Tuesday, June 17th 2008
ATI Believes GeForce GTX 200 Will be NVIDIA's Last Monolithic GPU.
The head of ATI Technologies claims that the recently introduced NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 GPU will be the last monolithic "megachip" because they are simply too expensive to manufacture. The statement was made after NVIDIA executives vowed to keep producing large single chip GPUs. The size of the G200 GPU is about 600mm2¬¬ which means only about 97 can fit on a 300mm wafer costing thousands of dollars. Earlier this year NVIDIA's chief scientist said that AMD is unable to develop a large monolithic graphics processor due to lack of resources. However, Mr. Bergman said that smaller chips allow easier adoption of them for mobile computers.
Source:
X-bit Labs
116 Comments on ATI Believes GeForce GTX 200 Will be NVIDIA's Last Monolithic GPU.
nvidia is a big company and it would take alot for them to "bet the farm" on a single chip. it's not like nvidia will really care if ati's is faster thsi time. nvidia will just simply laugh when theirs outsells ati's faster card. this has been typical since the dawn of nvidia (though back then it was rare that ati got a win, the radeon was the first to even truly compete)
the gtx280 seems to be a flop, no biggie nvidia will launch a revision which may or may not flop as well. it doesn't matter because nvidia is already working 4-5 generations out. So if this generation is a flop, they'll simply pour more of their employees into the next gen.
Ati also works several generations out which is why it didn't matter that the r600 was a flop. they already had several others in the pipeline that they knew performed better perwatt.
and I seriously have to laugh at all the fanboys who say "look at the last 2 years, nvidia can't lose" wow was the 8800 your first gpu or what? nvidia nor intel nor amd nor ati nor via nor any other manufacturer can put out the best product every time. it's impossible and history tells us differently. the ti4000 series stomped all over ati's radeon 8500. and all the nvidia fanboys went "see nvidia can't lose" and then came the fx series in which the 9700's stomped all over and later the 9800's widened the gap. Then fact that nvidia has been ruling for the past 2 years only strengthens the argument that the ati card will be faster this time. ATi and nvidia have been doing this dance since long before many on this forum, knew what a graphics card was and they'll be doing this dance long after. it's development + pressure from competition + a little luck that forms the winner. and nvidia has been missing an element making them less likely to come on top this time.
the gtx280 was the chip specs wise we all wanted it to be double the rop's double the mem bit, and nearly double the shaders. the trouble is each time the gpu manufacturers double things, it takes games quite a while to catch up in coding to use the extra power. The gtx280 will only grow more powerful as time goes on, but it will likely be the last of it's kind. why? because it's the way the markets going. the bigger badder phase started when intel was pushing the clock speeds and ati was pushing the pixel pipeline. both required more cooling and psu than previous generations had seen. the core2duo is different offering more power without going for the GHZ (stock comparison of course) and each generation seems to have a lower tdp than the last. gpu's similarly will start (and have already started rv670/g92) doing the same thing. the high tdp gpus will start going by the wayside while cheaper/quieter/lower tdp versions will replace them. the g92 did a good job of increasing performance while dropping heat and energy requirements. the gt200b will likely do the same with nvidias next chip being cooler than the gt200b. it's market trends. more ussers are going for cooler quiter pc's than in 2000 making this quite a different battle than it used to be.
It's round so it aides several manufacturing processes. A Perti-plate is never square, we use them for microbial cultures. It's round and so aides streaking, colony design, etc. I wish pizza was square, but then it becomes difficult for Dominoes to make them. They come in a semi-manufactured state, the local Dominoes completes the manufacture before giving it away to the delivery boys.
You have to add lower operational voltages, lower in-between transistor latency = higher possible clocks and lower power consumption. Everything adds up to manufacturers being able to make the same chip a lot easier/cheaper or a faster chip for the same costs.
Read this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWfCqpJzJYM&feature=related
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWVywhzuHnQ&feature=related
EDIT: Anyway it's not because they spin while they "plant" suff in them, but quite the oposite from what I've understood. It's while they remove the remains and they could be square for that purpose. I had already taken into account they could make them spin to take those remains out, but square wafers could spin too, it would be just not as easier. :) They have to be round because of how the silicon bar is created though, and I didn't know that. I like learning this kind of things. :D
ps. btarunr you would have made a brilliantly chavy sentence if you said "i is serious cat now." :D
But yeah, the posibility still remains, I wouldn't bet my leg though.
See, don't I look serious?™See, they polish the wafers when they're rotated at high-speeds. Could you do that with squares? Next time, hide the rick-roll in a bundle of links, don't make it obvious, I didn't fall for that last link.
first half is wii chips, its the second half that gets interesting
About the link I made it obvious because I wanted it to be obvious, that was my joke.
EDIT: BTW is that cat photoshoped? lol