NVIDIA’s Vera and Rosa CPUs: A New Era of Competition

NVIDIA is shifting its CPU strategy from internal use only to a dual approach—serving both its own needs and external customers. This transformation begins with the Vera CPU, based on the Arm instruction set and NVIDIA’s custom architecture.

• Key Specs of Vera CPU:
  • 72 cores
  • Space multithreading and high-speed interconnect innovations
  • Claimed 1.5× IPC performance boost
  • Exceptional single-thread performance and highly efficient multi-threading

This marks NVIDIA’s direct challenge to Intel and AMD, while also competing against other Arm-based custom processors.

Rosa CPU – Coming in 2028

According to NVIDIA’s roadmap, the next step after Vera is the Rosa CPU, expected in 2028. The name “Rosa” is short for Rosalyn, honoring Nobel Prize–winning medical physicist Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (1921–2011). She pioneered radioimmunoassay technology, enabling detection of viruses, hormones, and drug levels in blood without biological assays. Remarkably, she waived patent rights, allowing global free adoption.

Despite facing gender discrimination early in her career, Yalow’s determination led to groundbreaking achievements. NVIDIA continues its tradition of naming CPUs and GPUs after renowned physicists.

• Rosa CPU Highlights:
  • Entirely new design
  • Focus on extreme single-thread performance
  • Part of NVIDIA’s next-generation computing platform
  • Integrated with BlueField-5 DPU and ConnectX-10 SuperNIC

This also signals a shortened CPU development cycle—from four years down to two—bringing NVIDIA closer to Intel and AMD’s cadence.

Feynman GPU – The Platform’s Star

The upcoming platform’s centerpiece is the Feynman GPU, which introduces two major innovations:

1. Die stacking – enabling dramatic performance scaling.
2. Custom HBM4 memory – likely a derivative of C-HBM4E, with potential for 1TB per package and soaring bandwidth.

In short, NVIDIA is positioning itself as a full-spectrum competitor in CPUs and GPUs, with Vera as the opening move, Rosa as the next leap, and Feynman GPU as the flagship of its new computing ecosystem.