Nvidia confirms ARM CPU for Windows!

[Edward78]

I watched it, didn't hear about a CPU, but a sys. I don't think I missed it. A midwestern term comes to me now "Put up or shut up"

[tkitch]

it'll be a SoC, like a cell phone or laptop.

 

So, that's perfectly expected. 

[Edward78]

13 minutes ago, tkitch said:

it'll be a SoC, like a cell phone or laptop.

 

So, that's perfectly expected. 

Thought so, just the vid. had CPU in the sub. So it seemed they were finally going to start selling ARM CPUs.Wonder what the hold up is?

[tkitch]

buying a motherboard with an onboard CPU is buying a CPU.  

 

We're unlikely to see socketable CPUs in the future, and ARM is very unlikely to put in the effort to make it happens.

[mariushm]

AMD won't give them license to the  AM4 or AM5 sockets,  Intel won't give them a license to their sockets, so nVidia won't be stupid enough to make an entire ecosystem with motherboards that accept only 1-3 models of their CPUs (variations on core count and peak frequency being the differences).

 

Also, being ARM i doubt they'd bother to add DDR5 support, it's easier to just ad LPDDR5X support or GDDR6, something like that.

 

It could be cool if they take advantage of owning mellanox to add  25gbps ethernet or even just 10 gbps into the system-on-chip, which would make them  a potential hit for nas  machines

[Edward78]

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

buying a motherboard with an onboard CPU is buying a CPU.  

 

We're unlikely to see socketable CPUs in the future, and ARM is very unlikely to put in the effort to make it happens.

I just think it is odd, ARM laptops x86 PCs. So 2 versions of the same app. Why have 2 versions when PCs can just go ARM too?

[ewitte]

What I would like to see is windows chips designed like the Apple ones with 200, 400 and even 800GB/s memory and decent graphics.

[ewitte]

14 minutes ago, Edward78 said:

I just think it is odd, ARM laptops x86 PCs. So 2 versions of the same app. Why have 2 versions when PCs can just go ARM too?

I test windows for Arm on a M2 Max CPU (Parallels).  The translation software for x86 apps works pretty good with not too much performance loss.

[Edward78]

37 minutes ago, ewitte said:

What I would like to see is windows chips designed like the Apple ones with 200, 400 and even 800GB/s memory and decent graphics.

OMG, those are some awesome mem speeds One thing I would love is to is the GPU still being able to be a dGPU..

[porina]

54 minutes ago, Edward78 said:

I just think it is odd, ARM laptops x86 PCs. So 2 versions of the same app. Why have 2 versions when PCs can just go ARM too?

The question I asked when Qualcomm entered the Windows on Arm market is still, why should I consider ARM at all for Windows? Is it cheaper? Faster? What advantage does it give? What disadvantages are there too? Software compatibility was not 100%. 

 

41 minutes ago, ewitte said:

What I would like to see is windows chips designed like the Apple ones with 200, 400 and even 800GB/s memory and decent graphics.

Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max) is a move in that direction. ~250GB/s bandwidth = upper mid range mobile perf tier.

[Edward78]

Quote

The question I asked when Qualcomm entered the Windows on Arm market is still, why should I consider ARM at all for Windows? Is it cheaper? Faster? What advantage does it give? What disadvantages are there too? Software compatibility was not 100%. 

 

The #1 ad., cooler & less power hungery, not sure on others haven't looked them up, but the speed of ARM is not horid, not like switching to ARM will throws us back to Mhtz CPUs. Iwould love to have a sys I have in my sig. in something as small as NES or the Og Xbox. Like before the wheel, they would not think of the advantages before the wheel.

[ewitte]

1 hour ago, Edward78 said:

 

The #1 ad., cooler & less power hungery, not sure on others haven't looked them up, but the speed of ARM is not horid, not like switching to ARM will throws us back to Mhtz CPUs. Iwould love to have a sys I have in my sig. in something as small as NES or the Og Xbox. Like before the wheel, they would not think of the advantages before the wheel.

The Apple chips have been near the top for speed.  It actually does MUCH better in some instances for CPU tasks that needed the bandwidth (or at least bandwidth with large amount of RAM).

[porina]

14 hours ago, Edward78 said:

The #1 ad., cooler & less power hungery

That is not "because it is ARM" but because it was designed and operated to be so. As ewitte says below, Apple have done great with their M series chips but no one else is quite there yet. Qualcomm's offerings had mixed reviews at launch. They were not decisively better than best x86, like Lunar Lake or even Ryzen AI.

 

12 hours ago, ewitte said:

The Apple chips have been near the top for speed.  It actually does MUCH better in some instances for CPU tasks that needed the bandwidth (or at least bandwidth with large amount of RAM).

Apple chips are great, but the RAM part is not unique to ARM or Apple. It is another design choice to go for unified memory or not. Technically all APUs are unified memory, but x86 ones were so low performance no one cared about it. Strix Point is the first higher performance APU in x86 space, and hopefully not the last. At higher performance memory, you lose flexibility in upgrading/replacing it, although CAMM2 might offer a path out of that in future.

[Edward78]

I think it is just odd, I mean they are coming out with laptops, desktops are not a huge jump in complexity.

[ewitte]

16 hours ago, porina said:

Apple chips are great, but the RAM part is not unique to ARM or Apple. It is another design choice to go for unified memory or not. Technically all APUs are unified memory, but x86 ones were so low performance no one cared about it. Strix Point is the first higher performance APU in x86 space, and hopefully not the last. At higher performance memory, you lose flexibility in upgrading/replacing it, although CAMM2 might offer a path out of that in future.

But the configuration for the ram is.  They go all the way up to 800GB/s.  Although the 800GB/s models are expensive.  The M2 Max Studio I have is 400GB/s.

[porina]

6 hours ago, ewitte said:

But the configuration for the ram is.  They go all the way up to 800GB/s.  Although the 800GB/s models are expensive.  The M2 Max Studio I have is 400GB/s.

I see that as being more "right sized" for the GPU used. Unless AMD make much bigger GPU parts in a Strix Halo like configuration, there isn't a driver for that higher bandwidth. Strix Halo is the start, not the end. 

 

The M4 Pro is probably nearest to Strix Halo, with same 256-bit bus giving 276GB/s due to slightly higher mem clocks. M4 Max doubles that to 546GB/s but it is basically two chips glued together. Something AMD has not attempted in this area, yet. If Strix Halo takes off, maybe they'll try that in a future gen.

[Edward78]

Off topic, it be nice if they would adapt something like the dGPU some laptops have for Desktops. So you can build a PC with a dGPU (Not external) in a tiny case.

[Zodiark1593]

39 minutes ago, Edward78 said:

Off topic, it be nice if they would adapt something like the dGPU some laptops have for Desktops. So you can build a PC with a dGPU (Not external) in a tiny case.

Most laptops have the dGPU components soldered onto the mainboard as the rest of the system. It’s actually pretty uncommon for even gaming laptops to be using MXM. 
 

With PCI-e 5.0 being a thing though, perhaps a daughterboard containing the dGPU can be connected via M.2 (PCI-e 5.0 x4 should be good for 16GB/sec). 

[Edward78]

With PCI-e 5.0 being a thing though, perhaps a daughterboard containing the dGPU can be connected via M.2 (PCI-e 5.0 x4 should be good for 16GB/sec). 

 

The crazy thing is, I said to my Dad the other day "They need a to come out with a  m.2 dGPU". That would be great & good enough to play AAA games also.

[Ha-Satan]

On 2/14/2025 at 11:19 AM, Edward78 said:

I just think it is odd, ARM laptops x86 PCs. So 2 versions of the same app. Why have 2 versions when PCs can just go ARM too?

There's always going to be multiple ISAs because there's always somebody out there who thinks that they can do it better.

 

Even if ARM were to take over the laptop and desktop space, well, RISC-V is coming along nicely and will probably be a meaningful competitor to ARM, if not in the near future, at least in the middle future.

[Edward78]

16 hours ago, Ha-Satan said:

There's always going to be multiple ISAs because there's always somebody out there who thinks that they can do it better.

 

Even if ARM were to take over the laptop and desktop space, well, RISC-V is coming along nicely and will probably be a meaningful competitor to ARM, if not in the near future, at least in the middle future.

I thought RISC-V was ARM basically.

[Ha-Satan]

Just now, Edward78 said:

I thought RISC-V was ARM basically.

No. They are both RISC ISAs but they are not the same. Granted, I am not a pro software developer, but as far as I know, you would have just as much work to do porting ARM applications over to RISC-V as you would porting X86 applications to ARM. Like, you can't just install an ARM operating system like Armbian on a RISC-V computer. You have to install a RISC-V specific OS like Bianbu.

 

 

[Edward78]

22 hours ago, Ha-Satan said:

No. They are both RISC ISAs but they are not the same. Granted, I am not a pro software developer, but as far as I know, you would have just as much work to do porting ARM applications over to RISC-V as you would porting X86 applications to ARM. Like, you can't just install an ARM operating system like Armbian on a RISC-V computer. You have to install a RISC-V specific OS like Bianbu.

 

 

Thanks.