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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
415 Comments
View All Comments
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.
---
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.
---
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.
--
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.