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 RV770 Lesson (or The GT200 Story)
It took NVIDIA a while to give us an honest response to the RV770. At first it was all about CUDA and PhsyX. RV770 didn't have it, so we shouldn't be recommending it; that was NVIDIA's stance.
Today, it's much more humble.
Ujesh is wiling to take total blame for GT200. As manager of GeForce at the time, Ujesh admitted that he priced GT200 wrong. NVIDIA looked at RV670 (Radeon HD 3870) and extrapolated from that to predict what RV770's performance would be. Obviously, RV770 caught NVIDIA off guard and GT200 was priced much too high.
Ujesh doesn't believe NVIDIA will make the same mistake with Fermi.
Jonah, unwilling to let Ujesh take all of the blame, admitted that engineering was partially at fault as well. GT200 was the last chip NVIDIA ever built at 65nm - there's no excuse for that. The chip needed to be at 55nm from the get-go, but NVIDIA had been extremely conservative about moving to new manufacturing processes too early.
It all dates back to NV30, the GeForce FX. It was a brand new architecture on a bleeding edge manufacturing process, 130nm at the time, which ultimately lead to its delay. ATI pulled ahead with the 150nm Radeon 9700 Pro and NVIDIA vowed never to make that mistake again.
With NV30, NVIDIA was too eager to move to new processes. Jonah believes that GT200 was an example of NVIDIA swinging too far in the other direction; NVIDIA was too conservative.
The biggest lesson RV770 taught NVIDIA was to be quicker to migrate to new manufacturing processes. Not NV30 quick, but definitely not as slow as GT200. Internal policies are now in place to ensure this.
Architecturally, there aren't huge lessons to be learned from RV770. It was a good chip in NVIDIA's eyes, but NVIDIA isn't adjusting their architecture in response to it. NVIDIA will continue to build beefy GPUs and AMD appears committed to building more affordable ones. Both companies are focused on building more efficiently.
Of Die Sizes and Transitions
Fermi and Cypress are both built on the same 40nm TSMC process, yet they differ by nearly 1 billion transistors. Even the first generation Larrabee will be closer in size to Cypress than Fermi, and it's made at Intel's state of the art 45nm facilities.
What you're seeing is a significant divergence between the graphics companies, one that I expect will continue to grow in the near term.
NVIDIA's architecture is designed to address its primary deficiency: the company's lack of a general purpose microprocessor. As such, Fermi's enhancements over GT200 address that issue. While Fermi will play games, and NVIDIA claims it will do so better than the Radeon HD 5870, it is designed to be a general purpose compute machine.
ATI's approach is much more cautious. While Cypress can run DirectX Compute and OpenCL applications (the former faster than any NVIDIA GPU on the market today), ATI's use of transistors was specifically targeted to run the GPU's killer app today: 3D games.
Intel's take is the most unique. Both ATI and NVIDIA have to support their existing businesses, so they can't simply introduce a revolutionary product that sacrifices performance on existing applications for some lofty, longer term goal. Intel however has no discrete GPU business today, so it can.
Larrabee is in rough shape right now. The chip is buggy, the first time we met it it wasn't healthy enough to even run a 3D game. Intel has 6 - 9 months to get it ready for launch. By then, the Radeon HD 5870 will be priced between $299 - $349, and Larrabee will most likely slot in $100 - $150 cheaper. Fermi is going to be aiming for the top of the price brackets.
The motivation behind AMD's "sweet spot" strategy wasn't just die size, it was price. AMD believed that by building large, $600+ GPUs, it didn't service the needs of the majority of its customers quickly enough. It took far too long to make a $199 GPU from a $600 one - quickly approaching a year.
Clearly Fermi is going to be huge. NVIDIA isn't disclosing die sizes, but if we estimate that a 40% higher transistor count results in a 40% larger die area then we're looking at over 467mm^2 for Fermi. That's smaller than GT200 and about the size of G80; it's still big.
I asked Jonah if that meant Fermi would take a while to move down to more mainstream pricepoints. Ujesh stepped in and said that he thought I'd be pleasantly surprised once NVIDIA is ready to announce Fermi configurations and price points. If you were NVIDIA, would you say anything else?
Jonah did step in to clarify. He believes that AMD's strategy simply boils down to targeting a different price point. He believes that the correct answer isn't to target a lower price point first, but rather build big chips efficiently. And build them so that you can scale to different sizes/configurations without having to redo a bunch of stuff. Putting on his marketing hat for a bit, Jonah said that NVIDIA is actively making investments in that direction. Perhaps Fermi will be different and it'll scale down to $199 and $299 price points with little effort? It seems doubtful, but we'll find out next year.
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siyabongazulu - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
rennyathe one I was going to buy on the 24 was from ncix.com but shipping and handling was gonna be a bit too much. The fact that they had the cards on the launch date, 23 goes to show how a big liar silicondoc is. Plus his link on fudzilla, just like I said before, betrays him since it does not say that the model being shown is a working model. I can say I'm making a remote that can trump all other remotes on performance levels and will be the next big thing for gadget lovers. But if I come up with a supposed model and just flash it around, it doesnt mean that it's a working model unless I can prove that it is by using it. So until Nvidia shows the card at work and gives us numbers based on such task then we can talk about it. Hey don't forget that we also go for bang for buck, reason why I got the 5870. I have a feeling that when GT300 does launch, it will be big but also would like to see how ATI responds to that.
siyabongazulu - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
rennyaI think we all get it. This guy is mentally ill. So I posted those links to refute his argument and he hasn't touched any. He knows he's lying and that his fudzilla link betrays him. So he'll keep on ranting. silicondoc has to remember this, all big companies that have a working model of an upcoming product do a demo and show the figures and they don't just give you paper work (which is what Nvidia is doing right now.) And it doesn't take a genius to see that GT300 w/e they wanna call it is not even close to be released unless you would want to call many sources such as tgdaily, the inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1052025/g...">http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1052025/g... and ofcourse anand big liers then go ahead silicondoc..So until it comes out ( be it Nov, Mid Oct or Jan) then we can come back and talk performance. Have fun silicondoc and when GT300 performance trumps HD5870 then I'll sell 5870 for Gt300 card but don't forget we also need to see how much power that monster will be drawing. I call it monster because so far the on "paper" performance puts it that way
siyabongazulu - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
by the way sorry I forgot to pass you the link where I got mine.. here you go http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowPr...">http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.ph...=pd&... and here is another site they have had them in stock since the 23rd of sept just like predicted. Man you are full of shit..was gonna buy mine from there but decided to save the money on shipping and boom 3 days later it was in a store right next door.wwohoo..I just said bye bye to my nvidia card and if you wanna know it was yes you guessed it GTX 285 and glad I got almost full value for that!!siyabongazulu - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Here SD..And that's where I got mine you dumb prick.. now stop fussin and if you ask when I got it, well so just you know it was on the 29th you idiot and that is simply because I'm in Canada. So if Nvidia had it launched, wouldn't it be somewhere on the web now. by the way here is an article that refutes your claim that Radeon HD 5870 was a fud (http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/24/4-000-alienware...">http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/24/4-00...-benchma... Dell had it already. Here is another (http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/23/maingear-cyberp...">http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/23/main...-desktop.... And all of those pc makers had the cards prior to launch date. So I don't know how you can argue that. So if you Nvidia was to have its card as you claim by using fudzilla pictures, then please provide us with a link that shows any manufacture that is already selling a pc with your GT300 and here is another link that shows how dumb you are http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/23/ati-radeon-hd-5...">http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/23/ati-...o-the-sc... hope that helpsTA152H - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
I agree, it shows sooooo much intelligence and class to curse! It's so creative! It's so wonderful! It's a real shame we don't have more foul mouths in positions of power, because it's just so entertaining!Yay!
yacoub - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
I'm with you. Oh wait, don't forget the bold to make sure no one misses it!TA152H - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Admin: You've overstayed your welcome, goodbye.I am beginning to think this site is lost. One thing I always liked about Anand was his tone was never harsh, even if I didn't agree with the content.
Now he's cursing. Yes, and as you said, in bold. Ugggh.
This and their idiotic pictorials of motherboards, then the clear bias towards Lynnfield. Again, I'm not complaining they liked it, so much as the way they lied about the numbers, and it took a lot of complaints to show the Bloomfied was faster. They were trying to hide that.
Their unscientific testing is also gotten to the point of absurdity.
I like their web page layout, but it's getting to the point where this site is become much less useful for information.
It's easy to get to the point where you do what people say they want. Yes, the jerks like to see curses, and think it's cool. I'm sure they got page reads from the idiotic pictorials of motherboards. Most of the people here did want to be lied to about Lynnfield, since it was something more people could afford compared to Bloomfield. It's tempting, but, ultimately, it's a mistake.
I'd like to see them do something that requires intelligence, and a bit more daring. Pit one writer (not Gary, he's too easy to beat) against another. Have, point and counterpoint articles. Let's say Anand is pro-Lynnfield, or pro-ATI card, or whatever. Then they use Jarrod to argue the points against it, or for the other card. Now, maybe Anand isn't so pro this item, or Jarrod isn't against it. Nonetheless, each could argue (anyone can argue and make points, because nothing in this world is absolutely good or bad, except for maybe pizza), and in doing so bring up the complexity of parts, rather than making people post about the mistakes they make and then have them show the complexity.
You think Anand would have put up those overblown remarks in his initial article on Lynnfield if he knew Jarrod would jump on him for it? I'd be more careful if I were writing it, so would he. I think the back and forth would be fun for them, and at the same time, would make them think and bring out things their articles never even approach.
It's better than us having to post about their inaccuracies and flaws in testing. It would be more entertaining too. And, people can argue, without disliking each other. Argument is healthy, and is a sign of active minds. Blind obedience is best relegated to dogs, or women :P. OK, I'm glad my other half doesn't read these things, or I'd get slapped.
ClownPuncher - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Don't let the door hit you in the ego on the way out.the zorro - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
this is a catastrophe.really, nvidia is finished.
this means four or five months of amd ruling.
seriously nvidia has nothing, nothing,zero, nada,
kaput nvidia is over.
Lifted - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Huh? Is that really all the troll you could muster for this article? SiliconDoc has you beat by a mile.