G80 is more CPU than GPU

A WELL-CONNECTED source says Nvidia's G80 is as programmable as the average CPU. Nvidia's flagship chip powering the Geforce 8800 GTX and GTS has, he said, almost everything that a CPU needs.

This may answer the question, can and will Nvidia make a CPU? Certainly the chip is not meant to be X86 compatible but it is apparently super programmable. We hear that it could probably handle X86 instructions as well.

AMD techies took a deep look at the G80 and confirmed the claims. G80 has all the features of CPU but it is big, hot and bulky. However, Nvidia still has to shrink the chip to make it cost effective.

Both ATI and Nvidia want yo make a combine CPU/GPU, and from waht we hear, Nvidia may not be far from this goal. It needs to optimise this chip before moving to a real CPU market. G80 is still big, complicated, and warm but we expect its maker to move toward the ultimate CPU goal in 2007.

All Nvidia has to do now is get itself an X86 licence. µ