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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

#31

Post by phh »

Well, I have the first model of laptops using nVidia Arm chip, it's called Toshiba AC100, and rocked a nVidia Tegra 2 in 2010.

It launched with Android, but I helped put GNU/Linux on it (got my first mainline author-ship with it), and daily drove it for a year at university (back then not everyone had laptops)

It was a hell of a device, and to this day I'm still missing anything close to it. 10 inch, 900g, 10 hour battery life (which was unthinkable on PCs back then), removable battery so when traveling I just had two batteries, extremely sturdy (I used to launch it in the air, and failed some times without worrying) [1]. That being said, even back then it was seriously limited, and I would max out the RAM just by doing ssh + quasselclient. By killing quasselclient I could have enough RAM to launch firefox to a simple web page, but that's it.

[1] It wasn't made to be sturdy, it's just that there was basically no weight, the pcb was very small, and it had pretty huge bezels

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

#32

Post by wmf »

seanalltogether wrote: post #28

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?

It's more of a low latency (DDR/LPDDR) vs. high bandwidth (GDDR/HBM) tradeoff.

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

#33

Post by eslaught »

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.

Let's not exaggerate here. I've got the M2 Pro Mac Mini, and it is nearly silent, but depending on your workload you still generate nontrivial heat and the fans do need to run to keep it cool. Maybe I notice more because I build a lot of software, but this is not some magic bullet that avoids the need for traditional heat management.

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

#34

Post by frandroid »

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…

You stopped hearing about it because the chips Qualcomm made were dreadful.

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

#35

Post by dboreham »

pjmlp wrote: post #11
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…

First step is convincing Windows development community that Windows on ARM actually matters. Until then, whatever Apple has over 80% of the worldwide desktop market hardly matters. And after how UWP was managed, there aren't that many that care.

Not so much an issue now: fewer native apps left, and current x86 emulation is great.

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

#36

Post by wmf »

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.

It takes four years or more to design a CPU. The M1 came out three years ago.

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

#37

Post by brucethemoose2 »

phh wrote: post #31

Well, I have the first model of laptops using nVidia Arm chip, it's called Toshiba AC100, and rocked a nVidia Tegra 2 in 2010. It launched with Android, but I helped put GNU/Linux on it (got my first mainline author-ship with it), and daily drove it for a year at university (back then not everyone had laptops) It was a hell of a device, and to this day I'm still missing anything close to it. 10 inch, 900g, 10 hour ba…

The Tegra series is still ongoing, its just marketed at self-driving vehicles.

You can get dev boards, but they are hilariously expensive, and I'd guess the idle/low load performance pales in comparison to other vendors these days.

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

#38

Post by MenhirMike »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #9

> Nvidia has quietly begun designing central processing units (CPUs) that would run Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) Windows operating system... > Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) also plans to make chips for PCs with Arm technology... > Qualcomm plans to reveal more details about a flagship chip.. (That would be the Nuvia core, I assume) Really, just read the whole thing. Its a brief but juicy report. Anyway, I wonder if Nvidia i…

> Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) also plans to make chips for PCs with Arm technology

Technically, the Platform Security Processor that's integrated in most (all?) Zen CPUs is already an ARM chip, though I guess that they mean actual general purpose CPUs.

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

#40

Post by _yo2u »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #37
phh wrote: post #31

Well, I have the first model of laptops using nVidia Arm chip, it's called Toshiba AC100, and rocked a nVidia Tegra 2 in 2010. It launched with Android, but I helped put GNU/Linux on it (got my first mainline author-ship with it), and daily drove it for a year at university (back then not everyone had laptops) It was a hell of a device, and to this day I'm still missing anything close to it. 10 inch, 900g, 10 hour ba…

The Tegra series is still ongoing, its just marketed at self-driving vehicles. You can get dev boards, but they are hilariously expensive, and I'd guess the idle/low load performance pales in comparison to other vendors these days.

The tegra series also still exists in all the nintendo switches of the world ;)
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