Project Denver is an ARM architecture

ARM architecture

ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

 CPU being designed by Nvidia

NVIDIA

Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...

, targeted at personal computer

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

s, server

Server (computing)

In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...

s, and supercomputer

Supercomputer

A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...

s. The CPU package will include an Nvidia GPU on-chip.

The existence of Project Denver was revealed at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show

Consumer Electronics Show

The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...

. Microsoft also announced that the upcoming Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Windows 8

Windows 8

Windows 8 is the codename for the next version of the Microsoft Windows computer operating system following Windows 7. It has many changes from previous versions. In particular it adds support for ARM microprocessors in addition to the previously supported x86 microprocessors from Intel and AMD...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 will be able to run on ARM architecture CPUs such as Project Denver. In a March 4th 2011 Q&A article CEO Jen-Hsun Huang

Jen-Hsun Huang

Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang is a Taiwanese American entrepreneur and businessman. A native of Taiwan, he grew up in Oregon, graduating from Oregon State University before moving to California where he graduated from Stanford University. He co-founded the graphics-processor company Nvidia and serves...

 revealed that Project Denver is a five year 64-bit

64-bit

64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...

 ARM architecture

ARM architecture

ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

 CPU development on which hundreds of engineers had already worked on for three and half years and which also has 32-bit

32-bit

The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....

 ARM architecture

ARM architecture

ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

 backwards compatibility.

The Project Denver CPU internally translates the ARM instructions to an internal instruction set, using firmware in the CPU.

According to Charlie Demerjian, Project Denver was originally intended to be a x86 CPU, but was changed to the ARM-64 instruction set because Nvidia could not obtain a license to Intel's patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

s.