NVIDIA and AMD May Release Arm-Based Chips for PCs as Early as 2025: Report

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More challenges for Intel? Reuters has shared a new report that claims NVIDIA, as well as AMD, are currently developing CPUs for PCs that are based on Arm technology. According to at least one of the publication's sources, the first of these chips could reach the market as early as 2025, complementing Qualcomm's own future Arm-based processors, which will apparently include a new flagship sold under the Snapdragon X brand. Reuters noted in its report that Qualcomm currently has an exclusivity arrangement to develop Windows-compatible chips, but that's set to expire next year.

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I thought they already had - isn't that what's in the Nintendo Switch, among other things?

nVidia's Tegra and Jetson both are sporting ARM cores if I'm not mistaken.

And AMD had an Opteron A1100 out for a while for ... some reason.
 
Talk about a long time in coming. IIRC I first saw the MS surface RT with nvidia tegra back in 2012, with desktop ARM PCs from nvida/qualcomm not much later.

Nvidia dropped its desktop ARM plans and were supposed to return after the ARM buyout, that didn't happen so plans got scrapped again and it seems nvidia may be finally coming to desktop/laptop market.

AMD had a similar story supposedly developing ARM chips for server and mobile markets even a CPU integrating ARM and x86 cores. Still waiting that to happen.
 
The main reason it's taken so long, and that it will probably take a bit longer - is that none of the companies involved are Apple, and none of them control the whole stack (hardware to userland).

However, Apple has at least shown that Arm cores can be competitive, so not all hope is lost.
 
Now if nvidia manages to release an ARM gaming PC that rivals x86... One can dream...
 
The main reason it's taken so long, and that it will probably take a bit longer - is that none of the companies involved are Apple, and none of them control the whole stack (hardware to userland).

However, Apple has at least shown that Arm cores can be competitive, so not all hope is lost.
So just how hard it would be to buy / create a software developer group?
In genuinely wonder, often I think a lot of the difficulties they may have is the company smothering employess with corporate issues.
How hard would it be to recreate a cohesive division with an agressive free spirit.
Their mission will be OS, browser and Office apps to go with the hardware plus lookin to create support for big name software like adobe.
All the needed cloud crap etc.
So I wonder how much an year for this?
At 250k per developer, 100 is 25million a year, 400 is 100million a year? A team of 400 not good?
I really have no idea, but 100million a year is certainly peanuts for nvidia, AMD could do it I think, but it might hurt, since this would be percieved as a big hole to dig into. I don't know..
 
Unfortunately I can see this happening.
I can even see it working... it's a crapshow on Apple because they literally do not support many of the APIs or features that desktop parts do.

But Nvidia? I'd bet that they'd have the appropriate support, and the way that WINE is working on Linux, gaming might actually turn out fine.
 
I really have no idea, but 100million a year is certainly peanuts for nvidia, AMD could do it I think, but it might hurt, since this would be percieved as a big hole to dig into. I don't know..
They'd have to buy Microsoft and say Adobe first. That's the level of control that Apple has.
 
They'd have to buy Microsoft and say Adobe first. That's the level of control that Apple has.
Do they though, I mean, what does it take to do and maintain something like Apple does. The OS, the store, whatever and the hardware. Isn't there loads of previous code than can be used and such? Honestly asking, I just don't know, sure MS is a trillion plus company and so is Apple, but you see open souce Linux with decent software, done on a budget of what? The spare time of goodwilled people?
The only company lately I can think of did the whole thing recently was huawei, which is supposedly android derivative, but some explain its not, that when it was android compatible (it won't be moving forward) it just had android in it as a layer or extra kernel, as the os is multikernel/ microkernel whatever that is. Sure huawei is a huge company, but the os was a backup plan with no definitive push that only became relevant once US sanctions kicked in, as huawei prefered android, and prefered Qualcomm comunications kit for that matter. Only after sanctions they finished the whole thing and made it whole, with store front, multiple device compatibility and so on (watches tablets, reglfrigerators etc) so huawei was a mostly hardware company yet they did develop the whole thing in a not so long time under less than favorable conditions, so Nvidia can't do it? Its too much of a lift for real?
Don't know, I just wonder a bit about these things, we get so many games, as a matter of routine, yet an office product like MS office is soooo impossible, its either 60$ a year (more?) or free (libre office, google docs looked like garbage last time I tried them long ago) no in-between it seems.
As far as OS, its always oh my gooood! , its so impossible! No one can do it! You know don't know if it makes sense.
 
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I can even see it working... it's a crapshow on Apple because they literally do not support many of the APIs or features that desktop parts do.

But Nvidia? I'd bet that they'd have the appropriate support, and the way that WINE is working on Linux, gaming might actually turn out fine.
AFAIK nvidia has demoed ARM based gaming pcs running windows on ARM games (I think), can't recall which one, that was when nvidia had its teeth on the ARM buyout.

I guess if anyone can do it, its nvidia. that said, they tried ARM gaming on the Shield devices and it didn't fare well.
 
it's a crapshow on Apple because they literally do not support many of the APIs or features that desktop parts do.
It is?

I mean, if you are talking about API support from Windows not being supported on OS X - well, that has nothing to do with the hardware, and I don't exactly expect Apple to go out and implement Microsoft APIs.

But going from Intel OS X to ARM OS X, I certainly wouldn't call it a crapshow. It's mostly seamless. The only glaring exception I can think of is virtualization and the loss of Boot Camp, that had to be overhauled for obvious reasons, but even that has mostly worked itself out with Windows ARM edition working fairly well there now - and again, you are back to Microsoft support, which isn't exactly on Apple to provide.

Especially when you consider Apple is a bigger gaming company than Microsoft or Sony... maybe Microsoft should look into supporting Metal rather than Apple trying to emulate DirectX.
 
ARM is great for some things, floating point calculations isn't one of them. And that's what gaming mostly relies on. It works for Mac's because Mac's are not good at gaming, and most people aren't buying a Mac to game.
 
ARM is great for some things, floating point calculations isn't one of them. And that's what gaming mostly relies on. It works for Mac's because Mac's are not good at gaming, and most people aren't buying a Mac to game.
Most of those calculations are done on the GPU anyway. CPU is mostly just there to feed the GPU, handle the networking and run the UI anymore.
 
that said, they tried ARM gaming on the Shield devices and it didn't fare well.
Well, that's mostly Android gaming, and with embedded/mobile class SoCs. A desktop SoC would look a lot more like what's in gaming consoles from Microsoft and Sony, or Apple's M-series Arm CPUs, and hopefully run Windows and Linux Arm OSs.

I mean, if you are talking about API support from Windows not being supported on OS X - well, that has nothing to do with the hardware, and I don't exactly expect Apple to go out and implement Microsoft APIs.
It's that the hardware itself is lacking when it comes to games. I don't know the details in depth, just enough to know that Apple's GPU is far more akin to how mobile GPUs are architected versus how a desktop GPU is, and that means that there's stuff that desktop games expect to be available that isn't available in hardware on Apple's M-series SoCs.

Stuff that would otherwise work with an AMD or Nvidia GPU is going to be a hackjob to get running on Apple's current systems, at best. Main point is that this isn't representative of a modern desktop with the x86 CPU switched out for an Arm CPU.

ARM is great for some things, floating point calculations isn't one of them. And that's what gaming mostly relies on.
While games do rely on floating point, just like on x86 CPUs with SSE and AVX (etc.), there are FP vector accelerators used in Arm CPUs as well. It's just a matter of someone (other than Apple) building up the existing IP.
 
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