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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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.