Nvidia Post-Volta (Ampere?) Rumor and Speculation Thread

They said specifically that most chips will be made by TSMC, which indicates most gaming chips too. Most likely it's a case like Pascal - TSMC for everything but the lowest end chips which are made by Samsung

 

TSMC 7nm capacity is used up. That is why I feel Nvidia might release Ampere for gaming on a refined 12nm node. And use 7nm for GA100 and GA102 dies for their Business sector GPUs. 12nm+ makes sense if you stop and think about the cost, power and efficiency aspects of it all. Specially, if Nvidia was put off guard by Navi (rdna), so close after Vega20.

 

We don't know whether NVIDIA will use N7 or N7+, N7+ hasn't had any reported capacity issues so far AFAIK and N7 capacity issues should be resolving themselves as Apple is going 5nm

 

Haven't they basically been confirmed to be using Samsung 7nm? Releasing on yet another 12nm just seems the way to ruin with Xe coming up and RDNA2 seemingly being a large improvement over one.

They announced as much nearly a year ago. Unless Samsung's process is in such deep shit that they can't deliver almost anything the TSMC is producing stuff just seems like a baseless rumor.

 

Yes, they have confirmed they will use Samsung to make some chips. They've also re-iterated that TSMC will still make most of their chips.

 

Confirmation that HPC version of Ampere is coming this summer:

Full Story at the source:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/0...rst-production-cray-shasta-supercomputer/amp/

 

The question is: will gaming Ampere be unveiled before HPC or after it?

Also from the source, They are comparing Ampere to V100:

 

NVIDIA’s Next-Gen GPU Is Up To 75% Faster Than Current-Gen – Will Be Deployed in Big Red 200 Supercomputer This Summer

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-next-gen-ampere-gpu-75-percent-faster-existing-gpus

 

What memory config should we expect on the flagship gaming GPU? GDDR6 clock speeds were basically maxed out this generation.

16 Gbps on a 384-bit bus gets to 768 GBps. That's about 25% more bandwidth than the 2080 Ti. Doesn't seem like enough especially for the resolutions and framerates we're chasing these days.

Return of 512-bit buses or will Nvidia finally bring HBM2 to consumer cards?

 

Worth noting is that the comparison is against Volta, not Turing, and they don't specify on what metrics they expect it to be 70-75% faster. Also it's about the Tesla which may or may not even use the same architecture as next gen consumer GPUs, but certainly won't use same chip with any GeForce.

Also 3x power efficiency (+50% speed at half the power) which WCCFTech is referring to is obviously not happening unless NVIDIA found the holy grail or something similar.

 

We cant downplay nvidia yet untill the new product is out there.

 

Who's downplaying them? 3x power efficiency would be same as card performing like 2080 Ti while consuming less than 1650 Super, that kind of progress would be unheard of.

 

According to Igorslab, NVIDIA's board partners are gearing up for a massive overhaul of their PCB designs, in anticipation of NVIDIA's next gen cards, a method called "backdrill" will be used to allow for much higher operating frequencies than possible now with the current board designs, it's also more expensive. The interpretation of this is that NVIDIA is gearing up to introduce really fast new GPUs.

https://www.igorslab.de/en/why-the-...er-the-practice-phase-igorslab-investigative/

 

Sounds like they're getting consumers ready for yet another Nvidia price gouge.

 

NVIDIA is making a killing in quarterly profits right now, and with no competition, I don't think prices will stabilize to lower levels anytime soon.

 

Erm, last time I checked AMD provides ample competition in everything but the very highest end

 

They are always late and with less feature :/ No real reason to switch camp or to buy them vs nvidia parts (and I've a Vega..).

 

Halo effect is important, that's one, NVIDIA has 4 GPUs above AMD's highest Navi choice, 2070S, 2080, 2080S, 2080Ti, not counting Titan RTX of course.

Secondly, looking at the market right now, that's not true, AMD still doesn't provide competition when their GPUs lack essential hardware features, NVIDIA has way options than them at every price point and is selling way more GPUs. The 5500XT had poor reception, same for the 5600XT, the 5700 series is being outmatched by the super series in sales, especially with the current driver woes, the 5700XT is the only successful Navi choice for AMD right now, but the recent driver problems have cast a big shadow over it.

Thirdly, on the process front AMD is a node behind NVIDIA as well, that doesn't matter to consumers right now, but it matters a hell of a lot more next gen. It gives NVIDIA headroom to experiment and push their advantage further.

 

While it's factually incorrect to say there is no competition I'd say that AMD still has far from enough mind- and market share for NVIDIA to be feeling much of a dent from it. AMD is moving forward impressively, but NVIDIA has certainly won the marketing game. Pre-builds, laptops, supercomputers et. al. still mainly offer NVIDIA GPU solutions. So the result is effectually the same.

AMD will need to have a strong counter to NVIDIA's next product lineup for them to really feel the burn I suspect. They're shifting prices around a little, now, because they have to in the low to mid-range.

 

While the halo effect is important, I don't think it'd be-all, end-all. Volkswagen flourished from the Beetle and Golf (Rabbit in the US). A well made product for the right price is key. Not to say it's unimportant, just that I think it gets overstated. And as to the performance of the 5500 and 5600 cards, we just can't say yet. They've been out for far too little time to make an adequate judgement on its success. Though they've had a few hurdles on launch I think it's rash to rashly disregard them as trash.

Lastly, AMD is on 7nm with RDNA, and NVIDIA is still on 14nm. Though this will change too.... 7nm with the new lineup, so I don't know where you got the process disadvantage from? Or have I missed something and NVIDIA is jumping to 5nm?