Here it is, right here - NVIDIA's entry into the x86 CPU market

[SunnyD]

Transmeta soliciting offers to buy all IP and assets.

In a direct address to investors, Transmeta is inviting potential buyers to contact its financial advisor, in order to sort out the details of the purchase. This is announced together with a freshly-inked deal with Intel Corporation for a ?perpetual non-exclusive license to all Transmeta patents and patent applications, including any patent rights later acquired by Transmeta, now existing or as may be filed on or before December 31, 2017?. The deal also includes the upfront payment of a previous settlement from December 2007. Instead of paying five easy installments this year, Intel drops the lump sum of $91.5 million for the thing to go away.

Here's the perfect opportunity for NVIDIA to get their hands on an x86 license that has substance. Seeing as NVIDIA has already dropped a wad of cash in Transmeta's pockets a few months back for other technology, this could very well be the beginning of a new x86 CPU and platform.

 

[geoffry]

I would welcome NVDA coming into the mkt, just as I welcome INTC going into GPUs. I'm not sure if this confirms their entry though.

Also, how successful either would be in each others' turf we shall see....

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: geoffry
I would welcome NVDA coming into the mkt, just as I welcome INTC going into GPUs. I'm not sure if this confirms their entry though.

Also, how successful either would be in each others' turf we shall see....

No, it absolutely doesn't confirm anything... but if NVIDIA wants to get into the x86 CPU market in full force without much in terms of limitations, this is their red carpet (again, if indeed Transmeta is looking for a suitor).

 

[ch33zw1z]

if something like this ever happened i'd support it, anything to keep x86 competitive!

 

[Nemesis 1]

Transmeta isn't an x86 processor guys . It emulates X86 nothing more. It takes a hugh hit in performance because of this.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Transmeta isn't an x86 processor guys . It emulates X86 nothing more. It takes a hugh hit in performance because of this.

Just like larrabee and graphics?

 

[Nemesis 1]

Transmeta Intel has to love this stuff. Transmeta is an EPIC processor just like Itanic/ ATI gpu's . I am sure intel would love another EPIC player in the game. Pretty soon Itanic will have alot of morphing code to play with .

Transmeta has sold rights to AMD Intel and NV . So anything AMD or NV comes up with for their epic processors . Intel will gladly welcome more competion to this party.


Its as I said befor EPIC in the end will rule. Intel welcomes any epic processor into the game. Sooner or later code will be written in epic so all the emulation can stop.

Than and only than will we see hugh performance gains.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Originally posted by: Zstream

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Transmeta isn't an x86 processor guys . It emulates X86 nothing more. It takes a hugh hit in performance because of this.

Just like larrabee and graphics?

True . But you left out ATI and NV gpu's Ati is EPIC . I don't know what ya call NV gpus . But all use emulation which is slow.


If you research it . Large cache can make the emulation delay go away. Intel larrabee has lots of cache

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Transmeta isn't an x86 processor guys . It emulates X86 nothing more. It takes a hugh hit in performance because of this.

I'm not talking about NVIDIA acquiring and using Crusoe as the basis of their CPU. I'm talking about NVIDIA acquiring Transmeta just to get ahold of the x86 ISA license, which then they can create x86 compatible processors however they see fit.

 

[Nemesis 1]

No thats not how the game is played. NV can't make an X86 processor with that ISA. Transmedia does not have x86 processor license. Only can do x86 in software.

I wouldn't buy transmeta just to morph x86 .

I found this much more interesting than this news . Since Intel / AMD and NV have bought license for transmedia. Intel has the whole pie right now.

transmedia software is written to work with EPIC/VLIW. So you believe NV will go EPIC with next generation of CPGPU. If they buy the company.


http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/...ave-ditzel-joins-intel

 

[Idontcare]

Nemesis you've got a real Mel Gibson Conspiracy Theory style of weaving a story of intrigue, smoke, mirrors, russians, epic emulators, etc.

I'll admit it's intoxicating to follow your posted logic and train of thought, best done after a glass of wine or two But a jolly good read nonetheless.

I think you are on to something, some would say you are simply on something, but I think you are on to something here.

There's just to many pots with Intel's hands in them, from russians to former execs of transmeta. (and you have all the links to back it up, every time, scary...Mel Gibson scary)

If nothing comes of it then at a minimum it can be said they sure wasted a hell of a lot of resources and accomplished a whole lot of nothing. But I'm inclined to believe, as you do, that something is going to come of it, eventually.

So the question whose answer holds some value to me...when is this EPIC day of vindication finally going to occur? (year or decade is good enough for me) We talking near-term (post Larrabee) or medium term (2015, 16nm and beyond) or long term (2025, post-CMOS era)?

 

[apoppin]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080905PD206.html

This is from an interview with Nvidia's CEO Jensen on Tuesday

Q: There are rumors Nvidia is heading into x86 CPU design, your comments?

A: Currently, we have no plans for that. We are very busy already and have no time to cross over to our competitors' field. The most important thing to remember is that Intel is the leader in the CPU market and so it's better that Nvidia focuses on what we do best. To cut in to the x86 CPU market would just be a waste of time and resources.

argue with him

Nvidia is probably less cash rich now

 

[Nemesis 1]

Interesting read. NV may not be interested in crossing over as stated by the man. But Intel has every intention of crossing over big time.

by PaulTozour on Wed Sep 10, 2008 8:13 pm

Right now, I can only pass on the official word:

Offset will be exclusive to select Intel-based platforms.

We look forward to being able to discuss more details in the future.


Paul Tozour
Project Offset teamPaulTozour

Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2008 3:45 pm
Private message

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Transmeta Intel has to love this stuff. Transmeta is an EPIC processor just like Itanic/ ATI gpu's . I am sure intel would love another EPIC player in the game. Pretty soon Itanic will have alot of morphing code to play with .

Transmeta has sold rights to AMD Intel and NV . So anything AMD or NV comes up with for their epic processors . Intel will gladly welcome more competion to this party.


Its as I said befor EPIC in the end will rule. Intel welcomes any epic processor into the game. Sooner or later code will be written in epic so all the emulation can stop.

Than and only than will we see hugh performance gains.

Man, you know people around here are reading too much INQ when they refer to Itanium as "Itanic", and not in a tongue-in-cheek manner...

It's a derogatory nickname -- a play on words of "Titanic".

 

[Nemesis 1]

I mean no disrespect by the word usage. Its not I who pinned that name . Nor was it an intel fan. When the final bell rings it will be epic. And proof that AMD64 did nothing but slow progress.

This is the biggest reason Zinn2b was banned . When most of what he said is in fact unfolding right befor our eyes. It means much to me. Its personel.

 

[the kernel]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Transmeta Intel has to love this stuff. Transmeta is an EPIC processor just like Itanic/ ATI gpu's . I am sure intel would love another EPIC player in the game. Pretty soon Itanic will have alot of morphing code to play with .

Three problems here:

1) EPIC != VLIW.

EPIC is based on the design philosophy of instruction level parallelism like VLIW, but they are NOT identical.

2) Neither VLIW nor EPIC is an instruction set, they are a design philosophy like RISC. Technically the ISA on the Itanium line is called IA64. So these two chips definitely aren't going to be running each others native code.

3) Transmeta chips never had any native software written for them that I am aware of; it was all done with the x86 emulation layer.

Transmeta has sold rights to AMD Intel and NV . So anything AMD or NV comes up with for their epic processors . Intel will gladly welcome more competion to this party.

No they bloody wouldn't. What on Earth makes you think Intel wants anyone making IA64 chips besides them? Have they granted a license to anyone? No.

Its as I said befor EPIC in the end will rule. Intel welcomes any epic processor into the game. Sooner or later code will be written in epic so all the emulation can stop.

Than and only than will we see hugh performance gains.

Ummm...no. Sorry, but this is just absurd.

10-15 years ago a lot of people thought that the x86 instruction set was running out of gas and would fail to keep up with newer ISAs such as PowerPC and IA64. But then a funny thing happened; Intel realized that they could build a CPU internally using many of the techniques used in more advanced ISAs and then either map them to existing x86 instructions (via ops fusion) or create extensions to the ISA (such as SSE and AVX). Or didn't you notice that almost all of the RISC ISAs are either dead or relegated to big iron?

The only place where Itanium or other alternative ISAs are going to have a place in the future is on big iron HPC machines. And you want to know why? Because for these guys who are working with huge datasets that must work with thousands of nodes with high bandwidth and low latency, the two factors of cost and having to recode your apps in low level languages for a specific instruction aren't nearly as important as absolute performance you can achieve.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Lets not get to far away from transmedias VLIW subject. NV buying and what purpose it would serve.


Outside embedded processing markets, Intel's Itanium IA-64 EPIC appears as the only example of a widely used VLIW architecture. However, EPIC architecture is sometimes distinguished from a pure VLIW architecture, since EPIC advocates full instruction predication, rotating register files, and a very long instruction word that can encode non-parallel instruction groups.

 

[Aberforth]

Originally posted by: apoppin
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080905PD206.html

This is from an interview with Nvidia's CEO Jensen on Tuesday

Q: There are rumors Nvidia is heading into x86 CPU design, your comments?

A: Currently, we have no plans for that. We are very busy already and have no time to cross over to our competitors' field. The most important thing to remember is that Intel is the leader in the CPU market and so it's better that Nvidia focuses on what we do best. To cut in to the x86 CPU market would just be a waste of time and resources.

argue with him

Nvidia is probably less cash rich now

I consider his comments as nothing but bilge, a few months ago when they released GT200 he said "we are already in the boundaries of technical limitation" now when Intel came up with larrabee and it's getting developer's attention he says "GPU will continue to grow for another 15 years" oh sure... because he has been cutting deals with 3rd parties like PhysX and Transmeta making their GPU a commercial hackwork than a architectural marvel.

 

[the kernel]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Lets not get to far away from transmedias VLIW subject. NV buying and what purpose it would serve.


Outside embedded processing markets, Intel's Itanium IA-64 EPIC appears as the only example of a widely used VLIW architecture. However, EPIC architecture is sometimes distinguished from a pure VLIW architecture, since EPIC advocates full instruction predication, rotating register files, and a very long instruction word that can encode non-parallel instruction groups.

Fine, so what exactly are you implying? What strategic benefit does nVidia get from buying Transmeta? They've already paid millions of dollars to license the Longrun/Longrun2 technology, so why buy what is purely an IP company if you already have access to IP?

And drop the reference to EPIC, it has zilch to do with this.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Aberforth

Originally posted by: apoppin
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080905PD206.html

This is from an interview with Nvidia's CEO Jensen on Tuesday

Q: There are rumors Nvidia is heading into x86 CPU design, your comments?

A: Currently, we have no plans for that. We are very busy already and have no time to cross over to our competitors' field. The most important thing to remember is that Intel is the leader in the CPU market and so it's better that Nvidia focuses on what we do best. To cut in to the x86 CPU market would just be a waste of time and resources.

argue with him

Nvidia is probably less cash rich now

I consider his comments as nothing but bilge

You need to know ..

.. you really hurt his feelings with your comment :brokenheart:



:laugh:

 

[Aberforth]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Aberforth

Originally posted by: apoppin
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080905PD206.html

This is from an interview with Nvidia's CEO Jensen on Tuesday

Q: There are rumors Nvidia is heading into x86 CPU design, your comments?

A: Currently, we have no plans for that. We are very busy already and have no time to cross over to our competitors' field. The most important thing to remember is that Intel is the leader in the CPU market and so it's better that Nvidia focuses on what we do best. To cut in to the x86 CPU market would just be a waste of time and resources.

argue with him

Nvidia is probably less cash rich now

I consider his comments as nothing but bilge

You need to know ..

.. you really hurt his feelings with your comment :brokenheart:



:laugh:

They aren't affected by comments/criticism, they are pretty stubborn- that's for sure.

 

[Nemesis 1]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/v..._Processing_Units.html

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/v..._Processing_Units.html

The harbinger of yet another industry titan reaching an apogee in their career trajectory is the foretelling of demise of anything related to their industry.

All this well-respected individual just did was put a time-stamp on when his career jumped the shark.

Sweeny isn't the first, and won't be the last, to make lousy claims of the imminent demise of some facet of the industry. We push titans and icons to make these kinds of grand-sweeping statements about the changes the future will bring.

Remember the lists that Bill Gates use to publish regarding how he felt the world will be different in 10 yrs? And they nearly always turned out to be rubbish?

Here's my favorite graph of the value of projections versus reality:

Itanium Sales: Forecasts versus Actual

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
I mean no disrespect by the word usage. Its not I who pinned that name . Nor was it an intel fan. When the final bell rings it will be epic. And proof that AMD64 did nothing but slow progress.

AMD64 did not slow progress, unless you're talking about slowing a transition to explicitly parallel architectures. Nothing is more evident than Intel's continued growth and performance enhancements to IA32. EM64T, Intel's implementation of AMD64. Growth of the x86 architecture into 64-bit territory without any performance losses. AMD64 moved x86 into big tin, replacing RISC architectures left and right. x86, particularly x86-64 now powers the world's fastest supercomputers. So tell me, how exactly did AMD64 slow progress, other than prove EPIC wasn't ready for mainstream?

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
No thats not how the game is played. NV can't make an X86 processor with that ISA. Transmedia does not have x86 processor license. Only can do x86 in software.

I wouldn't buy transmeta just to morph x86 .

I found this much more interesting than this news . Since Intel / AMD and NV have bought license for transmedia. Intel has the whole pie right now.

transmedia software is written to work with EPIC/VLIW. So you believe NV will go EPIC with next generation of CPGPU. If they buy the company.

#1 - I fixed your poor formatting, it's like reading apoppin's posts.

#2 - Transmeta licenses the x86 ISA, meaning they can use it how they see fit - in their case instruction translation. In case you're not sure about it, ISA means "Instruction Set Architecture", as in x86. There is no devil in the details of the implementation, they have the right to produce processors that are capable of processing x86 instructions. THIS is indeed what NVIDIA needs to get into the game, a perpetual non-exclusive license to the x86 ISA. This will allow NVIDIA to legally build CPUs that are capable of being x86 compatible without regard to how NVIDIA feels like they want to implement them. Maybe they'll do them with their GPU's, maybe they'll do it EPICly, maybe they'll make a traditional CISC or RISC/CISC hybrid. It doesn't matter. The point is that whomever acquires this part of Transmeta gets a license to make x86 compatible CPUs if they so desire.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
The point is that whomever acquires this part of Transmeta gets a license to make x86 compatible CPUs if they so desire.

Is that a "known" or is that a "presumed"?

I have been operating under the assumption that Intel structured all their x86 license agreements to be non-transferable including merger and acquisition of the license holder (transmeta in this case) by another corporation (Nvidia in this case).

But if this assumption is incorrect, and only AMD's x86 license carries such restrictions then I would dearly love to know this.