Nvidias plans for the next Gen ...

[Nexus]

On 2002-02-11 17:50, LeStoffer wrote:
Just think about their silicon budget... Sure they may move to the 0.13 process but with 63 million transitors already on the GF4 (.015 process) that change wont really give you silicon etate enough to pack in more than those extra DX 9 features AFAIK.
I think that after all NV20/NV25/Nv2a was a larger jump over NV10/15 than NV30 will be.

You can put many more transistors into a smaller process, even on a small shrink (going from 0.15 to 0.13). By shrinking a chip you make it cheaper and/or more complex.

Take a look at those numbers from the CPU world:

VIA's Centaur 3:
75 mm² @0.18µm, 11,200,000 transistors, 128KB L1, no L2
52 mm² @0.15µm, 15,800,000 transistors, 128KB L1 and 64KB L2

4.6 million more transistors and quite a bit smaller.

Intel's P4:
217 mm² @0.18µm, 42,000,000 transistors, 256KB L2
145 mm² @0.13µm, 55,000,000 transistors, 512KB L2

Same here, with bigger numbers.

Isnt this (programmable DSP's) what Metagence brings to the table (from IMGTEC) ???

You should know that as a PowerVR Extremist?. Just check http://www.metagence.com, they build DSPs, but not for (3D) graphic computation.

 

[duffer]

I don't think the NV30 will be completely programmable. It will probably just implement the DX9 vertex and pixel shaders, which are more programmable than DX8 vertex and pixel shaders, but (much) less programmable than the PS2 VU0 and VU1 shaders.

(My knowlege of DX9 comes from the Meltdown PowerPoint slides Microsoft posted on their web site a while back.)

I'm sure NVIDIA is shooting for Fall for introducing the NV30, so they can sell cards for Christmas. I expect this year's GDC will be a repeat of GDC two years ago - Microsoft will detail DX9 features during their "Developer Day" before GDC, and NVIDIA and ATI will demo their DX9 prototype cards behind closed doors.

Whether or not ordinary mortals (like us!) will hear anything about this is an open question. I hope so!

 

[PVR_Extremist]

Isnt this (programmable DSP's) what Metagence brings to the table (from IMGTEC) ???

You should know that as a PowerVR Extremist?. Just check http://www.metagence.com, they build DSPs, but not for (3D) graphic computation.
[/quote]

Who says that Metagence technology won't appear in PowerVR products? :rollseyes:

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: PVR_Extremist on 2002-02-13 10:06 ]</font>