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Rumors have resurfaced that NVIDIA is looking to support its business by branching into the production of x86 processors.
Speaking on behalf of Broadpoint AmTech, Analyst Doug Freedman said, “We believe Nvidia could enter the x86 CPU business. Nvidia could become a supplier of x86 CPUs by necessity to preserve both GPU and chipset revenue.”
He continued: ”We believe that Nvidia has hired former Transmeta staff extensively, and that instruction code ‘morphing’ requirements have declined as more x86 instructions have come off of patent coverage.”
Transmeta was a company that specialized in ULV processors branded with the Crusoe, and later the Efficeon names. The Crusoe and Efficeon processors differed from traditional CPUs in that the order and manner in which they executed x86 code was handled by software, an architectural design known as Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW).
VLIW architectures rely on software to identify inter-dependencies and schedule the execution order of incoming instructions. This forgoes the need for the complex hardware scheduling and reordering engines of superscalar processors like those from AMD or Intel.
The benefit to the Transmeta VLIW model is that extensions to the x86 spec can be added to the processor’s real-time software compiler with an update, thus adding to the processor’s capabilities without re-engineering the hardware. For example, the Efficeon processor was updated via software to support both SSE3 and the NX bit in 2002.
The downside to VLIW architectures is that they’re only as good as the real-time compiler doing the work of translating the system’s x86 calls. This very problem hamstrung the Crusoe CPU, as Transmeta’s Code Morphing Software (CMS) could not keep up with the computational performance of competing superscalar chips.
It would be a fantastic gamble for NVIDIA to follow in Transmeta’s footsteps with a VLIW architecture, but it would allow them to sidestep the issue of acquiring an x86 license. Put simply, Intel is never going to give them one. The two companies are already engaged in several legal entanglements, and Intel recently forced NVIDIA into putting a portion of its chipset business on the backburner. Emulating x86 in software, however, would allow NVIDIA to execute the x86 code that’s essential to surviving in the desktop market while shrugging Intel’s lock on the x86 ISA.
This is not the first time NVIDIA has been linked to the now-defunct Transmeta or to aspirations in the x86 market. NVIDIA was previously tapped to produce chipsets for the Efficeon CPU in 2003, and the company has said that an NVIDIA try at x86 is a matter of “not so much if” but when. Adopting Transmeta’s VLIW designs for a ULV SoC with Tegra-like qualities may be just the product NVIDIA needs to run up against products like the Intel Atom and the AMD Athlon Neo.
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