4 ms·

NVIDIA's Project Denver CPU puts the nail in Wintel's coffin

19 points by julian37 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago
As much as I would love to drive a wooden stake through its heart, shoot its head off with a 12 gauge shotgun and, just to be safe, put a couple silver bullets in Wintel's dead body and then help Nvidia on putting a couple nails in its coffin so we can throw it into the lava pit of Mount Doom, I am a bit skeptical. Wintel has a ton of momentum behind it.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  Windows running on X86 will still be popular, and, in fact, will likely be managing greater than 90% (95%? 99%?) market share for the foreseeable future, particularly on windows desktops/laptops. The point of the article, was that it's no longer "Wintel" - Windows will now run on ARM. That was the big news of the day.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Like it was pointed out elsewhere, it's not the first time Windows NT runs on non-x86 platforms. MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha and Itanium had their ports, along with some limited software support. It was this limited support that doomed those machines, despite the fact they had enormous speed advantages over their Intel-based counterparts, something ARM doesn't. Unless Microsoft can pull an unprecedented movement in their 3rd party ecosystem, I see no reason to consider this a world-changing event.
    - ambirex 16y ago
      I believe it is a significant change for the focus of NVIDIA, less so the world. It has long been rumored that they might be working on a CPU. It is a little bit like the surprise of Apple's A4 processor.
    - wladimir 16y ago
      Making it easier to support alternative architectures beyond x86 might have been one of the motives behind .NET. After all, .NET bytecode, like Java, is platform independent, or can be made platform independent with minimal effort. This means that ARM windows will already have a "3rd party ecosystem".
      - sid0 16y ago
        As David Wheeler said, "all problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection".
ambirex 16y ago
While I think that "the nail in Wintel's coffin" headline is, to put it kindly, hyperbole; I agree the the smart phone market has really given a boost to the ARM ecosystem. I can't help but feel their success is directly tied to Windows 8 supporting ARM. I hope for NVIDIA's sake that it doesn't go the direction of WinFS.

19 points by julian37 16y ago

As much as I would love to drive a wooden stake through its heart, shoot its head off with a 12 gauge shotgun and, just to be safe, put a couple silver bullets in Wintel's dead body and then help Nvidia on putting a couple nails in its coffin so we can throw it into the lava pit of Mount Doom, I am a bit skeptical. Wintel has a ton of momentum behind it.

ghshephard 16y ago
Windows running on X86 will still be popular, and, in fact, will likely be managing greater than 90% (95%? 99%?) market share for the foreseeable future, particularly on windows desktops/laptops. The point of the article, was that it's no longer "Wintel" - Windows will now run on ARM. That was the big news of the day.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Like it was pointed out elsewhere, it's not the first time Windows NT runs on non-x86 platforms. MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha and Itanium had their ports, along with some limited software support. It was this limited support that doomed those machines, despite the fact they had enormous speed advantages over their Intel-based counterparts, something ARM doesn't. Unless Microsoft can pull an unprecedented movement in their 3rd party ecosystem, I see no reason to consider this a world-changing event.
  - ambirex 16y ago
    I believe it is a significant change for the focus of NVIDIA, less so the world. It has long been rumored that they might be working on a CPU. It is a little bit like the surprise of Apple's A4 processor.
  - wladimir 16y ago
    Making it easier to support alternative architectures beyond x86 might have been one of the motives behind .NET. After all, .NET bytecode, like Java, is platform independent, or can be made platform independent with minimal effort. This means that ARM windows will already have a "3rd party ecosystem".
    - sid0 16y ago
      As David Wheeler said, "all problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection".

ambirex 16y ago

While I think that "the nail in Wintel's coffin" headline is, to put it kindly, hyperbole; I agree the the smart phone market has really given a boost to the ARM ecosystem. I can't help but feel their success is directly tied to Windows 8 supporting ARM. I hope for NVIDIA's sake that it doesn't go the direction of WinFS.