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
Final Words
Today's launch is strange. I tried to convince NVIDIA to release more information about Fermi but was met with staunch resistance from the company. NVIDIA claims that by pre-announcing Fermi's performance levels it would seriously hurt its existing business. It's up to you whether or not you want to believe that.
Last quarter the Tesla business unit made $10M. That's not a whole lot of money for a company that, at its peak, grossed $1B in a single quarter. NVIDIA believes that Fermi is when that will all change. To borrow a horrendously overused phrase, Fermi is the inflection point for NVIDIA's Tesla sales.
By adding support for ECC, enabling C++ and easier Visual Studio integration, NVIDIA believes that Fermi will open its Tesla business up to a group of clients that would previously not so much as speak to NVIDIA. ECC is the killer feature there.
While the bulk of NVIDIA's revenue today comes from 3D graphics, NVIDIA believes that Tegra (mobile) and Tesla are the future growth segments for the company. This hints at a very troubling future for GPU makers - are we soon approaching the Atom-ization of graphics cards?
Will 2010 be the beginning of good enough performance in PC games? Display resolutions have pretty much stagnated, PC games are first developed on consoles which have inferior hardware and thus don't have as high the GPU requirements. The fact that NVIDIA is looking to Tegra and Tesla to grow the company is very telling. Then again, perhaps a brand new approach to graphics is what we'll need for the re-invigoration of PC game development. Larrabee.
If the TAM for GPUs in HPC is so big, why did NVIDIA only make $10M last quarter? If you ask NVIDIA it has to do with focus and sales.
According to NVIDIA, over the past couple of years NVIDIA's Tesla sales efforts have been scattered. The focus was on selling to any customers that could potentially see a speedup, trying to gain some traction for the Tesla business.
Jen-Hsun did some yelling and now NVIDIA is a bit more focused in that department. If Tesla revenues increase linearly from this point, that's simply not going to be enough. I asked NVIDIA if exponential growth for Tesla was in the cards and if so, when would it happen. The answer was yes and with Fermi.
We'll see how that plays out, but if Fermi doesn't significantly increase Tesla revenues then we know that NVIDIA is in serious trouble.
The architecture looks good, Fermi just needs to be priced right. Oh and the chip needs to hurry up and come out.
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Griswold - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Well, you have to consider that nvidia is getting between a rock and a hard place. The PC gaming market is shrinking. Theres not much point in making desktop chipsets anymore... they have to shift focus (and I'm sure they will focus) on new things like GPGPU. I wont be surprised if GT300 wont be a the super awesome gamer GPU of choice so many people expect it to be. And perhaps, the one after GT300 will be even less impressive for gaming, regardless of what they just said about making humongous chips for the high-end segment.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Gee nvidia is between a rock and a hard place, since they have an OUT, and ATI DOES NOT.lol
That was a GREAT JOB focusing on the wrong player who is between a rock and a hard place, and that player would be RED ROOSTER ATI !
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no chipsets
no chance at TESLA sales in the billions to coleges and government and schools and research centers all ove the world....
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buh bye ATI ! < what you should have actually "speculated"
...
But then, we know who you are and what you're about -
TELLING THE EXACT OPPSITE OF THE TRUTH, ALL FOR YOUR RED GOD, ATI !
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silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
When nVidia actually sends out Fermi samples for previews/reviews, only then will you know how good it is. We all want to see it because we want competition and lower prices (and maybe some of us will buy one or more, as well!).Until then, keep your fanboy comments to yourself.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
No silverblue, that is in fact your problem, not mine, as you won't know anything, till you're shown a lie or otherwise, and it's shoved into your tiny processor for your personal acceptance.The fact remains, red fanboy raver Griswold blew it, and I pointed out exactly WHY.
The fact that you cry about it, because you group stupid dummies keep blowing nearly every statement you make, sure isn't my fault.
silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
I wonder if you do actually read posts before you reply to them.SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Take your own advice, you pathetic hypocrit.ClownPuncher - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Its actually "hypocrite".SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
It's "it's", you pathetic hypocrit.silverblue - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
It's "hypocrite", you pathetic hypocrite.chizow - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Nvidia is simply hedging their bets and expanding their horizons. They've still managed to offer the fastest GPUs per product cycle/generation and they're clearly far more advanced than AMD when it comes to GPGPU in both theory and practice.Jensen's keynote tipped his hat numerous times to Nvidia's roots as a GPU company that designed chips to run 3D video games, but the focus of his presentation was clearly to sell it as more than that, as a cGPU capable of incredible computational ability.