NVidia has announced that they will be making x86 processors in coming years.

In a Q&A session at the conference, Nvidia’s senior vice president of investor relations and communications, Michael Hara, was asked when Nvidia would want to get into the general purpose microprocessor business. Hara said that“the question is not so much I think if; I think the question is when.”

“I think some time down the road it makes sense to take the same level of integration that we’ve done with Tegra,”“Tegra is by any definition a complete computer on a chip, and the requirements of that market are such that you have to be very low power, very small, but highly efficient. So in that particular state it made a lot of sense to take that approach, and someday it’s going to make sense to take the same approach in the x86 market as well.”

However, Hara also pointed out that Nvidia’s x86 CPU wouldn’t be appropriate for every segment of the market, and would be mainly targeted at smaller system-on-chip platforms. “If you look at the high-end of the PC market I think it’s going to stay fairly discrete, because that seems to be the best of all worlds,” said Hara, adding that “a highly integrated system-on-chip is going to make sense” in the MID (mobile intelligent device) and netbook markets.

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