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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silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Anand's entitled to make mistakes. You do nothing else.SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Oh golly, another lie.First you admit I'm correct, FINALLY, then you claim only mistakes from me.
You're a liar again.
However, I congratulate you, for FINALLY having the half baked dishonesty under enough control that you offer an excuse for Anand.
That certainly is progress.
silverblue - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
And you conveniently forget the title of this article which clearly states 2010.johnsonx - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
I think there might be something wrong with SiliconDoc. Something wrong in the head.SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
I think that pat fancy can now fairly be declared the quacking idiot group collective's complete defense.Congratulations, you're all such a pile of ignorant sheep, you'll swather together the same old feckless riddle for eachothers emotional comfort, and so far to here, nearly only monkeypaw tried to address the launch lie pointed out.
I suppose a general rule, you love your mass hysterical delusionary appeasement, in leiu of an actual admittance, understanding, or mere rebuttal to the author's false launch accusation in the article, the warped and biased comparisons pointed out, and the calculations required to reveal the various cover-ups I already commented on.
Good for you people, when the exposure of bias and lies is too great to even attempt to negate, it's great to be a swaddling jerkoff in union.
I certainly don't have to wonder anymore.
Griswold - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
So, you're the new village fool?Finally - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Make that "Global Village Fool 2.0"He is an advanced version, y'know?
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Nvidia LAUNCHED TODAY... se page two by your insane master Anand.--
YOU'VE all got the same disease.
MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Is sanity now considered to be a disease? We're not the one's visiting a website in which we so aggressively scream "bias" on (apparently) every GPU article. If you think Anand's work is so offensive and wrong, then why do you keep coming back for more?Anyway, I just don't see where you get this "bias" talk. For crying out loud, you can't make many assumptions about the product's performance when you don't even know the clock speeds. You can guess till you're blue in the face, but that still leaves you with no FACTS. Also keep in mind that GT300 will have ECC enabled (at least in Tesla), which has been known to affect latency and clock speeds in other realms. I'm not 100% sure how the ECC spec works in GDDR5, but usually ECC comes at a cost.
As for "paper launch," ultimately semantics don't matter. However, a paper launch is generally defined as a product announcement that you cannot buy yet. It's frequently used as a business tactic to keep people from buying your competitor's products. If the card is officially announced (and it hasn't), but no product is available, then by my definition, it is a paper launch. However, everyone has their own definition of the term. This article I see more as a technology preview, though nVidia's intent is still probably to keep people from buying an RV870 right now. That's where the line blurs.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
A launch date is the date the company claims PRODUCT WILL BE AVAILABLE IN RETAIL CHANNELS.No "semantics" you whine about or cocka doodle do up will change that.
A LAUNCH date officially as has been for YEARS sonny paw, is when the corp says "YOU CAN BUY THIS" as a private end consumer.
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Anything ELSE is a showcase, an announcement, a preview of upcoming tech, a marketing plan, ETC.
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YOU LTING ABOUT THE VERY ABSOLUTE FACTS THAT FOR YEARS HAVE APPLIED PERIOD IS JUST ANOTHER RED ROOSTER NOTCH ACQUIRED.