San Jose (CA) - Nvidia announced that it is counting on Via?s Nano and will make "a significant investment in optimizing [the company?s] software for the processor". During a Q&A session held after the two-hour keynote of Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, the executive talked about heterogeneous computing and the ways his company is going to work in the future. Huang believes that the "Nano processor is a terrific performer", and especially likes the fact that you can get "DirectX 10 and 1080p playback for small change".
In fact, we heard that Nvidia is already working on optimizing all of its software for the Via Nano platform, putting the importance of this new CPU on one level with chips from AMD, ARM, IBM and Intel.
Somehow we believe that eating too much cake can?t be good, and Nvidia is definitely eating into too many different markets right now. We aren?t sure, if Nvidia really has the resources among its 5500 employees to play into so many different fields. To get those design wins, Nvidia will have to be able to support its product line-up from cradle to grave. The general feedback we are receiving from the smartphone and motherboard makers, for example, is that Nvidia?s FAE support is not good enough at this time.
Time will tell where Nvidia will end up in the future, but for now, we have doubts about the number of targeted markets. Bear in mind that Intel has more than 80,000 employees (down from more than 100,000 two years ago) and even AMD is aiming for at least 10,000 for the time when its cost-cutting process is finalized.
