CPU

Montalvo's Miracle Chip Fails the x86 Test

The start-up is still validating the processor's design

By Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

10th of April 2008, 11:02 GMT

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Montalvo got its chip, now it has to make it work

Chip startup Montalvo boldly raised up against Intel earlier this year in an attempt at delivering a miraculously efficient x86 processor. However, the company seems to be facing another wall in its market conquest, as its design

lamentably fails in speaking the same language with the rest of the processors.

The company was reported late last month to be in talks with Fujitsu about a manufacturing contract. It seems that the manufacturing process eventually finished with the company's long awaited processor, but the bad news is yet to come: it does not live up to Montalvo's expectations.

Recent reports emerging from the ultra-secretive company say that the processor lamentably failed the x86 tests, therefore it is unable to run software written for the x86 processors. Montalvo is currently seeking help for bringing up, validating and verifying its intricate processor architecture.

Montalvo managed to score quite a large amount of money in research and development programs from a notable amount of investors, but designing a chip is extremely expensive, and disaster can strike at any step. AMD's failure with its Barcelona / Phenom silicon should be an illustrative example.

More than that, Montalvo is reportedly $100 million short, and needs to get additional funding in order to continue its energy-efficiency pursuit.

The idea behind Montalvo's design is based on a couple of asymmetrical cores, that would handle different jobs, according to their complexity. The larger cores will kick in when the system is working on complex computing tasks, and will be shut down when the CPU is performing basic tasks, thus sparing important amounts of energy.

Rumor has it that Montalvo is currently in talks with chip giant Sun Microsystems about a possible merger. However, this is less probable, given the fact that the server expert is focused on developing its Rock processor, slated for release later this year.

TAGS:

Montalvo | CPU | x86 | Sun | Intel

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