Nvidia to Challenge Intel with Arm-Based Processors for PCs

Its rapidly reaching the point where Windows is the least useful most foibled way to run Windows apps. No one can make a Steam Deck that works a third as well, and that's 90% because everyone else relies on Windows.

If you need anything other than a pure desktop form factor, it feels like Windows is a bad fit. It's unknown how long Windows can remain the top desktop option. And app emulation is great elsewhere.

jakobson143• 3 years ago

wine and proton do nothing to port across architectures from x86 to ARM. whenever anyone uses wine to run windows software on arm linux they do so using qemu/fex via hangover.

SubiculumCode• 3 years ago

office 365?

StressedDev2• 3 years ago

The ARM version of Windows runs ARM and x64 software. It works very well.

longstation• 3 years ago

I think another important message from the same article is: AMD is also preparing Arm-based CPUs.

bradfa2• 3 years ago

Again? https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/01/14/will-amds-seattle-pu...

andrewstuart4• 3 years ago

I really think Intel will be hard to displace on the desktop.

There is a very low tolerance for incompatibility and ARM, whilst great in controlled environments, just cannot compete with Intel architecture in compatibility.

outside12342• 3 years ago

Plus Microsoft is not super invested in making ARM shine like Apple is

StressedDev2• 3 years ago

I am not sure where you got that from. Windows runs great on ARM. I got one the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (it's an 8 core ARM PC with 32 GB of RAM, 512 GB SSD). I ran run Windows, Office, Visual Studio, GIT, etc.

I suspect a lot of games will not run but everything else works fine. This includes x64 (x86 64-bit software).

Also, MS has made a lot of their software ARM compatible. Office 365, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio code all have native ARM binaries. In Visual Studio's case, it has fewer features than the x64 version (mostly fewer supported SDKs).

Overall, I can't tell I am even running on an ARM system because it feels like an x64 system. It is responsive, fast and just works.

pjmlp• 3 years ago

They are actually,

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2023/10/16/window...

However the Windows developer community couldn't care less if it doesn't bring more money home, and Microsoft isn't Apple, backwards compatibility matters.

swatcoder• 3 years ago

For better or worse, the last 15 years saw the industry move to a highly-abstracted platform-agnostic software ecosystem. People perform many of their tasks using applications running in a browser, in a wrapped browser engine like Electron, or in products using other portable runtimes like .NET or the JVM.

Meanwhile, much legacy software that hasn't made this transition often comes from an age of much lower performance and so can afford the penalties of emulation against modern hardware. Other legacy products are continually aging out and being retired for other reasons.

There are always exceptions, but Intel doesn't have the nearly the security it once did.

andrewstuart4• 3 years ago

I reckon if you send a gamer kid down to the store to buy a PC they will come back with an Intel architecture machine, even if there were ARM machines there.

majormajor2• 3 years ago

For better or worse, the last 15 years saw the industry move to a highly-abstracted platform-agnostic software ecosystem. People perform many of their tasks using applications running in a browser, in a wrapped browser engine like Electron, or in products using other portable runtimes like .NET or the JVM.

A lot of the people who only need those things have largely already moved away from the PC desktop. (Especially if we don't include "laptop" in the "Intel will be hard to displace on the desktop" statement, which I'm not sure if the OP meant to include or not. But even if we include laptops, a lot of people have already moved away to tablet or non-Wintel-land.)

The remaining things, though? Generally not highly abstracted. There's the highly-tuned-for-amd64 performance side of things, and then the legacy/slow dev cycle side. I'm skeptical on the legacy side that there's a good business to be built on trying to move those users to a different architecture. Everybody's special weird setup is gonna be different enough with lots of random one-off external hardware or other such requirements I don't see good universal solutions that could scale.

It's not a growth business anymore but it's decline is slowing, I think.

dehrmann2• 3 years ago

highly-abstracted platform-agnostic software ecosystem

It also moved towards Docker and Rust.

zer0zzz• 3 years ago

Don’t forget that there’s all the tricks apple did with Rosetta to make emulating x86 fast (hardware consistency support, 4k pages, etc). I think the same apply for chpe.

helsinkiandrew• 3 years ago

I really think Intel will be hard to displace on the desktop.

It will be hard but not impossible. If (for example) Nvidia were to produce a product with a tight integration between CPU/GPU - both technically and price wise that could be used to create a very competitive gaming PC (perhaps low to mid end) then worked with a few gaming companies so the major games worked on it. Made sure Windows and the basic office apps, Chrome, Firefox etc. worked well there would be a market, especially if the ARM chip gave a noticeable performance boost over a similarly priced Intel.

daft_pink• 3 years ago

I think AMD is the most likely to win this race as they are way more reasonable than Nvidia and Qualcomm in terms of margins and better at working with the vendors.

brucethemoose27• 3 years ago

That is a reasonable assessment.

Nvidia and Qualcomm are just so... Nvidia and Qualcomm like. They can't help themselves.

That being said, history also suggests AMD will bungle the software side.

photonbeam• 3 years ago

I’ve always been baffled by this, why hasn’t AMD brought in an army of software devs

MikusR2• 3 years ago

And AMD is so AMD.

dehrmann2• 3 years ago

Plus their product is an almost one-to-one replacement for Intel's. There's no question of if X will work, and you don't need to port anything before doing performance tests.

conradev• 3 years ago

Qualcomm already ships SoCs for Surfaces, Chromebooks and Galaxy Books. Those chips lag in performance, and I’m curious how much of them catching up will just be “updating to the latest ARM IP”

NVIDIA also shipped Tegra SoCs with their own Denver cores, but they scrapped the project

jwells89• 3 years ago

If AMD makes the Linux versions of the various software surrounding their ARM CPU open source, it'll likely win by default. Even if Nvidia's and Qualcomm's offerings perform a bit better, nobody wants to put up with those two's nonsense if they don't have to.

orwin• 3 years ago

Yes. The only reason I'm on intel on my main (general purpose) computer is that I want reliable software that will just work on a clean install, without having to modprobe or modify the grub.

AMD is cheaper (less power too for the same performances), so for my NAS and laptop it's my choice, and probably if I had to build a gaming computer I would use AMD too.

throwaway9143• 3 years ago

It pisses me off that AMD does either low/cheap laptops or extremely gaudy gaming machines. There's this high performance ultrabook niche that I wish they could make inroads to.

It is impossible to find: AMD + high resolution screen (3840x2400) + 120hz + OLED. In the last year even the Intel ones downgraded though, everyone went 3200x2000 @ 120hz OLED.

It's just frustrating when you're looking at upper-end AMD laptops and you cannot find 16GB of memory, or a decent screen. I'm glad they can dish out $500-$800 laptops, but I don't know why OEMs are always pairing the good components with Intel.

fodkodrasz• 3 years ago

It must be a coincidence..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Allegations_by_the_Europ...

pizza234• 3 years ago

It's just frustrating when you're looking at upper-end AMD laptops and you cannot find 16GB of memory, or a decent screen.

This is not correct. Just looking at Lenovo (and surely, there are similar machines from other brands), even a mainstream laptop like the Yoga 7 14" AMD ships 16 GB, and it has a 2.8K OLED display as option. If you want more, the T14(s) can ship with 32 GB and matte display.

smallstepforman• 3 years ago

Two years ago I got the AND advantage edition chipset in HP Omen. 5800 gpu, 6600M navi + dmbedded vega, 32gb ram 3200, 16” QHD @165Hz, 1Tb nvme + extra nvme. This was Stock, I just added an extra 1Tb nvme drive. Cool snd quiet. Even has full size cursor keys, and a row for home/end and friends, including prtnscrn. And lots of expansion ports.

AMD do offer solutions, its the vendors that ignored Navi and insisted on supplying power guzzling 3060 instead. Blame the customers for that.

Good laptop with 3 flaws - should have been 16:10, and the touchpad driver is terrible, and power supply is a brick. Fix these and you would have had oerfect laptop.

stoobs• 3 years ago

AMD doesn't make laptops, take it up with Acer, Asus, Lenovo, etc etc.

chaostheory• 3 years ago

Have you seen the modular offerings from https://frame.work/

Given the nature of their laptops, even if the laptop you want isn’t there yet it’s only a matter of time before you get the module that you want

TylerE3• 3 years ago

Something like an Apple M-Series, but with enough RTX cores bolted on to provide, say, PS5 levels of GPU... that could be pretty compelling. I like my M1 Studio a ton, but I do wish it had a bit more GPU.

VHRanger• 3 years ago

They've been building the Tegra for the switch and shield.

I'd be interested in more recent SoCs from them

brucethemoose27• 3 years ago

You can already buy Orin dev boards, they just cost a fortune.

pier25• 3 years ago

The M2 improved the GPU considerably and the M3 is rumoured to improve it even further.

TylerE3• 3 years ago

I look forward to it then. I actually bought mine through a best buy program where after, I think it was 24 months I basically have the option of making either a balloon payment and keeping the machine I have, or turning it in but applying at least a substantial percentage of payments so far (might even be 100%) towards the latest generation. So, I'll probably do that and get whatever M2/M3 Studio is available, and hopefully spring for the Ultra double the everything version instead of the base.

Even still, my basest of base 32GB M1 Studio actually games pretty well in the few games that are really properly optimized for it (e.g. arm native, vulkan)

raverbashing• 3 years ago

Makes me wonder if this could be on the next-gen Playstation or XBOX

vondur• 3 years ago

Some of the Nvidia Jetson kits seemed to be pretty good little PC's. They run Linux fine, but Windows seems to be lagging for ARM at the moment.

adrian_b• 3 years ago

The Jetson Orin kits have decent performance and good documentation, but they are extremely overpriced in comparison with equivalent computers with Intel or AMD CPUs.

glitchc• 3 years ago

DOA. It's one thing for Apple with full vertical integration to succeed, quite another for NVidia to make any inroads where they have no control over the OS stack. The Windows ARM version is not going to save them.

returnInfinity• 3 years ago

Most likely, but Jensen hows how important Software is. Maybe there is a chance he can pull a rabbit out of his leather Jacket.

otabdeveloper4• 3 years ago

Linux ARM works perfectly well.

Unless you want to play videogames, Linux ARM is probably preferable to Intel.

sangnoir2• 3 years ago

Nvidia can have full vertical integration in thr data center. If they can have high memory bandwidth and integrate it with their next-gen GPU (e.g. with a custom high-bandwidth fabric allowing for more shared memory), they'll sell a lot of them to hyperscalers and ML training crowd. Lower cooling costs may be a co-headline item.

initplus• 3 years ago

Apple's ARM switch worked because they have tight control over the whole software stack, and actually worked really hard to provide transparent support for older x86-64 software. Windows for ARM has none of this support and has basically zilch market share as a result.

If Microsoft releases an equivalent of Rosetta at the same level of quality it will be a different story. But I can't see what influence Nvidia has over this?

jamesgeck02• 3 years ago

If Microsoft releases an equivalent of Rosetta at the same level of quality it will be a different story.

Microsoft has had their own Rosetta equivalent for a few years now. In theory application compatibility is more comprehensive than Rosetta as it supports much older applications, including 32-bit applications. In practice (likely as a result of trying to support so much more stuff) application compatibility isn't as rock solid as Rosetta for every application.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x8...

DanielHB• 3 years ago

Apple's Rosetta uses some special hardware in the M1 and later chips to make some x86/x64 translated instructions much faster. I believe it was the load and store instructions.

Microsoft doesn't have access to these instructions for their own implementation (because they are not ARM standard), but theoretically they could have qualcomm or other SoC providers add some custom hardware that does the same. But in a fragmented landscape that can be hard, some windows laptop SoCs might have it, some might not.

nknealk• 3 years ago

I think it’s slightly more complex than that. Apple included in their processor design custom extensions to ARM that alter things like memory order to make emulation easier [1]. It’s not just control over the software stack that makes Rosetta so performant.

[1] https://github.com/saagarjha/TSOEnabler

utopcell• 3 years ago

Nvidia could do the same

hurril3• 3 years ago

Apple doesn't have (tight) control over the whole software stack. This is something people say and probably believe.

They don't write Haskell, Postgres, Rust, Java, Scala, Firefox, Spotify, VS Code, Postico or any number of the other software that I run.

They (Apple) released _their_ software and the necessary tools to make it possible for all the software vendors to port all their code in their time, basically. But it all ran (runs!) on both Intel and ARM, still.

lllauri• 3 years ago

Most of the software mentioned was working fine on ARM based SBC-s long before Apple switched to it.

hurril3• 3 years ago

Why has this been downvoted? Who is upset by this?

m463• 3 years ago

I think it might be interesting though.

Microsoft is a software company. Nvidia is a hardware company.

Although they don't have the tight integration that Apple has, there might not be the limitations apple adds.

vGPU2• 3 years ago

What do you call the surface line and the Xbox?

Justsignedup2• 3 years ago

Also Rosetta isn't perfect. Apple doesn't have gaming. Windows does. Even if ms was to release Rosetta one of their core market uses will be crippled.

elsonrodriguez2• 3 years ago

This is where close partnering helps. Microsoft can lead the way in building all their games(a considerable library, especially after the Activision acquisition) with universal binaries, and provide great tools to third parties to build games the same way.

The games that aren't recompiled will (after 2 years or so) fall far enough behind in requirements compared to the state of the art, that the emulation will be fast enough to play those older games.

pornel• 3 years ago

Apple has fat binaries, and made Xcode produce them by default, with seamless cross-compilation. AFAIK Windows has nothing like that. There are no fat binaries. Cross-compilation is fiddly and needs to be done manually.

There is a massive difference between developers just needing to press the "Build" button again (with no code or config changes), and requiring developers to manually add support for both architectures the hard way.

iamgopal• 3 years ago

Hopefully they target Linux

hlandau• 3 years ago

I'm sure this will be dependent on lots of signed closed-source firmware like Intel and AMD platforms, but there's always room for NVIDIA to surprise me, break character and do the opposite. It would attract a lot of people to the platform who want or need open firmware.

nologic01• 3 years ago

Alas, feels like signaling to support the overheated hype and trillion dollar valuation.

Real competition in this space would be really good. The shape of mass computing is inceasingly a tortured collusion game rather than a true market.

Anybody who used a raspberry pi knows that the desktop computing landscape is not what it used to be. For peanuts you can have a rock-solid linux PC that covers the computing needs of like the 99% of people.

With a convergent OS you'd also cover the mobile use case, where conveniently Arm is already the norm.

The future will not look like the past but speculators beware, timing earthquakes is not possible.

nickstinemates• 3 years ago

I hope Nvidia makes an Os too. Anything to threaten Windows.

justinclift2• 3 years ago

What kind of benefits do you reckon they'd get from doing their own OS?

Guessing you mean something more than they're own Linux distro too?

jacobgorm• 3 years ago

Just wondering how many hugabytes we will have to download just to get Hello World to link and run…

AltruisticGapHN• 3 years ago

Maybe NVIDIA is aiming for servers and the like here, not the mainstream market. So the flawless support for Windows and drivers and their own GPUs for gamers etc is less of a concern?

Fascinating developments though... we would all benefit from chipsets converging towards a similar architecture.

karteum• 3 years ago

By the way, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver : "Project Denver was originally intended to support both ARM and x86 code using code morphing technology from Transmeta, but was changed to the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set because Nvidia could not obtain a license to Intel's patents"

exabrial• 3 years ago

I really want a sever with the absurd memory bandwidth/latency that an m1/m2 have.

Just not a lot of benchmarks here that reflect what happens in the real world unfortunately

namelosw• 3 years ago

It seems Nvidia was trying to unify cloud computing (GPU + CPU + whatever-PU), and put those beasts in data centres.

Is this "PC" processor still aiming for data centres or desktops? It's not surprising at all if it's the former one.

seec• 3 years ago

I wouldn't hold my breath too much. Before even talking about software and backward compatibility which is quite important for windows users (at least the one who are going to buy at high price/margins) it must be competitive from a performance standpoint.

If we look at what Apple has done with their ARM chips, outside of power consumption they rarely win on performance. It is mostly software optimized to use their specialized hardware compute block that get any advantage from Apple Silicon. Their ARM CPU are not that special, especially since they make it hard to sort CPU from GPU and other hardware co-processor. When you go look in detail in the various benchmark numbers you realize the CPU part performs at most like a mid-range laptop CPU. And their GPU (that gets used to "win" some CPU benchmark) is weak when you consider the price but admittedly that is not going to be a problem for NVidia.

People say Apple successfully transitioned but it is mostly because they leave no choice to their customers. In other words, they do not have to compete. I doubt they would have sold much Apple Silicon desktop if those were to compete with equivalent Intel + dGPU machines; particularly considering the price premium. Compared to the golden iMac era, it seems like they do not sell much of them in the first place, and it sort of makes my argument.

NVidia will not have this luxury that Apple has. They will have to compete on both performance and price. Apple did not really succeed; I doubt they will. But maybe their chip designers are so much better than Apple's or less focus on power consumption will allow them to unlock more performance from ARM. But this is old history, and it seems to just repeat itself. Apple just went back to their Motorola "G" days where they pretend that they are competitive but in fact when you do run software that exists cross platform and is not unfairly optimized for the Apple platform it is rarely true. NVidia won't be able to create a marketing spin around this and still sell their stuff at a massive premium. It is unlikely that PCs will switch to ARM because there are not that many benefits but quite a bit of hassle and cost involved.

It is like the rotary engine that has some advantages over traditional piston engines but in the end are very rarely worth the tradeoffs which is why it is stuck in niche applications (at best, mostly unused actually).

Nvidia to Challenge Intel with Arm-Based Processors for PCs

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