Richard Cownie (tich@pobox.com) on 8/4/10 wrote:
---------------------------
>mpx (mpx@nomail.pl) on 8/4/10 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>AMD Bobcat core is supposed to be licensable, and possible to be produced in TSMC
>>fabs. Perhaps it's a good candidate for ION3?
>>
>
>Maybe. But it isn't high enough performance to satisfy
>the need for good scalar FP performance for HPC.
>SandyBridge with AVX, and maybe Bulldozer with integrated
>GPGPU, are both going to make life tough for NVidia in
>the HPC market.
>

Most people don't care about HPC. They will buy Sandybridge or Bulldozer but not for HPC or even with performance in mind, and for HPC the on-die GPUs will be thermically bottlenecked. Today's CPUs are more than fast enough for most people, and if volume is what counts then nvidia should use a Bobcat-based "ION3" to attack AMD and Intel where it hurts, in the low-end, where Intel can't really go without castrating the hell out of the Atom platform to avoid cannibalization. Something like the very first ION prototype displayed by nvidia, for example, would have sold like crazy if given the chance.