Posts tagged nvidia
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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AMD kills ATI brand
Aug 30th
Alas, the day has come when the world of computer graphics cards will no longer be a race between red (ATI) and green (Nvidia). Instead it’ll be green all over, as AMD just announced that it will be shuttering the ATI brand. ATI’s product brands — Radeon, FirePro, Eyefinity, and the like — will still remain and will be colored red, but they’ll all now be AMD-branded.
The decision is based on the company’s upcoming Fusion hybrid APUs, which will combine an AMD CPU and ATI graphics chip into one core. Branding everything as AMD makes things simpler, but we have to question the company’s judgement in the graphics space. Whereas AMD is still largely seen as a value-oriented second-choice to Intel in the processor space, ATI has a market-leading brand image in graphics.
Only time will tell whether AMD will end up diluting its strength in graphics by associating Radeon with Phenom. Interestingly, the change would mean that Intel-powered computers with ATI graphics would now have both Intel and AMD stickers on them, so AMD will be offering stickers that say just “Radeon graphics,” without AMD — which seemingly defeats the purpose of killing the ATI brand.
Read on for more about AMD’s decision.
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Making Sense of Smartphone Processors: The Mobile CPU/GPU Guide
Mar 14th
Smartphone manufacturers these days boast of their phones’ computer-like capabilities, from desktop-like internet browsing to HD video playback. They toss around spec sheets filled with processor names like ARM11, Cortex A8, Snapdragon, Tegra, OMAP, Armada, and more. What do these all mean, and how do the various chips compare? That’s what we’re going to take a look at today. More >
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