Thursday, May 30th 2024
NVIDIA to Stick to Monolithic GPU Dies for its GeForce "Blackwell" Generation
NVIDIA's GeForce "Blackwell" generation of gaming GPUs will stick to being traditional monolithic die chips. The company will not build its next generation of chips as either disaggregated devices, or multi-chip modules. Kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks, says that the largest GPU in the generation, the "GB202," is based on a physically monolithic design. The GB202 is expected to power the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 (or RTX 4090 successor), and if NVIDIA sticking to traditional chip design for this, then it's unlikely that smaller GPUs will be any different.
In contrast, AMD started building disaggregated devices with its current RDNA 3 generation, with its top two chips, the "Navi 31" and "Navi 32," being disaggregated chips. An interesting rumor suggests that team red's RDNA 4 generation will see a transition from disaggregated chips to multi-chip modules—packages that contain multiple fully-integrated GPU dies. Back to the green camp, and NVIDIA is expected to use an advanced 4 nm-class node for its GeForce "Blackwell" GPUs.
Sources:
kopite7kimi (Twitter), HXL (Twitter)
In contrast, AMD started building disaggregated devices with its current RDNA 3 generation, with its top two chips, the "Navi 31" and "Navi 32," being disaggregated chips. An interesting rumor suggests that team red's RDNA 4 generation will see a transition from disaggregated chips to multi-chip modules—packages that contain multiple fully-integrated GPU dies. Back to the green camp, and NVIDIA is expected to use an advanced 4 nm-class node for its GeForce "Blackwell" GPUs.
30 Comments on NVIDIA to Stick to Monolithic GPU Dies for its GeForce "Blackwell" Generation
Looks like the consumers are getting the shaft yet again, unless the 5080 gets the GB203 die as well, I suppose.
The performance uplift over Lovelace will be interesting with this series, as to me it sounds like a lot of overclocking is going to be needed to bring the big performance gains to these cards. Maybe 600w+ 5090s will be a thing, and 350w 5080s etc...?
I used to be so excited for new generation of GPU and CPU but I just can't anymore the pricing is leaving such a bad taste in my mouth I just buy peripherals or add to my water cooling. Honestly consoles never looked better.
But if the rumors are true Nvidia might go back to 1 Generation of GPUs per year (just like it used to be with GTX GPUs back then).
As for Blackwell, I guess Nvidia isn't ready to risk accepting or willing to iron out the shortcomings of the chiplet design (high idle power being the key). Playing it safe makes sense.
Again, you don't change your car every 1 or 2 years just because a new, faster model came in existence. Best comparison you can do, is with the smart phones. However, only suckers buys the exact same phone (let's call it iPhone 14, when the 3 years old model is exactly the same in all possible ways) :))
That was circa 2022, current implementation on Blackwell could be even better.
On-chip communications have a scaling issue wherein routing more and more data lines throughout the chips becomes increasingly difficult to do in an ideal maner as complexity increases. The university of Toronto did a paper studying the latency of CPUs with and without an interposer which demonstrated that as CPU core count increases so too does the benefit of having an active interposer.
I guess right now is a bad moment for buying, because the new generation is coming soon.