Microsoft amp; NVIDIA To Design CPUs

According to INQ, Microsoft and NVIDIA are working on making some CPU architecture. Development is underway at NVIDIA's just-announced Portland, Oregon, Design Center on 45nm designs. The project should bear fruit sometime in 2008, as NVIDIA prepares plans to compete with Intel and AMD on the blended graphic and CPU concept. Microsoft is exploring hardware design now in part because of a new set of tools that will make it possible to test ideas quickly, he said. The researchers will employ a system designed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, that makes it possible to reconfigure computer designs without the cost of making finished chips.