NVIDIA CineFX Architecture (NV30)

Of course ATI and nVidia have to shoulder the fabrication size costs. They have to pay TSMC money, don't they?

After all, most of the cost, once full production has begun, is in the silicon wafers. This is most of the cost that TSMC passes on to its customers as well.

 

agreed, and contract cost for ATi's R300 maybe higher than NV30... but say, if TSMC f's up a lot of R300 mistakingly cause its .15 --- they still have to meet that X amount of requirement by contract, at original cost AFAIK.

 

IMHO I doubt.

First, it is well designed because it get 300Mhz with 107millions transistors and .15 micron process.
Second, how do you know what problems Nvidia have with NV30?
Third, the extra power is a necessity AND a advantage from the performance viewpoint.

Maybe we will see some 256bits DDR-II

107/96 = 1.11 or 11% and it is not much, I consider more or less equal. Any doubts?

It will not change in a couple of months

Chalnoth, Why dont you try to balance your posts. It is so much Nvidia oriented. Just in case you want to know I have a GF3Ti200.

 

You don't think there will be any benefit to the new pixel/vertex shaders in the NV30? I'd say that's highly presumptuous.

But the .13 micron process should allow higher clock speeds without the necessity of external power. Meaning less cost and higher performance.

It's a possibility, just not a very likely one. DDR2 will likely be used to cut costs in this first generation.

A few things. A fairly small percentage can have a significant effect on the number of chips per wafer, since wafers are round, and chips are square.

And 11% is pretty significant when you're talking about chips this size. Besides that, we don't know whether or not the NV30 is using more layers. If it is using more layers, then its die size could be even smaller.

Wolverine: Magneto is right. A war is coming. Are you sure you're on the right side?
Storm: At least I've chosen a side.

 

why chose sides?

 

Why argue without choosing sides? You'll just end up arguing with yourself.

 

For the next 3 years for games IMHO no.

Ok let me translate what I was trying to say.
Lets say the limit is 10W and R300 is using 12W and NV30 use the limit 10W. Lets say the performance advantage is 30% but now 20% is over because of the extra power. Now the smaller process advantage is small.

We dont know how much extra power R300 requires or how much NV30 will require, but I hope you understand the scenario.

It is a possibility.

IIRC it use more layers but the 20% reduction is TSMC info. http://www.tsmc.com/english/technology/t0101.htm
Yields are more important now.

Life is more than that.

 

Are you a game developer? If not, your opinion means nothing. I think that there's a good possibility of some use within the next year, but I'm certainly waiting on some gamedev comments to know fo sure. Right now, all that we know for sure is that the NV30 holds the potential for improvements in games based on its superior programmability.

If the NV30 needs extra power to run at optimum performance, then it will get it.

And, btw, don't forget that we're not talking about the same achitecture. The NV30 was designed for the .13 micron process.

So? I like to argue. That's why I'm here. I fill up the rest of my life with other things I like to do

 

I'll have to disagree with that. There is (generally) no "contract for parts" that is signed. The IHV pays for the mask set (approximately $500-750K for .13u, slightly less for .15u), the IHV pays for each wafer that is produced. The yield is almost entirely the IHVs risk. There is obviously engineering work done on both sides to solve yield problems, since both parties want the chips produced and want to continue the business venture, but unless the yield fallout can be directly attributed to the fab, the IHV is SOL. I have been involved in projects where the fab did guarantee yield because of factual misrepresentation in the design phase (i.e. to avoid a lawsuit). However, there was a lot of work that went in to "prove" who's fault it was.

The fab will merrily allow an IHV to produce a chip with 200M transistors and won't guarantee any sort of yield.

 

Thought....

The difference would be more substantial if the 2D engine of the graphics chip were emulated in the pixel shader. Seeing as how ATI is beginning to do just that with FULLSTREAM, the more flexible NV30 architecture may be able to completely supplant the 2D portion of the asic. This may buy Nvidia another 1-10 million transistors (I have no idea what a modern 2D core consumes in transistors) which could give them a higher than expected '3D transistor' differential. Surely the greatest barrier to doing this is developing new 2D drivers, but doing so can't be that bad, certainly easier than a 3D driver or developing a shader language and compiler.

If NV30 doesn't do this, I absolutely expect someone to do it soon. If you can squeeze Final Fantasy class rendering through the shader pipes, I ask why can't they do the same for my Win2k GUI

-Toasty

 

Are you a game developer or a fan? Your opinion means nothing to me.

How do you know? Another fan word?

Maybe the R300 has a more compact design than NV30, maybe not.

 

On the flip side, it's equaly presumptuous to assume that there will be any benefit...

Just revisit the situation with NV HOS implementation (spline-based)... sure it's great tech but then they had to disable it in their drivers, making it useless.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to both releases (R300 and NV30).

 

Well, most features implemented in hardware have at least some benefit, usually within a few months of the release of the hardware.

To be fair, it was only disabled in Direct3D.

And yes, I certainly agree that there is a possibility we won't see these features used in games anytime soon. But, given the past, few features follow this pattern.

 

As long as an individual doesn't argue with the sole purpose to choose sides it's fine by me.

There's nothing wrong to "argue" with yourself (metaphorically); holding up the mirror trims egos and builds character.

Excuse the interruption carry on...

 

I'd rather not argue with myself in public, is what I meant. Could get boring...mostly for others. But yeah, I think I'm done with this topic.

 

No, choosing sides blinds you to the truth.
To assume one side will win, without knowing everything, means you make assumptions.
This blinds you to certain possibilities.
This is your most ludicrous post yet, Chalnoth, and is why i dont trust any information in any of your posts.
You also say you like arguing. Well, you arent arguing. You are pedantically supporting a particular IHV - there can be no argument without an open mind.

 

agreed agreed agreed

 

Just a few questions to those "in the know":

is it feasible for nv30 to be an 8 pixel-pipe implementation? I know that most rumored specs point out to that, but with all the added complexity to their vertex & pixel shaders in comparison to r300 (lots more registers than r300 & addional ops) an 8*2 design is probably not possible with ~9% higher transistor count (assuming 110m(r300) and 120m(nv30)). Could it be that nv30 is going to be a more "nVidia traditional" 4*2 architecture (I remember to have read somewhere that nv30s problem(missing a better word here, do not want to imply that it really has one) in regards to speed was not so much with the clock-rate it will attain, but rather with how much it can do per clock cycle (don't remember where i red it). Could that be the reason why they implemented that fp16 color format, to be competetive with ati ("fillrate wise", then processing 8 pixels/clock).

how does nv18 fit in with nv31 (i assume it to be the value part) taking mainstream and nv28 being the dx8 (value) part. if it really is dx8 capable, why bother with nv28 (just to fill oems' 8xagp checkbox???).

Won't nv30's higher "close to real-time" (again, for the lack of a better expression) rendering capabillitys be quite important for end-users in regards to Longhorn (being able to run larger shaders on windows)?

 

NV30 will have 16 pipelines - that's double the ammount of the pipelines on R300!

 

Hi alexsok,

Careful--the paper just mentions "16 texture units," not pipelines. It could just as well be speaking of virtual TMUs, not physical ones. Or a 8x2 design. Or 4x4. Or . . .

Here's waiting for the NV3x paper launch . . .

ta,
-Sascha.rb