Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 103 posts

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

#61

Post by delfinom »

WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #50

Prior to switching to Apple Silicon, Apple prepared the path with their effort to push for universal binaries by default Software made yesterday were already prepared to run on their new silicon Rosetta was only a transition helper, not meant to be a permanent solution Microsoft didn't do any of that, and still doesn't, their leadership is clueless and dangerous If Microsoft doesn't put in the effort, it'll never wor…

>Why only Apple is able to pull it off? Why this lack of care from everybody else?

Apple got burnt, multiple times, by both Intel and Nvidia. That set them on a complete war path to move to arm where they control the chips. As part of that war path, their goal was to drop x86 entirely so they needed the transition layer.

Microsoft has no need to drop x86 entirely, in fact x86 will continue to remain a good part of a market for the foreseeable future. Who knows, maybe RISCV suddenly takes off because even Qualcomm has begun pushing a cool billion dollars towards RISCV development due to ARM/Softbank attempting to make them destroy their IP. Heck, ARM/Softbank is basically trying to destroy the ARM market for profit by terminating Qualcomm's licenses by 2025.

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

#64

Post by pseudosavant »

surgical_fire wrote: post #56
pseudosavant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a OnePlus 6T acquired in 2019 that is absolutely fine to this day. I only replaced it because they dropped support for new OS updates. I installed DivestOS on it and use it as a backup phone (i.e.: I take it with me to the gym, and keep my main phone at home). If they had kept support, I wouldn't even have replaced it.

Single threaded (best indicator of device responsiveness) Geekbench score:

2018 OnePlus 6T: 521

2017 iPhone 8: 1020

My older phone is literally twice as fast. From a performance perspective it will be usable far longer than the OnePlus.

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

#65

Post by jacooper »

deaddodo wrote: post #29
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).

Yes but it's still terrible with a much bigger performance loss than rosseta, partially because the M chips have some tricks for better emulation.

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

#66

Post by pseudosavant »

MenhirMike wrote: post #41
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the current Qualcomm cores is that they are cheap and low power, but the new Nuvia cores should alleviate this. ...But be careful what you wish for. There have been some promising ARM core designs (Samsung's Mongoose series, Nvidia's Denver/Carmel) that all ended being worse than tweaked ARM-designed cores. Others (Marvell's SMT ThunderX series, Fujitsu's HPC A64FX) were too niche, and ultimately dis…

Didn't they also lose one of their key employees? That was arguably in 2019, before the M1 came out, so I don't know how much of an impact Gerard Williams actually had, but I do wonder if they can keep the team together. (Edit: Just googled, Gerard Williams is now at Nuvia and in the middle of a lawsuit with Apple)

This has probably been the biggest issue Apple has faced post M1. They've lost lots of top people to other companies trying to design performance cores like Apple's. That and their SoC development resources are spread across far more products than they used to be.

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

#67

Post by deaddodo »

jacooper wrote: post #65
deaddodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Yes but it's still terrible with a much bigger performance loss than rosseta, partially because the M chips have some tricks for better emulation.

The performance is actually much better than most people from that skillset originally expected, and it generally gets better performance from arbitrary code paths/machine logic than Rosetta does.

Rosetta outperforms it because of hardware assistance, not because Microsoft's implementation is bad (let alone "terrible").

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

#68

Post by surgical_fire »

pseudosavant wrote: post #64
surgical_fire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a OnePlus 6T acquired in 2019 that is absolutely fine to this day. I only replaced it because they dropped support for new OS updates. I installed DivestOS on it and use it as a backup phone (i.e.: I take it with me to the gym, and keep my main phone at home). If they had kept support, I wouldn't even have replaced it.

Single threaded (best indicator of device responsiveness) Geekbench score: 2018 OnePlus 6T: 521 2017 iPhone 8: 1020 My older phone is literally twice as fast. From a performance perspective it will be usable far longer than the OnePlus.

And yet, despite benchmark numbers, my point still stands. For all the usage I listed above, my old Android is perfectly serviceable. Not once I was using it and thought a better CPU might speed something up, because nothing was slow. The phone never feels hot while using it.

When I try a new phone, I don't see any noticeable difference in speed. Everything loads more or less the same.

A better CPU (even one twice as fast) on a smartphone brings virtually no benefit at this point. Half of "this is pretty fast" is still "pretty fast".

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #50

Prior to switching to Apple Silicon, Apple prepared the path with their effort to push for universal binaries by default Software made yesterday were already prepared to run on their new silicon Rosetta was only a transition helper, not meant to be a permanent solution Microsoft didn't do any of that, and still doesn't, their leadership is clueless and dangerous If Microsoft doesn't put in the effort, it'll never wor…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

wmf wrote: post #62
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #47

I don't understand the aarch64 hotness. Is it because Apple did it? At the end of the day it's just a different instruction set- what makes that such an advantage?

People are misunderstanding the source of Apple's advantage.

That's what I think but I'm assuming that I'm naive. Apple's advantage is the vertical integration, putting memory on-package, and buying the best node.
Post reply on HN