NVIDIA's Fermi: Architected for Tesla, 3 Billion Transistors in 2010
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The graph below is one of transistor count, not die size. Inevitably, on the same manufacturing process, a significantly higher transistor count translates into a larger die size. But for the purposes of this article, all I need to show you is a representation of transistor count.
See that big circle on the right? That's Fermi. NVIDIA's next-generation architecture.
NVIDIA astonished us with GT200 tipping the scales at 1.4 billion transistors. Fermi is more than twice that at 3 billion. And literally, that's what Fermi is - more than twice a GT200.
At the high level the specs are simple. Fermi has a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface and 512 cores. That's more than twice the processing power of GT200 but, just like RV870 (Cypress), it's not twice the memory bandwidth.
The architecture goes much further than that, but NVIDIA believes that AMD has shown its cards (literally) and is very confident that Fermi will be faster. The questions are at what price and when.
The price is a valid concern. Fermi is a 40nm GPU just like RV870 but it has a 40% higher transistor count. Both are built at TSMC, so you can expect that Fermi will cost NVIDIA more to make than ATI's Radeon HD 5870.
Then timing is just as valid, because while Fermi currently exists on paper, it's not a product yet. Fermi is late. Clock speeds, configurations and price points have yet to be finalized. NVIDIA just recently got working chips back and it's going to be at least two months before I see the first samples. Widespread availability won't be until at least Q1 2010.
I asked two people at NVIDIA why Fermi is late; NVIDIA's VP of Product Marketing, Ujesh Desai and NVIDIA's VP of GPU Engineering, Jonah Alben. Ujesh responded: because designing GPUs this big is "fucking hard".
Jonah elaborated, as I will attempt to do here today.
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Zingam - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
No no! This is just on paper! When will see it for real!! Oh... Q2-3-4 next year! :)So you cannot claim they have the better thing because they don't have it yet! And don't forget next year we might have the head-smashing Larrabee!
:)
Who knows!!! I think you are way to biased and not objective when you type!
chizow - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Heheh if Q2 is what you want to believe when you cry yourself to sleep every night, so be it. ;)Seriously though, its looking like late Q4 or early Q1 and its undoubtedly meant for one single purpose: to destroy the world of ATI GPUs.
As for Larrabee lol...check out some of the IDF news about it. Even Anand hints at Laughabee's failure in his article here. It may compete as a GPGPU extension of x86, but not as a traditional 3D raster, not even close.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Gosh you'd be correct except here is the FERMIhttp://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15762/1/">http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15762/1/
There it is bubba. you blew your yap wide open in ignorance and LOST.
Good job, you've got plenty of company.
ClownPuncher - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Wow, a video card! On top of that pcb could be a cat shit for all we know. The card does not exist, because I can't touch it, I can't buy it, and I can't play games on it.Also, the fact that you seem to get all of your info from Fudzilla speaks volumes. All of your syphillus induced mad ramblings are tiresome.
Lifted - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
I see what appears to be a PCB with some plastic attached, and possibly a fan in there as well. Yawn.ksherman - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Really like these kind of leaps in computing power, I find it fascinating. A shame that it seems nVidia is pulling a bit away from the mainstream graphics segment, but I suppose that means that the new cards from ATI/AMD are the undisputed choice for a graphics card in the next few months. 5850 it is!fri2219 - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
For the love of Strunk and White, stop murdering English in that manner- it detracts from the text buried between banner ads.Sunday Ironfoot - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
nVidia have invented a new way to fry eggs, just crack one open on top of their GPU and play some Crysis. :-)SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Let's crack it on page 4. A mjore efficient architecture max threads in flight. Although the DOWNSIDE is sure to be mentioned FIRST as in "not as many as GT200", and the differences mentioned later, the hidden conclusion with the dissing included is apparent.Let's draw it OUT.
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What should have been said 1st:
Nvidia's new core is 4 times more efficient with threads in flight, so it reduces the number of those from 30,720 to 24,576, maintaining an impressive INCREASE.
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Yes, now the simple calculation:
GT200 30720x2 = 61,440 GT300 24576x4 = 98,304
at the bottom we find second to last line the TRUTH, before the SLAM on the gt200 ends the page:
" After two clocks, the dispatchers are free to send another pair of half-warps out again. As I mentioned before, in GT200/G80 the entire SM was tied up for a full 8 cycles after an SFU issue."
4 to 1, 4 times better, 1/4th the clock cycles needed
" The flexibility is nice, or rather, the inflexibility of GT200/G80 was horrible for efficiency and Fermi fixes that. "
LOL
With a 4x increase in this core design area, first we're told GT200 "had more" then were told Fermi is faster in terms that allow > the final tale, GT200 sucks.
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I just LOVE IT, I bet nvidia does as well.
tamalero - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
on paper everything looks amazing, just like the R600 did in its time, and the Nvidia FX series as well. so please, just shut up and start spreading your FUD until theres real information, real benches, real useful stuff.