While the whole world is likely waiting for the debut of NVIDIA's first consumer-grade, Fermi-based graphics processing units, the company's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, goes along and dismisses some of the recurring rumors that have been circulating on the Internet. One of these rumors claims that the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker is currently in the process of developing an x86 processor of its own. This will put the company in direct competition with Intel and its x86 technology, which should be rather interesting, especially after taking a look at the differences of opinion between the two companies.
During an interview last week, after the company's announcement of its third-quarter
earnings, Jen-Hsun Huang was asked about the possibility of his company entering the x86 market with a processor of its own, which will be compatible with all the pieces of software that currently run on Intel or AMD-based PCs. Upon hearing the question, the company's CEO strongly denied the rumors, saying that, “Nvidia's strategy is very, very clear. I'm very straightforward about it. Right now, more than ever, we have to focus on visual and parallel computing.”
NVIDIA's CEO went on to say that his company was looking at that moment to proliferate the GPU into all kinds of platforms, including bringing the GPUs into servers for parallel computing and enabling cloud-computing solutions that took advantage of the performance capabilities of the graphics processing unit. In addition, Huang also reaffirmed the company's expectations for its Tegra platform, which will drive NVIDIA into the mobile-computing market.
Despite Jen-Hsun Huang's statements, there still are some reports that claim the company is likely developing an x86 central processing unit, which will likely be coming to the market in the next 12 months, or even sooner. If that's the case, Intel and NVIDIA will enter a head-to-head competition in both the CPU and GPU segments, especially considering Intel's plans to roll out its Larrabee chip.
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