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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457R4LDR34DKN07 - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
A few points I have about this chip. First it is massive which leads me to believe it is going to be hot and use a lot of power (depending on frequencies). Second it is a one size fits all processor and not specifically a graphics processor. Third is it is going to be difficult to make with decent yields IE expensive and will be hard to scale performance up. I do believe It will be fast due to cache but redesigning cache will be hard for this monolith.silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
It should take the performance crown back from ATI but I'm worried that it's going to be difficult to scale it down for lesser cards (which is where nVidia will make more of its money anyway).When it's out and we can compare its performance as well as price with the 58x0 series, I'll be happier. Choice is never a bad thing. I also don't want nVidia to be too badly hurt by Larrabee so it's in their best interests to get this thing out soon.
AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
The Atom is for mobile applications, and Intel is still designing faster desktop chips. The "Atom" of graphics is called "integrated", and it has been around forever. There's no reason to believe that PC games of 2010 won't require faster graphics.The fact that nvidia wants to GROW doesn't mean their bread-and-butter business is going away. Every company wants to grow.
If Fermi's die size is significantly increased by adding stuff that doesn't benefit 3D games, that's a problem, and they should consider 2 different designs for Tesla and gaming. Intel has Xeon chips separate, don't they?
If digital displays overcome their 60Hz limitation, there will be more incentive for cards to render more than 60fps.
Lastly, Anand, you have a reoccurring grammar problem of separating two complete sentences with a comma. This is hard to read and annoying. Please either use a semicolon or start a new sentence. Two examples are, Page 8, sentences that begin with "Display resolutions" and "The architecture". Aside from that, excellent article as usual.
Ananke - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Actually, NVidia is great company, as well as AMD is. However, NVidia cards recently tend to be more expensive compared to their counterparts, so WHY somebody would pay more for the same result?If and when they bring that Fermi to the market, and if that thing is $200 per card delivered to me, I may consider buying. Most people here don't care if NVidia is capable of building supercomputers. They care if they can buy descent gaming card for less than $200. Very simple economics.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
I'm not sure, other than there's another red raver ready on repeat, but if all that you and your "overwhelming number" of fps freaks care about is fps dollar bang, you still don't have your information correct.Does ATI have a gaming presets panel, filled with a hundred popular games all configurable with one click of the mouse to get there?
Somehow, when Derek quickly put up the very, very disappointing new ati CCC shell, it was immediately complained about from all corners, and the worst part was lesser functionality in the same amount of clicks. A drop down mess, instead of a side spread nice bookmarks panel.
So really, even if you're only all about fps, at basically perhaps a few frames more at 2560x with 4xaa and 16aa on only a few specific games, less equal or below at lower rez, WHY would you settle for that CCC nightmare, or some other mushed up thing like ramming into atitool and manually clicking and typing in everything to get a gaming profile, or endless jacking with rivatuner ?
Not only that, but then you've got zero PhysX (certainly part of 3d gaming), no ambient occlusion, less GAME support with TWIMTBP dominating the field, and no UNIFIED 190.26 driver, but a speckling hack of various ati versions in order to get the right one to work with your particular ati card ?
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I mean it's nice to make a big fat dream line that everything is equal, but that really is not the case at all. It's not even close.
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I find ragin red roosters come back with "I don't run CCC !" To which of course one must ask "Why not ? Why can't you run your "equal card" panel, why is it - because it sucks ?
Well it most definitely DOES compared to the NVidia implementation.
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Something usually costs more because, well, we all know why.
Divide Overflow - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Agreed. I'm a bit worried that this monster will cost an arm and a leg and won't scale well into consumer price points.Kingslayer - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Silicon duck is the greatest fanboy I've ever seen, maybe less annomynity would quiet his rhetoric.http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/member.p...">http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/member.p...
tamalero - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
well that answers everything, when someone has to spam the "catholic", must be a bibblethumper who only spreads a single thing and doesnt believe nor accept any other information, even with confirmed facts.SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
What makes you think I'm "catholic" ?And that's interesting you've thrown out another nutball cleche', anyway.
How is it that you've determined that a "catholic" doesn't accept "any other 'even confirmed' facts" ? ( I rather doubt you know what Confirmation is, so you don't get a pun point, and that certainly doesn't prove I'm anything but knowledgeable. )
Or even a "Bible thumper" ?
Have you ever met a bible thumper?
Be nice to meet one some day, guess you've been sinnin' yer little lying butt off - you must attract them ! Not sure what proives either, other than it is just as confirmed a fact as you've ever shared.
I suppose that puts 95% of the world's population in your idiot bucket, since that's low giving 5% to athiests, probably not that many.
So in your world, you, the athiest, and your less than 5%, are those who know the facts ? LOL
About what ? LOL
Now aren't you REALLY talking about, yourself, and all your little lying red ragers here ?
Let's count the PROOFS you and yours have failed, I'll be generous
1. Paper launch definition
2. Not really NVIDIA launch day
3. 5870 is NOT 10.5" but 11.1" IN FACT, and longer than 285 and 295
4. GT300 is already cooked and cards are being tested just not by your red rooster master, he's low down on the 2 month plus totem pole
5. GT300 cores have a good yield
6. ati cores did/do not have a good yield on 5870
7. Nvidia is and has been very profitable
8. ati amd have been losing lots of money, BILLIONS on billions sold BAD BAD losses
9. ati cores as a general rule and NEARLY ALWAYS have hotter running cores as released, because of their tiny chip that causes greater heat density with the same, and more and even less power useage, this is a physical law of science and cannot be changed by red fan wishes.
10. NVIDIA has a higher market share 28% than ati who is 3rd and at only 18% or so. Intel actually leads at 50%, but ati is LAST.
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Shall we go on, close minded, ati card thumping red rooster ?
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I mean it's just SPECTACULAR that you can be such a hypocrit.
tamalero - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
a.-Since when the yields of the 5870 are lower than the GT300?they use the same tech and since the 5870 is less complex and smaller core, it will obviusly have HIGHER YIELDS. (also where are your sources, I want facts not your imaginary friend who tells you stuff)
2.-Nvidia wasnt profiteable last year when they got caught shipping defective chipsets and forced by ATI to lower the prices of the GT200 series.
3.- only Nvidia said "everyhing is OK" while demostrating no working silicon, thats not the way to show that the yields are "OK".
4.- only the AMD division is lossing money, ATI is earning and will for sure earn a lot more now that the 58XX series are selling like hot cakes.
5.- 50% if you count the INTEGRATED market, wich is not the focus of ATI, ATI and NVidia are mostly focused on discrete graphics.
intel as 0% of the discrete market.
and actually Nvidia would be the one to dissapear first, as they dont hae exclusivity for their SLIs and Corei7 corei5 chipsets.
while ATI can with no problem produce stuff for their AMD mobos.
and dude, I might be from another country, but at least Im not trying to spit insults every second unlike you, specially when proven wrong with facts.
please, do the world a favor and get your medicine.