Posts tagged cpu
Project Denver: Windows 8 on Nvidia CPUs, Intel in the Crosshairs
Jan 5th
In the course of just a few hours, the seeds have been planted for a major upheaval in personal computing. Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement that Windows 8 will support ARM processors, graphics chip maker Nvidia has revealed that it is developing a full lineup of ARM processors. ”Project Denver” will include CPUs for desktops, laptops, servers, and supercomputers and is an all-out assault on Intel’s PC market dominance.
In the past, Nvidia has licensed ARM cores for its Tegra and Tegra 2 smartphone/tablet chipsets (see here for more info), but with this announcement, Nvidia aims to turn itself into a full-fledged System-on-a-Chip (SoC) architecture designer– a major upgrade. The firm will integrate graphics chipsets into its CPUs, as Intel and AMD have done recently. The single most important factor that makes Project Denver significant, however, is Microsoft’s announcement: no longer being limited to just x86 chips (which Nvidia could never get a license from Intel to produce), Windows 8 PCs will be able to run on Nvidia’s processors without issue.
Read on for more about Nvidia’s new CPU project.
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Microsoft: Windows 8 will support ARM processors
Jan 5th
Microsoft dropped a bombshell at CES today, announcing that the next version of the Windows OS will run on ARM processors. The company stated that Windows for ARM will run on SoC (System on a Chip) architectures and will support hardware accelerated web browsing, media playback, and peripheral support on par with standard x86 Windows.
The move is aimed at extending the Windows experience to new devices. ”Windows PCs will continue to adapt and evolve,” CEO Steve Ballmer said in his keynote. “It means Windows will be everywhere on every kind of device without compromise.” The company showed off demo units running a future version of Windows (but with the user interface from Windows 7) on ARM chips from Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Texas Instruments.
The ARM-powered machines were running just Internet Explorer 9, Office for ARM, and an Epson printer driver. The Nvidia Tegra 2 demo box, however, was nonetheless impressive, smoothly playing the Iron Man 2 trailer in 1080p and running the IE9 HTML5 demos without any hiccups.
Read on for more details about Microsoft’s ARM announcement, and see our Smartphone Processor Guide for more information about ARM’s SoC processor architectures.
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Qualcomm ships dual-core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon CPU for smartphones
Jun 3rd
Qualcomm just shipped the first dual-core smartphone processor, a 1.2 GHz Snapdragon chip. The new third-generation QSD8260 and 8660 chips are based on a die-shrunk 45nm version of the 1 GHz QSD8250 chip found in phones like the HTC HD2, EVO 4G, and Google’s Nexus One and should use less power while packing a lot more computing horsepower.
The third-generation Snapdragon CPUs offer a next-generation Adreno (ATI Imageon) GPU with support for Open GL ES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1, hardware acceleration for 1080p HD video encode/decode, and video output resolution up to WXGA (1280×800) with 24-bit color. They also pack a dedicated low power audio engine (to allow the rest of the CPU to go to sleep when you’re just playing music) and low power GPS electronics (to reduce power consumption in navigation apps).
The 8260 model packs an HSPA+ radio (GSM), while the 8660 supports both HSPA+ (GSM) and EV-DO Rev. B (CDMA). Qualcomm will also offer the QSD 8672, a 1.5 GHz version for tablets and larger devices that began sampling several months ago.
The CPUs are based on the same Scorpion core design as current Snapdragon chips, implementing the ARMv7 instruction set but offering slightly better performance clock-for-clock than ARM’s reference design, Cortex A8. For more information, check out our Smartphone Processor Guide.
No info on when the new chips will hit production smartphones, but we’re probably looking at early 2011 at the earliest.
Full press release after the break.
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VIA demos dual-core 1.6 GHz Nano DC desktop CPU, 720p HD video
Jun 3rd
VIA just demoed a prototype dual-core version of its much-acclaimed but hard-to-find Nano CPU at Computex in Taipei. The Nano DC is a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, but VIA reps says it’s only meant for low-cost desktops, not netbooks. We did some digging and found that the prototype CPU basically consists of two of company’s single-core Nano 3000 dies put together in one package. The Nano 3000 is a 65nm chip, and putting two of them together probably pushes power and heat levels way too high for netbook usage.
Nonetheless, a 65nm dual-core Nano might still offer a decent low-cost CPU option for desktops. VIA’s demo motherboard paired the Nano DC with a VN1000 Digital Media Chipset and dual-channel DDR3 memory. VN1000 includes an S3 Chrome 520 GPU, which was demoing a 720p video loop and supports 1080p HD playback, DirectX 10.1, and HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.
VIA’s true (single-die) dual-core Nano chip for netbooks should be out by early next year. The company was experimenting with 45nm manufacturing processes but wasn’t able to lock down the details in time to launch the CPU this month, as originally planned.
Photo: Engadget
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