Monday, July 25th 2016
NVIDIA Accelerates Volta to May 2017?
Following the surprise TITAN X Pascal launch slated for 2nd August, it looks like NVIDIA product development cycle is running on steroids, with reports emerging of the company accelerating its next-generation "Volta" architecture debut to May 2017, along the sidelines of next year's GTC. The architecture was originally scheduled to make its debut in 2018.
Much like "Pascal," the "Volta" architecture could first debut with HPC products, before moving on to the consumer graphics segment. NVIDIA could also retain the 16 nm FinFET+ process at TSMC for Volta. Stacked on-package memory such as HBM2 could be more readily available by 2017, and could hit sizable volumes towards the end of the year, making it ripe for implementation in high-volume consumer products.
Source:
WCCFTech
Much like "Pascal," the "Volta" architecture could first debut with HPC products, before moving on to the consumer graphics segment. NVIDIA could also retain the 16 nm FinFET+ process at TSMC for Volta. Stacked on-package memory such as HBM2 could be more readily available by 2017, and could hit sizable volumes towards the end of the year, making it ripe for implementation in high-volume consumer products.
102 Comments on NVIDIA Accelerates Volta to May 2017?
In short;
VEGA 1 will battle 1070/1080 and VEGA 2 will battle 1180/1080Ti or what ever they decide to call it. VEGA 1 will most likely have GDDR5x memory, but VEGA 2 comes with HBM2 (as will NVIDIA's counter answer if they can get enough chips), (they already know whether or not this is the case.)
If Volta will increase the number of shaders, then you'll reap the benefits of async. Till then, it's there because DX12 says it has to be.
PS Your 980 precedes DX12 by almost a full year, I'm not surprised it doesn't handle everything DX12 flawlessly.
Lets correct one of those: AMD only has priority on HBM2 from one of the fabs (Hynix, I believe).
:)
Sure, let's not fool each other. Volta hasn't been "pushed up", they have super computer contracts which have been in the works and AMD's little GPUs have nothing to do with it. The main page for Oakland says end of 2017 which means the architecture is already done or being refined and made to be readily available for them in bulk by end of year next year. We get the trickle effect which for those who don't whine about Nvidia is a win/win.
The funny thing about these threads going back and forth is it's quite obvious who understands the business end of it vs the ones who do nothing but post fanboy comments and speculate. "Oh Nvidia is doing this because they're scared of AMD" or "AMD pushed Vega up because the 1080 is a monster!". No, it doesn't work that way. These roadmaps that are "leaked" are planned years ahead with only minor modifications made as time goes on for whatever is happening in the industry. Don't think otherwise.
I didnt write that they could veto down all HBM2 memory in the world; AMD invented HBM2 together with Hynix, and Samsung and GloFo are producing it (I looked on the net instead of believing.) Which means that AMD gets money and have a deal with GloFo to make zen, polaris AND HBM2 (guess how have the best order for GloFo?) NVIDIA have to will rely on TSMC / samsung to get their HBM2. Im not saying that it cannot happen, but they are going to fight the rest of the industry for it.
And, for the record, I despise PR machine posts from both sides.
www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Whats-Asynchronous-Compute-3DMark-Time-Spy-Controversy
Keep in mind, that Futuremark works with the hardware OEMs to validate their code against their own best practices. BOTH AMD and nVidia have had to sign off on their work.
Maxwell came without dynamic scheduling, Pascal has fixed that. Maxwell/Pascal won't profit from async compute because there are no idle shaders to put to work in an async manner.
That's about as far as I can dumb it down. Because that's all that DX12 requires. DX12 is an API, it does not mandate any hardware implementation, nor does it guarantee using the API will speed things up.
AMD OpenGL: 4.3
AMD Vulkan: 1.17.1 + AMD Shader intrinsics extensions +async compute
nVidia OpenGL: 4.5
nVidia Vulkan: 1.8.1 with no special extensions or features, just basic and older Vulkan driver
i wonder if id software is gonna do another update+drivers
And before anybody moans about "can't compare last gen to current gen" - die shrinks allow more hardware at less power. The hardware gives the benefit so Fury X's 8900 transistors trounces the 1080's 7200.
The GTX 1080 and 1070 only have 7200 transistors compared to Fiji's 8900. That's a nut busting 24% increase. Fury X has 4096 shaders to 1920 on the GTX 1070 (a 113% increase in hardware). Same ROPS. Higher bandwidth.
So, you're happy that a card with the hardware prowess of the Fury X can only match the paltry hardware inside a GTX 1070? That's not impressive. Do you not see? That's worrying on AMD's side. How can the GTX 1070 even stand beside a Fury X in DX12?
If I were an AMD fanboy with a brain, I'd be worried that for all my posturing about DX12 and async, the mid range Pascal chip (GTX 1080) with the poorer async optimisations humps my beloved Fury X. I'd be worried that AMD's next step has to be a clock increase but to do that the hardware count has to suffer (relatively speaking). I'd be worried that Nvidia's top end Pascal consumer chip (GP102, Titan X) has 1000 more shaders than the GTX 1080 (which already beats everything at everything).
Your optimism is very misplaced. But that's okay, we need optimism in todays world.
Also gotta love how those threads always derail....