Thursday, October 1st 2009
NVIDIA 'Fermi', Tesla Board Pictured in Greater Detail, Non-Functional Dummy Unveiled
Unveiled at the footnote of the GPU Technology Conference 2009, by none other than NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA's Fermi architecture looks promising, at least in the field of GPGPU, which was extensively discussed upon in his address. The first reference board based on NVIDIA's newest 'GT300' GPU is a Tesla HPC processor card, which quickly became the face of the Fermi architecture. Singapore HardwareZone, and PCPop caught some of the first closeup pictures of the Tesla accelerator, and the GPU's BGA itself. Decked in a dash of chrome, the Tesla HPC processor card isn't particularly long, instead a great deal of compacting by its designers is evident. It draws power from one 8-pin, and 6-pin PCI-E power connectors, which aren't located next to each other. The cooler's blower also draws air from openings in the PCB, and a backplate further cools the GPU (and possibly other components located) from behind. From the looks of it, the GPU package itself isn't larger than that of the GT200 or its predecessor, the G80. Looks like NVIDIA is ready with a working prototype against all odds, after all, doesn't it? Not quite. On close inspection of the PCB, it doesn't look like a working sample. Components that are expected to have pins protruding soldered on the other side, don't have them, and the PCB seems to be abruptly ending. Perhaps it's only a dummy made to display at GTC, and give an indication of how the card ends up looking like. In other words, it doesn't look like NVIDIA has a working prototype/sample of the card they intended to have displayed the other day.
Sources:
Singapore HardwareZone, PCPop
94 Comments on NVIDIA 'Fermi', Tesla Board Pictured in Greater Detail, Non-Functional Dummy Unveiled
Are you telling me this isnt a fake card?
If so read charlies article, or at least just look at the pictures and judge for yourself.
Nvidia's Share Price Chart
EDIT: The reason for the above is Nvidia's bad situation on chipsets, there will be no i7 / i5 chipsets (no licenses to use DMI), and AMD's own chips (700 series) are selling better than Nvidia offerings.
They seem to take consumers and enthusiast for idiots, and I dont like being played with like this. :mad:
I hope this will come round and bite them in the ass, just enough for them to think twice before pulling something like this again.
A really really stupid move IMO, even greedy one could say, to steal ATi's spotlight.:shadedshu
They should have rescheduled. My respect for nV had gone down quite a bit today. I they can falsify this, then it shows they don't feel sensitive to outrage in the face of profits.:slap:
Anyway, let me not say too much in case I come under fire by nV supporters that would defend even this.:p
And let me see those cards so i can buy some CF love again!(Price drops due to nvidia release)
We all remember the HD 2900 XT.
Could the G300 be Nvidia's R600? Hot, heavy, and with not much better performance, costing far, far too much?
Mock-ups are a name of the game. In an industry where looks matters just about as much as they do in the car industry, mock-ups are common place to give an idea of what the card will look like. They never said it was functional, if it was functional, they would have been giving demos. It is more likely that the functional models still look like shit, with non-retail cooling, just enough to get them working so the bugs can begin to be worked out. And they probably didn't want to sacrifice the developement time by giving ot a sample, just to be eye candy at a conference.Definitely, always wait for a functional sample, or even better a retail sample with independent reviews.
It might have the hot and heavy part, but judging by the specs it will definitely have the better performance.Oh come on, I lost a lot of respect for you because of that picture...where's the duct tape and bubble gum?!?!?! :laugh:
See that peak? It's the 1st of October, when the card was shown.
See what happens next? That's people finding out about the fake...
Oops?
although being a WX enthusiast, i would love to run my own daily WRF simulations(severe WX, winter WX, tropical systems) via Cuda/fortran(GPGPU)...just having trouble finding the resources to guide me in the right direction, if anyone has any infos plz share....:)
no such thing as bad publicity they say
very humorous. they must do coke,somehow:laugh:
Seriously though, I get what you're saying, but what excuse do they have for making such a low-grade (not to say piss-poor) mock-up? Surely they could've done better than that...