This is something I haven’t seen Arm crack into yet.

I think ATX style machines are very niche. Gamers love them and 3D artsits, but outside of that I think no one wants them anymore. I think that ARM-compatibility for games in the near term is a hard sell (although Blender, Maya, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro have been ported to ARM for running on Apple chips.) I think the market that NVIDIA should be chasing with the ARM CPUs + good GPUs is business machines. Our company…

I think you’re right about the class of device. MS can’t just treat ARM-based products the way it does now and make a leap in terms of end-user experience - wondering if this changes in the future.

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

#26

Post by surgical_fire »

pseudosavant wrote: post #12
vsskanth wrote: post #10

Why is it taking so long to launch competitive ARM Windows laptops ? Apple is already in it's third iteration of the M series and there's still no proper competition to the Macbooks.

Because the best chip designs in the world are made by Apple, Intel, and AMD. ARM's chip designs are years behind those three. Apple has shown ARM can have excellent performance, but they are the only ones to do it so far. Android users have shown that they don't care about buying new phones with CPUs that are slower than 3-year-old iPhones.

Because faster CPU on phones mostly doesn't matter.

I have a midrange Android phone that I use to watch videos, listen to music and podcasts, internet browsing, chat, banking. The only thing I don't do on my phone is play games. I never once caught myself thinking "boy, this phone is slow, a faster CPU would do wonders here". It doesn't ever even feel hot to the touch.

I bet it can run just fine most mobile games available. What the hell are people running on their phones that need a better CPU?

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

#27

Post by pseudosavant »

pseudosavant wrote: post #12
vsskanth wrote: post #10

Why is it taking so long to launch competitive ARM Windows laptops ? Apple is already in it's third iteration of the M series and there's still no proper competition to the Macbooks.

Because the best chip designs in the world are made by Apple, Intel, and AMD. ARM's chip designs are years behind those three. Apple has shown ARM can have excellent performance, but they are the only ones to do it so far. Android users have shown that they don't care about buying new phones with CPUs that are slower than 3-year-old iPhones.

Benchmarks aren't perfect but this shows the reality of Apple vs non-Apple ARM cores. An iPhone 12, from 3 years ago, has a 13% single thread performance advantage over the top Pixel 8 Pro.

Geekbench:

* Pixel 8 Pro: Single: 1760 Multi: 4442

* iPhone 15 Pro: Single: 2894 Multi: 7192

* iPhone 12: Single: 1995 Multi: 4401

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

#28

Post by seanalltogether »

I'm really curious if unified cpu/gpu chips are the future for laptop/desktop hardware. Mac is now unified across its product line, consoles are unified, phones are unified. My limited understanding though is that unified memory means giving up either high speed (for the cpu), or high bandwidth (for the gpu). Is that correct?

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

#29

Post by deaddodo »

nerdjon wrote: post #20

> 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. I know that Mac was always in single digit marketshare (but still a healthy amount as far as money for apple goes) but still doubling seems to be quite an achievement? I am curious if this is actually from an increase in Mac sales or a decrease in…

> Do they have an answer to rosetta so the transition can be mostly seamless (for everyone except developers if the M series is any indication...).

Microsoft had an AoT x86->ARM (and now, amd64->aarch64) binary translation layer before Apple's Rosetta had that capability (at least, publicly).

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

#30

Post by pseudosavant »

surgical_fire wrote: post #26
pseudosavant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the best chip designs in the world are made by Apple, Intel, and AMD. ARM's chip designs are years behind those three. Apple has shown ARM can have excellent performance, but they are the only ones to do it so far. Android users have shown that they don't care about buying new phones with CPUs that are slower than 3-year-old iPhones.

Because faster CPU on phones mostly doesn't matter. I have a midrange Android phone that I use to watch videos, listen to music and podcasts, internet browsing, chat, banking. The only thing I don't do on my phone is play games. I never once caught myself thinking "boy, this phone is slow, a faster CPU would do wonders here". It doesn't ever even feel hot to the touch. I bet it can run just fine most mobile games ava…

The fact that my 6yo iPhone 8 is still as fast as a 3yo Pixel phone definitely is part of why I can keep my iPhones far longer than another other phone I've ever had. You rarely see 6yo Android phones still in use, because it'd be as slow as a 9yo iPhone.
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