Graphics card manufacturer NVIDIA has been on a colliding course with processor giant Intel for some time now. From time to time the mood has been pretty tensed with blows below the belt, and the one we perhaps remember best was when NVIDIA tried to question the very future of the CPU. They tried to prove that it would be wiser to spend money on a graphics card sooner than a new processor and NVIDIA’s VP Jen-Hsun Huang said the following just a month ago;
“The heart of this issue is that the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the GPU.”
NVIDIA has completely turned around now, at least on the exterior as NVIDIA’s Michael Hara made a statement at Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Fransisco where he revealed that NVIDIA isn’t just planning to launch an x86-based CPU, but is most likely already working on one.
NVIDIA has a System-on-a-chip (SoC) solution for handhelds with its ARM-based Tegra processor, sporting both low power and high performance. Now that it is talking about an x86-based processor it looks like a similar venture as with the Tegra chip. Creating a circuit of the same integrated nature as Tegra but with x86 software support.
This is not a high-end performance processor like the models Intel and AMD produce, but perhaps the foundation of a new Ion platform for ultraportables. The processor is expected to surface within 2-3 years and exactly what NVIDIA will have to show by then is something only the future can tell.
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