NVIDIA Project Denver to hit the market in 2015?

VR Zone reports NVIDIA's Tegra "Stark" is expected to be the first produced based on the 64-bit Denver architecture. This SoC is anticipated to be introduced in late 2014, with actual availability in 2015. By the time Project Denver finally arrives, the architecture will have eight years of development behind its back as NVIDIA originally started working on the project after the acquisition of Stexar in 2006.

Prior to the debut of NVIDIA's own 64-bit architecture, the company will launch Kal-El and Kal-El+ (28nm die-shrink), both based on 32-bit ARM Cortex-A9 architecture, followed by Wayne (Cortex-A15) and Logan, all before Stark comes alive.

NVIDIA is developing Project Denver for better part of the past decade. The company acquired Colorado-based Stexar in 2006, with a plan to develop a binary compatible architecture with the x86 instruction set, with or without Intel's permission/license. The original architecture called for a similar approach used by Transmeta with a translation layer being the core part of the architecture. However, luckily for NVIDIA, then tiny ARM started its ascent into the contemporary computing with the new generation of smartphones. As such, NVIDIA's R&D shifted focus from being binary compatible with x86 into an extended ARM architecture. Needless to say, this practically required starting from scratch.

Given that NVIDIA takes four years to develop a new GPU and that typically, CPU requires five years of development, the first silicon coming out of Stexar will only come after eight years of development. One of terms we heard about Project Denver from a highly ranked executive in a competing firm was "Lost in Rockies".