Since Nuvacore is still just a startup, we can only wonder whether its business plan includes marketing of CPUs at all. Nuvia, which was also founded by Williams and Bruno along with Manu Gulati, was acquired by Qualcomm and ultimately shaped the company's Snapdragon X Elite SoCs. In that light, its approach could give the company considerable commercial flexibility.
By developing much of its WarpCore design without tying it to a particular ISA, the company could potentially adapt the technology to the requirements of a future customer or partner. An Arm licensee could use the underlying core technology for an Arm implementation; another customer could choose RISC-V or another ISA. An established x86 vendor could potentially acquire or license the underlying microarchitecture and create its own x86 CPUs if it needs to.
Nuvacore, of course, has not indicated that such a transaction is its objective, but keeping WarpCore ISA-agnostic for as long as possible potentially broadens the number of companies to which its CPU technology could be valuable.
All in all, the Core First announcement tells us considerably more about how Nuvacore intends to develop WarpCore than what the processor itself will eventually look like. But if the company really does keep its ISA options open until relatively late in development, WarpCore represents an unusual attempt to separate development of a high-performance CPU microarchitecture from one of the decisions that normally defines a processor project from its earliest stages.
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Anton Shilov Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
bit_user The key question I have is whether this new approach relies on AI to wire up the front-end (ISA) and back-end. It's possible they designed a lingua franca microcode that maps to all the concepts of major ISAs, but I fear such a general approach would end up sacrificing vital efficiency. Also, I wonder if their endgame is to get bought by a CPU or systems vendor, like PA Semi and Nuvia were. Or, are they really trying to go head-to-head with another core IP design firm, like SiFive? Finally, I'm thinking this might be a sneaky way around having to get an ARM ISA license. Maybe ARM is refusing to sell them a license, after what happened with Nuvia/Qualcomm and so they're just developing generic backends they can sell to a customer who already has an ARM Architecture license. Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/nuvacore-reveals-unconventional-core-first-cpu-ip-design-strategy-chip-startup-led-by-apple-and-nuvia-legends-plans-to-delay-isa-selection-for-as-long-as-possible#main
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