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Nvidia preps ARM Denver for supercomputers

Nvidia has outlined its plan for the Denver high-performance computing processor, but is cryptic about when the chip might launch.The processor will have a 64-bit capability and emphasis will be placed on single-threaded performance, the company's chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang, said on Thursday on the company's earnings call for the third quarter of 2012.
Written by Jack Clark, Contributor

Nvidia has outlined its plan for the Denver high-performance computing processor, but is cryptic about when the chip might launch.

The processor will have a 64-bit capability and emphasis will be placed on single-threaded performance, the company's chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang, said on Thursday on the company's earnings call for the third quarter of 2012.

With Denver, "we dedicated ourselves to create a new architecture that extends the ARM instruction set, which is inherently very energy-efficient already, and extend it to high-performance segments that we need for our company to grow our market," Huang said. "We're busily working on Denver. It is on track."

Denver was first announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Nvidia did not specify the ARM architecture the chip would be based on.

ARM made its first foray into 64-bit chip designs with the ARMv8 architecture, which was announced on 27 October.

At the time of the launch ARM said the architecture should get its chips into "high-performance servers and computing". ARM already has a presence in mobiles and tablets.

"The Denver architecture is intended to extend the ARM instruction set into segments where ARM is not naturally likely to go themselves," Huang said

"There are segments in the marketplace that desperately would like to see an energy-efficient instruction set architecture, like massively parallel processing in supercomputing," Huang said. "Or in a very energy-efficient high throughput server."

Energy efficiency has become a priority for many top technology companies. Intel has an ambitious scheme to develop a computer a hundred times more powerful than today's, but consuming only twice the amount of power.

Nvidia will talk more about the chip toward the end of next year, Huang said.

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