NVIDIA CPU may be well in development

X-bit Labs suggests NVIDIA has been preparing to enter the processor market for many years. The site points out NVIDIA has been a member of the HyperTransport Consortium for many years as well as the Silicon-on-Insulator process technology consortium. Additionally, the GPU giant hired Walliam Dally as its chief scientist, this guy is known for his expertise in parallel computing technologies as well as work on Cell/Larrabee-like processors. There are even rumors that NVIDIA has been hiring processor specialists from Stexar for several years now.

Now that the company presumably has microprocessor design specialists, the rights to use HyperTransport bus and some degree of expertise in SOI process technology, it seems clearly that Nvidia is working on CPUs or complex system-on-chip devices with a microprocessing unit inside. The question is when the company plans to release something that will compete against AMD and Intel. The answer to the question is simple: once AMD and Intel completely conquer the market of platforms by integrating crucial system components into their microprocessors there will be no place for Nvidia. Once this happens, it will make sense for the latter to begin promoting its own platforms with own CPUs or SoCs. It is very likely to happen rather sooner than later...