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
AlexWade - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
How long have you been working for NVidia?taltamir - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
don't insult nvidia by insinuating that this zealot is their employeedzoni2k2 - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
What the heck is wrong with you SiliconDoc?Since when is memory bandwidth main indicator of performance?!
For all I care Fermis memory bandwidth can be 999GB/s but what good is that if it's not used?
SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
I'm sure "it won't be used" because for the very first time "nvidia will make sure it "won't be used" becuase "they designed it that way ! " LOL--
You people are absolutely PATHETIC.
Now the greater Nvidia bandwith doesn't matter, because you don't care if it's 999, because... nvidia failed on design, and "it won't be used!"
ROFLMAO
Honestly, if you people heard yourselves...
I am really disappointed that the bias here is so much worse than even I had known, not to mention the utter lack of intellect so often displayed.
What a shame.
PorscheRacer - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Exactly! R600 had huge bandwidth but couldn't effectively use it; for the msot part. Is this huge bandwdth the GF300 has only able to be used in cGPU, or is it able to be used in games, too? We won't know till the card is actually reviewed a long while from now.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
What a joke. The current GT200 responds in all flavors quite well to memory clock / hence bandwith increases.You know that, you have been around long enough.
It's great seeing the reds scream it doesn't matter when ati loses a category. (no actually it isn't great, it's quite sickening)
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Yes of course bandwith does not really matter when ati loses, got it red rooster. When nvidia is SO FAR AHEAD in it, it's better to say "it's not double"...LOL---
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE AND THE AUTHOR IS THE REAL QUESTION!
--
What is wrong with you ? Why don't you want to know when it's nvidia, when it's nvidia a direct comparison to ati's card is FORBIDDEN !
That's what the author did !
It was " a very adept DECEPTION" !
---
Just pointing out how you get snowballed and haven't a clue.
Rumors also speculated 4,000 data rate ddr5
4000x384/8 - 192 bandwith, still planty more than 153 ati.
CLEARLY though "not double 141" (nvidia's former number also conveniently NOT MEWNTIONED being so close to 153/5870 is EMBARRASSING) - is 282...
--
So anand knows it's 240, not quite double 141, short of 282.
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Looks like SnakeOil has another alias!therealnickdanger - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Agreed. That was refreshing!mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Blimey, I didn't know Ujesh could utter such things. :D When I knew
him in 1998 he was much more offical/polite-sounding (he was Product
Manager for the O2 workstation at SGI; I was using a loaner O2 from
SGI to hunt for OS/app bugs - Ujesh was my main contact for feedback).
The poster who talked about availability has a strong point. My brother
has asked me to build him a new system next week. Looks like it'll be
an Athlon II X4 620, 4GB RAM, 5850, better CPU cooler, with either an
AM3 mbd and DDR3 RAM or AM2+ mbd and DDR2 RAM (not sure yet). By heck
he's going to see one hell of a speed boost; his current system is a
single-core Athlon64 2.64GHz, 2GB DDR400, X1950Pro AGP 8X. :D My own
6000+ 8800GT will seem slow by comparison... :|
Ian.