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
A Different Sort of Launch
Fermi will support DirectX 11 and NVIDIA believes it'll be faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in 3D games. With 3 billion transistors, it had better be. But that's the extent of what NVIDIA is willing to talk about with regards to Fermi as a gaming GPU. Sorry folks, today's launch is targeted entirely at Tesla.
A GeForce GTX 280 with 4GB of memory is the foundation for the Tesla C1060 cards
Tesla is NVIDIA's High Performance Computing (HPC) business. NVIDIA takes its consumer GPUs, equips them with a ton of memory, and sells them in personal or datacenter supercomputers called Tesla supercomputers or computing clusters. If you have an application that can run well on a GPU, the upside is tremendous.
Four of those C1060 cards in a 1U chassis make the Tesla S1070. PCIe connects the S1070 to the host server.
NVIDIA loves to cite examples of where algorithms ported to GPUs work so much better than CPUs. One such example is a seismic processing application that HESS found ran very well on NVIDIA GPUs. It migrated a cluster of 2000 servers to 32 Tesla S1070s, bringing total costs down from $8M to $400K, and total power from 1200kW down to 45kW.
| HESS Seismic Processing Example | Tesla | CPU |
| Performance | 1 | 1 |
| # of Machines | 32 Tesla S1070s | 2000 x86 servers |
| Total Cost | ~$400K | ~$8M |
| Total Power | 45kW | 1200kW |
Obviously this doesn't include the servers needed to drive the Teslas, but presumably that's not a significant cost. Either way the potential is there, it's just a matter of how many similar applications exist in the world.
According to NVIDIA, there are many more cases like this in the market. The table below shows what NVIDIA believes is the total available market in the next 18 months for these various HPC segments:
| Processor | Seismic | Supercomputing | Universities | Defence | Finance |
| GPU TAM | $300M | $200M | $150M | $250M | $230M |
These figures were calculated by looking at the algorithms used in each segment, the number of Hess-like Tesla installations that can be done, and the current budget for non-GPU based computing in those markets. If NVIDIA met its goals here, the Tesla business could be bigger than the GeForce one. There's just one problem:
As you'll soon see, many of the architectural features of Fermi are targeted specifically for Tesla markets. The same could be said about GT200, albeit to a lesser degree. Yet Tesla accounted for less than 1.3% of NVIDIA's total revenue last quarter.
Given these numbers it looks like NVIDIA is building GPUs for a world that doesn't exist. NVIDIA doesn't agree.
The Evolution of GPU Computing
When matched with the right algorithms and programming efforts, GPU computing can provide some real speedups. Much of Fermi's architecture is designed to improve performance in these HPC and other GPU compute applications.
Ever since G80, NVIDIA has been on this path to bring GPU computing to reality. I rarely get the opportunity to get a non-marketing answer out of NVIDIA, but in talking to Jonah Alben (VP of GPU Engineering) I had an unusually frank discussion.
From the outside, G80 looks to be a GPU architected for compute. Internally, NVIDIA viewed it as an opportunistic way to enable more general purpose computing on its GPUs. The transition to a unified shader architecture gave NVIDIA the chance to, relatively easily, turn G80 into more than just a GPU. NVIDIA viewed GPU computing as a future strength for the company, so G80 led a dual life. Awesome graphics chip by day, the foundation for CUDA by night.
Remember that G80 was hashed out back in 2002 - 2003. NVIDIA had some ideas of where it wanted to take GPU computing, but it wasn't until G80 hit that customers started providing feedback that ultimately shaped the way GT200 and Fermi turned out.
One key example was support for double precision floating point. The feature wasn't added until GT200 and even then, it was only added based on computing customer feedback from G80. Fermi kicks double precision performance up another notch as it now executes FP64 ops at half of its FP32 rate (more on this later).
While G80 and GT200 were still primarily graphics chips, NVIDIA views Fermi as a processor that makes compute just as serious as graphics. NVIDIA believes it's on a different course, at least for the short term, than AMD. And you'll see this in many of the architectural features of Fermi.
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silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Am I hearing you right - you say GT300 isn't a paper launch despite there being no cards for sale for the next few months, yet you said the 5870 was AND THERE WERE CARDS FOR SALE WHEN YOU MADE THE COMMENT! I don't care that you couldn't locate one, the simple fact is people had already bought cards from the first trickle (emphasis on the trickle part) and as such made your statement completely invalid.How much more rubbish are you going to spew from your hole?
(note: I needed to have caps above to make a salient point and not just because I felt like holding the shift key for no particular reason)
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
roflmao - If you're hearing anything right, you'd keep your text yap shut.Please show me the LAUNCH information on GT300, there, brainless bubba, the liar. I really cannot imagine you are that stupid, but then again, it is possible.
Congratulations for being a COMPLETE IDIOT AND LIAR! Really, you must work very hard to maintain that level of ignorance. In fact, the requirement to be that stupid exceeds the likelihood that you actually are purely ignorant, and therefore, it is more likely you're a troll. My condolences in either case in all seriousness.
silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
The proposed launch is late November but even Fudzilla concede that any problems will delay this. The earliest we'll see a GT300 on the shelves is just under 2 months. There, that's information for you. I want nVidia to launch GT300 this year but we don't always get what we wish for.Where did I lie in any of my previous posts? Oh right... I didn't bow down to worship the Green God(dess). If you had any semblance of an open mind or any stability at all, your nose wouldn't need cleaning. Calling me a troll is pure comedy gold and offering me your pity is outstanding to say the least :)
Keep trying. Or don't. Either way, I doubt many people care for your viewpoints anymore.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Oh jeeze, one red rooster who finally gets it.Congratulations, you're not the dumbest of your crowd.
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No shirking here comes the QUOTE !
" The proposed launch is late November " !!! whoo hoo !
Now a proposed launch is not an official launch- try to keep that straight in the gourd haters when the time comes.
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Pass it along to all the screaming tards, won't you please, you talk their language, or perhapos we'll just say you already have, because, by golly, they can believe you.
ROFLMAO
rennya - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
'Nvidia LAUNCHED TODAY... se page two by your insane master Anand.'This what you have said yourself somewhere in this very discussion. So you must have known about this so-called launch yourself.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
That's called sarcasm dear. Jiminy crickets.palladium - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
How can you tell if that's not a GTX285 with redesigned cover/cooler/PCB?samspqr - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
it is SO funny that that thing silicondoc's master/god is holding in his hand ended up revealing itself as nothing more than a mock-up...SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
PS THE SILICON IS ALREADY CUT AND IN PRODUCTION!---
Yes anand at the bottom of page 1 claims "it's paper" - DECIEVING YOU, since the WAFERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN BURNED AND YIELDS ARE REPORTED HIGH ! (in spite of ati's marketing arm lying and claiming "only 9 cores per wafer yields" - A BIG FAT LIE NVIDIA POINTED OUT !
Where have you been with your head in the sand ?
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So at the bottom of page 1 Anand leaves you dips with the impression "it's all paper" (but the TRUTH is DEVELOPER CARDS ARE ALREADY ASSEMBLED and being DEBUGGED and TESTED) just anand won't get one for 2 months.
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THEN BY PAGE 2 ANAND CALLS IT A PAPER LAUNCH !
roflmao
Yes, the red rooster himself has convinced himself "today's nvidia LAUNCH" (that LAUNCH word is what anand made up in his deranged mind) is a paper launch "JUST LIKE ATI'S!".
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It is nothing short of absolutely AMAZING.
The red rooster fan has boonswoggled his own gourd, stated in fasle terms, bashed it to be as bad as what ati just did with 5870, and IT'S NOT EVEN A LAUNCH DAY FOR NVIDIA !
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Congratulations, the massive bias is SCREAMING off the page. LOL
It's hilarious, to say the least, that the master can be that deluded with his own spew!
gx80050 - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Die painfully okay? Prefearbly by getting crushed to death in a
garbage compactor, by getting your face cut to ribbons with a
pocketknife, your head cracked open with a baseball bat, your stomach
sliced open and your entrails spilled out, and your eyeballs ripped
out of their sockets. Fucking bitch
I would love to kick you hard in the face, breaking it. Then I'd cut
your stomach open with a chainsaw, exposing your intestines. Then I'd
cut your windpipe in two with a boxcutter.
Hopefully you'll get what's coming to you. Fucking bitch
I really hope that you get curb-stomped. It'd be hilarious to see you
begging for help, and then someone stomps on the back of your head,
leaving you to die in horrible, agonizing pain. Faggot
Shut the fuck up f aggot, before you get your face bashed in and cut
to ribbons, and your throat slit.