NUVIA - a new CPU startup to challenge AMD and Intel?

smilingcrow · 16 Nov 2019 at 17:48

humbug said:
Surley what they use in servers is AMD64, not X86.

Surely an AMD64 license is useless without the underlying x86 license for which it is an extension?
Otherwise AMD could issue AMD64 licences to anyone and they could build an x86-64 CPU without Intel suing them.

humbug · 16 Nov 2019 at 18:03

smilingcrow said:
Surely an AMD64 license is useless without the underlying x86 license for which it is an extension?
Otherwise AMD could issue AMD64 licences to anyone and they could build an x86-64 CPU without Intel suing them.

X86_64

This is what Vince was talking about, to expand on it Intel wanted to remove the X86 licence from AMD, AMD were already developing their own set of Extensions, that's AMD64, it was very successful in the server space, to stop Intel withdrawing X86 AMD tagged AMD64 on to X86 for 64Bit Computing on the Desktop, Intel tried to counter AMD64 with their own 64Bit IP but failed. With that AMD forced Intel to licence AMD64, Intel and AMD ended up cross licensing X86 and AMD64. X86_64.

Microsoft use X86_64, Linux which includes server OS's use AMD64.

Edit: Its around about that time Intel really rapped up its illegal shenanigans against AMD.

Also, Games that are available on Windows but also run natively on Linux run far better on Linux than they do on Windows.

smilingcrow · 16 Nov 2019 at 18:29

Useless then.

humbug · 16 Nov 2019 at 18:35

smilingcrow said:
Useless then.

Neither X86_64 or AMD64 are useless, you use both on your Windows OS if you're running an Intel or AMD CPU, X86 on its own is useless, that ended with Windows XP 32Bit

I'll put it this way:
Intel could not operate on Windows without AMD's IP
AMD could not operate on Windows without Intel's IP

They are intertwined.

Linux, particularly BSD servers are AMD64 only. These days even Desktop Linux like Ubuntu and Kubuntu are AMD64 only.

I don't know what you mean?

Quartz · 16 Nov 2019 at 18:37

I'm interested that they're going for the server space. I wonder which niches within the server space? They can't be going for the 'virtualising Windows Servers' space because they don't do x64 and running an emulator has got to be a huge overhead.

smilingcrow · 16 Nov 2019 at 18:47

humbug said:
I don't know what you mean?

Clearly.
I am saying that an AMD64 license is completely dependent on having an x86 license which is why by itself it is worthless.

humbug · 16 Nov 2019 at 18:58

smilingcrow said:
Clearly.
I am saying that an AMD64 license is completely dependent on having an x86 license which is why by itself it is worthless.

By its self its used in 'not all' but in some server spaces.

I'll put it to you another way, if Intel remove X86 from AMD, they can continue to operate. If AMD removed AMD64 from Intel, Intel cannot operate. If you want argue which is useless; X86_64 is useless without the _64 part, AMD64 is still useful on its own.

humbug · 16 Nov 2019 at 19:06

@smilingcrow do you run an Intel CPU? go to this explorer address...

smilingcrow · 16 Nov 2019 at 19:10

So are you suggesting that AMD can issue an AMD64 license to anyone and that the purchaser can then build a compatible chip without having to get a license from Intel for all the underlying x86 patents that make up the majority of the ISA?

humbug · 16 Nov 2019 at 19:12

smilingcrow said:
So are you suggesting that AMD can issue an AMD64 license to anyone and that the purchaser can then build a compatible chip without having to get a license from Intel for all the underlying x86 patents that make up the majority of the ISA?

AMD could issue AMD64 and with that the licensee could build datacenter compatible CPU's, yes.

smilingcrow · 16 Nov 2019 at 19:18

humbug said:
AMD could issue AMD64 and with that the licensee could build datacenter compatible CPU's, yes.

Why do you use the exact words I highlighted?
Does that mean that the CPUs couldn't run Windows without a license from Intel also?

humbug · 16 Nov 2019 at 21:03

smilingcrow said:
Why do you use the exact words I highlighted?
Does that mean that the CPUs couldn't run Windows without a license from Intel also?

Already answered this question.

humbug said:
Neither X86_64 or AMD64 are useless, you use both on your Windows OS if you're running an Intel or AMD CPU, X86 on its own is useless, that ended with Windows XP 32Bit

I'll put it this way:
Intel could not operate on Windows without AMD's IP
AMD could not operate on Windows without Intel's IP

They are intertwined.

Linux, particularly BSD servers are AMD64 only. These days even Desktop Linux like Ubuntu and Kubuntu are AMD64 only.

I don't know what you mean?

Dalandius · 16 Nov 2019 at 21:57

NUVIA’s goals are to create new chip and CPU designs that are aiming to compete at the highest performance levels in the datacentre market, aiming for an upheaval in the industry for what the company describes as “A step-function increase in compute performance and power efficiency”.

Yet another company doing ARM in the cloud?
As for needing x86 or AMD64 license why would they. They are not going to be running Windows in a data centre are they?

humbug · 16 Nov 2019 at 22:02

Dalandius said:
Yet another company doing ARM in the cloud?
As for needing x86 or AMD64 license why would they. They are not going to be running Windows in a data centre are they?

Technically they wouldn't, if they can get software vendors to support them.

smilingcrow · 16 Nov 2019 at 22:17

humbug said:
Already answered this question.

You should write for politicians, your level of obfuscation is that good/bad.

Vince · 17 Nov 2019 at 01:11

smilingcrow said:
You should write for politicians, your level of obfuscation is that good/bad.

There is Intel x86 code (Intel IP) in AMD64 so technically no, well at least not anywhere outside of China and even that was limited to the production of a couple of specific designs and within a spec provided by AMD. At the end of the day the AMD64 instruction set took Intel IP, added further instructions to allow 64bit computing while maintaining backwards compatibility with intels x86 to which it also added instructions and for which there was a massive base of Intel optimised code.

In my opinion Intel simply missed spotting that this was their best way forward when they were trying to build an entirely new ground up 64bit ecosystem, they stood to gain the most from this technology but by the time the spec was made public AMD had already dropped the K8 architecture. If you are Intel at this point what do you do? Carry on trying to flogg a dead horse in Itanium or build something to beat the competition which at this time was incredibly strong?

To answer the question AMD cannot simply license AMD64 to anybody as it carries the same underlying use license as the technology on which it was built. It's massively important to distinguish between the license to create a micro architecture for specific instruction sets and the license to write software against that architecture one is free to maintain the other almost impossible. Again I'm sure nVidia would attest to this, it was no secret that they wanted and could not get an x86 license and by extension of that cannot produce AMD64 capable processors, this also applies to emulating the x86/AMD64 instructions sets on other architectures. There is nothing to distinguish a difference between AMD6 and x86_x64.

Wikipedia said:
x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64 and Intel 64[note 1]) is the 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set. It introduces two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mode. With 64-bit mode and the new paging mode

My money is on a clause in the cross license that in the event of one not operating the technology is then openly available to the other. Which is what AMD needed, checkmate on the IP to continue building x86 designs. Carefully constructed by "helping out the competition".

I took this snippit from Anandtech which had an article about the 2011 legeal settlement between Intel and Nvidia:

NVIDIA also does not get an x86 license. x86 is among an umbrella group of what’s being called “Intel proprietary products” which NVIDIA is not getting access to. Intel’s flash memory holdings and other chipset holdings are also a part of this. Interestingly the agreement also classifies an “Intel Architecture Emulator” as being a proprietary product. At first glance this would seem to disallow NVIDIA from making an x86 emulator for any of their products, be it their GPU holdings or the newly announced Project Denver ARM CPU. Being officially prohibited from emulating x86 could be a huge deal for Denver down the road depending on where NVIDIA goes with it.

Basically the chip in the op will be an arm or risc-v chip. Essentially the title is a bit clickbaity as really are they taking on intel and amd who predominantly create x86 designs?

Grim5 · 18 Nov 2019 at 06:04

As long as they have proper product names

As you can see below, Intel has everyone beat

humbug · 18 Nov 2019 at 12:14

lol ^^^

zx128k · 18 Nov 2019 at 18:11

humbug said:
X86_64

This is what Vince was talking about, to expand on it Intel wanted to remove the X86 licence from AMD, AMD were already developing their own set of Extensions, that's AMD64, it was very successful in the server space, to stop Intel withdrawing X86 AMD tagged AMD64 on to X86 for 64Bit Computing on the Desktop, Intel tried to counter AMD64 with their own 64Bit IP but failed. With that AMD forced Intel to licence AMD64, Intel and AMD ended up cross licensing X86 and AMD64. X86_64.

Microsoft use X86_64, Linux which includes server OS's use AMD64.

Edit: Its around about that time Intel really rapped up its illegal shenanigans against AMD.

Also, Games that are available on Windows but also run natively on Linux run far better on Linux than they do on Windows.

I remember buying an Athlon 64. Itanium Intels IA-64 processor hit the market before Opteron. Itanium basically failed to sell, so Intel made a clone of the AMD64 extensions named IA-32e (later renamed EM64T, then yet again renamed to Intel 64). After that I think we had the Xeon and Pentium 4 processor from Intel which were updated to support the new 64-bit instruction set.

humbug · 18 Nov 2019 at 18:26

zx128k said:
I remember buying an Athlon 64. Itanium Intels IA-64 processor hit the market before Opteron. Itanium basically failed to sell, so Intel made a clone of the AMD64 extensions named IA-32e (later renamed EM64T, then yet again renamed to Intel 64). After that I think we had the Xeon and Pentium 4 processor from Intel which were updated to support the new 64-bit instruction set.

Vince, yet again is right, i was wrong, i looked again at it. AMD64 does contain some Intel IP, there has also been some legal wrangling over some of it with AMD capitulating. Intel and AMD are joined at the hip, IP wars between them has them owning bits of X86_64 between them.