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It's Nvidia circling back for a kill on intel. They didn't go head to head, even they wanted to. Instead they built a completely different space within data cen
by Keyframe 6y ago
It's Nvidia circling back for a kill on intel. They didn't go head to head, even they wanted to. Instead they built a completely different space within data centers for them, got a foothold, expanded (mellanox) and now going for the missing piece, which will also allow them to expand the battleground with intel outside of datacenters. Interesting times and Nvidia, so far, showed they know their strategic moves.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoNVidia is awful when it comes to FLOSS support. If they get ARM, at least it may accelerate RISC V developments.
- rjsw 6y agoARM isn't great, I don't see much difference in GPU documentation between the two.
- robert_foss 6y agoThis is true and fair. However ARM does a _lot_ of ecosystem open source support for their ISAs.
- monadic2 6y agoARM makes GPUs? I’m holding a reference copy of aarch64 in my hands and I’ve written half an assembler from it. Granted SoCs often are just as bad as nvidia, but that’s not ARM’s fault or problem, really.
- rjsw 6y ago> ARM makes GPUs? They do [1], but don't provide documentation for them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU)
- monadic2 6y agoAh, I never made the connection before.
- ansible 6y agoNXP (formerly Freescale) generally has good docs and tools for their iMX series SoCs. For some of them you have to sign up to get the reference manuals though.
- jshap70 6y agoyou do realize that Nvidia is a major backer of RISC-V and already uses it on GPU's Turing and newer?
- FeepingCreature 6y agoYeah but they have no avenue to control it. Not like ARM and its ISA licensing.
- jshap70 6y agoRISC-V is inherently a customizable ISA though, whereas ARM implementations are very specific about what they require to be called an "ARM processor". This wouldnt change from this acq.
- the-dude 6y agoWould they tone it down if they acquired ARM?
- jshap70 6y agono. they're isolated for a reason, with the RISC-V processor being used as the controller to manage the behavior of the other parts of the chip. beyond just licensing ARM is expensive because it's required to implement a lot. With that chip being RISC-V they can make it as minimal and perfectly tuned as possible, so it's slow when it can afford to be cheap and fast when it needs to be.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoThat isn't the same at all. Canonical being a major backer of Linux is significant, but Linux is significantly open and diversified to where it does not stand or fail by one party, abet there are some that have more influence than others.
- sg47 6y agoNvidia is making a play for the data center business not the desktop business. Especially with its Mellanox acquisition, Nvidia wants to build high performance data centers (they have GPUs and networking but need CPUs since most computing is general purpose). I doubt that they'll succeed though since they don't have the software layer to provide the 'private cloud' that they are looking to build.
- fennecfoxen 6y agoThey basically want to run a cloud built around feeding enormous amounts of data to their GPUs, for AI operations and the like. This is also why they bought SwiftStack in March: to manage that storage. Source: job interview
- NotSammyHagar 6y agoThe other part of it is Softbank will be rescued from their idiotic and incredibly wasteful investments. They bought so much crap and had too much money and they still managed to buy a few valuable things, probably by accident. It's slightly infuriating. At least I'm happy to see amd succeeding by actual intelligent engineering.
- Keyframe 6y agoWasn't Softbank involved with Nvidia as well? That's probably the connection.