I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them - George Bush
|
|
|
Nvidia has two CPU lines
NVIDIA IS GOING to release two types of CPUs in the near future. On June 3rd, according to the slides from this week's reviewers day. Luckily as they forgot to invite us, they forgot to NDA us as well so we can tell you all about the Tegra APX 2500 and CSX 600/650 while others can only fume. Awwwww.
ARM11 based system on a chip. This one is aimed at handheld devices in the same way that Atom is.
The chip itself comes in a 144mm2 package, not die, and can do 720p encode and decode at 14MBps. It supports the same last gen features as much of the current GeForce line, can do AA and AF, and will support OpenGL ES 2.0.
The big brother CSX 600 and 650 is aimed at larger machines with screens between handhelds and real laptops. It runs Wince, not XP or Me II because it is not x86, and in general makes you question why they bothered. The chip itself has 256K of L2 cache and can be die stacked to keep the footprint small.
This one runs at 700-800MHz and will support 1080p at 24FPS, not the full 60. It also has hard disk support and can run video in under 3W. If you are keeping track, this is about what Atom can do, but Atom doesn't have that pesky FPS limit.
More information about who is using this will trickle out in the coming week before Computex, and expect a few people to have designs on display there. Given the vast speed advantage Intel has here, you would have to question why people would bother, but, as P. T. Barnum was quoted as saying. µ
Tags: Nvidia
Share this:
Share
I will recommend not to wait until you get enough money to buy different goods! You can take the a href="http://lowest-rate-loans.com/topics/business-loans" business loans /a or just car loan and feel yourself free
The a href="http://lowest-rate-loans.com/topics/mortgage-loans" mortgage loans /a suppose to be essential for people, which are willing to ground their own business. By the way, it's very easy to get a car loan.
I think that to get the a href="http://lowest-rate-loans.com/topics/personal-loans" personal loans /a from creditors you must have a good reason. However, once I have received a small business loan, just because I was willing to buy a house.
Do you acknowledge that this is correct time to get the a href="http://lowest-rate-loans.com/topics/personal-loans" lowest-rate-loans.com /a , which would make your dreams come true.
"can run video in under 3W. If you are keeping track, this is about what Atom can do, but Atom doesn't have that pesky FPS limit"

Yeah, but Atom needs an 8W chipset (Paulsbo) to achieve that. So this ARM based solution is a quarter of the power, and vastly smaller.

Note that even the AXP2500 is more powerful, in a single cheap chip, than all the Intel based chippery inside the Apple TV which struggles to decode at half the bitrate. If Apple had any sense, they would release an Apple TV based upon the high end nVidia CPU line, price it lower, and crow about the higher performance. If they don't, someone else will.
To correct the previous post... ARM11 is technology that has been shipping in devices for a fewyears. This is not the latest ARMv7 (Cortex-A) technology that TI and Qualcomm devices use which is superior.
whoa my mistake, ARM11 is ARMv6. Cortex is ARMv7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture 

not cortex.
@Lord Moon: These particular IP's are targeted for places that still will need decent performance. Video & opengl acceleration. And it will do them with good power budget. Performance per watt will for sure be better than Atom, but the chip still has to be optimized to be fast & high bandwidth, unlike many embedded systems.

@Alex: ARM is much more energy efficient, and theres plenty of OS's that run great on it. What would they have to gain from and X86 license?

@Leroy: 1080P60 is a target because then you can power ANY display with your device. Its not designed with Bluray in minds, its designed as a portable computer you can plug in. If you ahve a portable computer than cannot do 1080P its not going to just work in a lot of places youd expect.

@hoohoo: yes the world needs more ARM makers. for one, if the market gets competitive enough the fascists at TI might have enough competition that they think about letting mere mortals and not just special friends use their good parts.

@Perezoso: ARM11 is Cortex, so yes, its Cortex.

Guys! These chips will make passable laptops/desktops, but the form factor they're aiming for is MUCH SMALLER. A lot of these will end up in consumer portable media player devices, where the OEM takes the platform, adds someone elses packaged OS, then builds a locked down UI on that base kernel. However I'm sure some nice linux systems will also ensue.
Ok, so lets take a company that is struggling a little (NVidia) with yields and clock speeds on hugely fat and power consuming chips - and lets take some of that energy and focus and go after a low cost (profit?) market segment. They dont even own their own fabs for heavens sake...how does one make money with model? I read where Apple is looking to buy their own fab to make their own baby proc's.

There are multiple things they could improve upon in order to keep their market share - power, cost, speed, drivers, yield, performance, etc. But nooo...lets take those people and do...SOMETHING ELSE!!

I suspect they are worried about Intel's Larrabee and want something else to bring in some money if Intel actually delivers

I agree with a statement I read from another poster....I really liked NV for a long time (and bought many of their products) but the relationship is looking ugly when one side is always whining.
If I'm correct then 1080p standard is set to 60fps 1080i is 30fps.

23.9whatever is what a human eye can "decode" but those estra frames can give you extra detail what you can't see, but you do.

The limit set to 24 makes sense, since it cuts down power consumption so it makes sense, as you can't see the extra detail on that small screen even if you can see it on a larger one even if you can't see it as your eye can see only 23.9watever fps...

competition always makes sense, but if it's nVidia, don't expect that it will force the prices down, or the performance up, so it doesn't really make sense...

anyways, I don't really like nVidia as much as I did when they started...

I swear I loved them... but the feeling has changed just like in a relationship, where you were sure you want to have kids with her/him, but later you only wanted to kill that stranger...
Wasn't the APX 2500 actually launched at Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona? So it's hardly a big news leak here, although the CPX seems to be new.
Since Nvidia has always made such a big deal about high framerates, even though 24 fps is all you can see (except in wide panning shots), then the fact that they can only do 24fps is a big deal.

These chips sound like a steaming pile of cr*p, and only running Windows ce is laughable. Windows CE was rubbish the day it shipped and now its old rubbish.

Its great that they don't have a real CPU architecture, I am so pleased.
A large number of those Eee PCs are running Windows or dual booting. Any mini laptop with an ARM processor is going to lose a lot of potential customers as the customers may be willing to try a linux laptop, but they want the comfort of knowing they can install Windows later. There is a reason Asus includes a Windows driver disc with each laptop and makes sure to advertise that point. I personally would have no problem with a ARM based laptop, but I am not the average user (if I say so myself).
It's ME II not Me II charlie, since both letters of the original ME were acronyms for a word

As for the market for this poor chip compared to the competition; I'm sure nvidia already thought of ways to force manufacturers to adopt them regardless of many better offerings being available.
Is CSX 600/650 a Cortex-based SoC?
Does the world need another maker of ARM controllers? 

Unless I am very much mistaken, the only thing that can rival UNIX for diversity of versions and makers - emacs aside - is the ARM CPU.

It'd be great if Nvidia were to produce an x86 or x64 competitor. It'd be even greater, perhaps even insanely great, if Nvidia were to crack x86/x64 domination of the desktop & server CPU market with some non-xNN architecture. I'm not holding my breath though.
Interesting to see what the 'War of Words' between Intel, and Nvidia was going to come down to. Obviously, both companies have a lot invested into the emerging UMPC, and Ultra Low Cost PC market. It'll be interesting to see where this leads... but for Intel, this isn't their first competitive rodeo so to speak. Just look at AMD/ATI... Personally, for the good of the industry, I think they should work together on something. However, that of course would mean corporate cooperation, and Intel likely sees Nvidia as small potatoes compared to their multi trillion dollar, multinational operation, and they seem to want all of the market to themselves, if their crowing about their integrated graphics solutions are any indication.
BluRay disks are "1080p at 24fps", which are currently the highest-quality video source available to consumers. What's this "full 60" that it should theoretically be able to do?
as P. T. Barnum was quoted as saying.

But times have changed and i think it is every second now.

Don't you?
Surely 1080P at 24 FPS is what everyone is aiming for as its what the movie was shot at. It snot a game charlie 60FPS means nothing , accept that your movie will be running in Fast forward! 

So actually I can see a lot of people buying this, and as with the EEEPC it does not have to run windows to be a sucess!
NVIDIA should pursue an x86 license they are an American company so it’s not like the American economy would lose out, besides if this company had an x86 license it would be one of the few that could bring something interesting to the plate.
Your missing the point of embedded devices -- its not always about how fast the CPU is but also what it costs. I doubt many folks would say I'll buy microwave oven x rather than y because it has a CPU that runs 2 x faster or even if the CPU uses 10% less power. We buy microwave x over y because it costs $5 less or has a kool 'back potato' button that the other one doesn't have.

So.... unless Intel has changed its strips, Atom will be a costly part compared to an ARM processor. There are products where speed and power will be important and some they will probably go Intel's way, but there are many times more products where price is king and I'd expect these parts might just do OK .