• Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12407 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    Update:

    > "T50/Tegra 5 is now known as Denver, but the x86 part has been dropped for legal reasons."
    > http://semiaccurate.com/2011/04/06/nvidia-in-full-philosophical-retreat-for-tegra-3/

    More on what Project Denver has/had to do with x86:

    "T50 was going to be a full 64-bit x86 CPU, not ARM cored chip, but Nvidia lacked the patent licenses to make hardware that was x86 compatible. [...] Publicly, Nvidia's stance was that there was no need for any license because the company was not making x86 hardware. Technically, this is true, T50 is a software/firmware based 'code morphing' CPU like Transmeta. The ISA that users see is a software layer, not hardware, the underlying ISA can be just about anything that Nvidia's engineers feel works out best. T50 is not x86 under all the covers, nor is it ARM, it is something else totally that users will never be privy to. The idea was that this emulation of x86 in software would be more than enough to dodge any x86 patents that would stop the chip from coming to market. SemiAccurate has it on very good authority that this cunning plan would not have succeeded, and based on what the sources showed us, the chip never would have gotten to market. [...] So, where does a core go from here? That one is easy, it becomes an ARM core, or if you believe Nvidia PR, it was ARM all along. T50 was never ARM hardware based, we had originally heard it was an A15 or the follow-on part, that emulated x86, that information turned out to be wrong. T50 is its own unique ISA, and emulates the exposed ISA as embedded software. Think of it as an on chip x86 or ARM compiler to the low level instructions. So, between last fall and CES, out went x86, and in came ARM, specifically the ARM-64 core that is the follow up to the A15 chip."
    http://semiaccurate.com/2011/08/05/what-is-project-denver-based-on/
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