NV: Everything under control. 512-Fermi may appear someday. Yields aren't under 20%

[Lonyo]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20100414PD217.html

Nvidia does not comment on unannounced products; however, we have a chance to launch a graphics chip with 512 cores in the future.
TSMC's yields for its 40nm process has met our expectations and market rumors about the yields being lower than 20% are completely untrue. We currently have everything under control.

So there you go. It's not under 20%.
However, the rumour was for 20~30%, so...

 

[Patrick Wolf]

It's completely untrue the yields are below 20%, so it could be right at 20%. lol

Looking forward to the Furmace 512.

 

[Dadofamunky]

The GPU market, particularly NVidia, needs to get with the times. Power consumption is now a serious consideration. At this point, I would never consider a NVidia card. That's a shame, because I've always been happy with their products when I've gotten them.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

The GPU market, particularly NVidia, needs to get with the times. Power consumption is now a serious consideration.

Provided ATI can keep upping performance without becoming power hogs themselves.

 

[faxon]

It's completely untrue the yields are below 20%, so it could be right at 20%. lol

Looking forward to the Furmace 512.

i thought everyone was calling it thermi :awe:

 

[Madcatatlas]

You guys can laugh at it all you want! but you should fear the second incarnation!


On the other hand, that statement from nV is either a direct result of the stock news or in any case it speaks volumes about the pressure their own stockholders/fans are putting on them.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

i thought everyone was calling it thermi :awe:

lol, I had only heard of furmace. :thumbsup:

 

[Patrick Wolf]

You guys can laugh at it all you want! but you should fear the second incarnation!

This?

 

[BD231]

ok

 

[sandorski]

hehe, not exactly Inspiring or Convincing words.

 

[3DVagabond]

Nvidia does not comment on unannounced products; however, we have a chance to launch a graphics chip with 512 cores in the future.

Of course they do. They have a chance to release a 1024 and 2048 core parts in the future as well. There's a chance that the world will end tomorrow as well. anything's possible, afterall.

TSMC's yields for its 40nm process has met our expectations and market rumors about the yields being lower than 20% are completely untrue. We currently have everything under control.

Didn't they, not so long ago, blame TSMC's 40nm yields for the reason Fermi was late? Now they are perfectly satisfied?
<20% yields. Now who was it that said that? Interesting to see nVidia feeling the need to counter S\A.

I've been looking on Newegg every day. I'm not scouring the net to try and check on GTX480 availability, but Newegg hasn't had any whenever I've checked, for a while now. Tells me that not only was 512 cores unmanufacturable, but 480 cores is proving to be not much better.

 

[Bl0cks]

In comparison, what is the yield for 5850/5870's?

 

[Lonyo]

Didn't they, not so long ago, blame TSMC's 40nm yields for the reason Fermi was late? Now they are perfectly satisfied?
<20% yields. Now who was it that said that? Interesting to see nVidia feeling the need to counter S\A.

I've been looking on Newegg every day. I'm not scouring the net to try and check on GTX480 availability, but Newegg hasn't had any whenever I've checked, for a while now. Tells me that not only was 512 cores unmanufacturable, but 480 cores is proving to be not much better.

They didn't say they were perfectly satisfied, just that they were meeting expectations.

However, Nvidia expects the problems with 40nm yields to be solved completely in Q2 – Q3 2010, just in time when the company plans to ramp up production of chips based on the new-generation Fermi architecture.

“By the time we begin launching Fermi, which is in volume production today, and which will really become mainstream for us in Q2 – Q3 from a volume standpoint, the yield issues will be past us,” added Mr. White.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/..._Be_Completely_Solved_by_mid_2010_Nvidia.html
So they're not expecting great yields quite yet/up to this point, but by next quarter yields should be sorted.

 

[ZimZum]

In comparison, what is the yield for 5850/5870's?

Supposedly 60-80&#37; for cypress.

 

[SlowSpyder]

So yields are 21&#37; or higher. Who knows, they could be including the GTX460 in there as well to make things sound better.

Or, who knows, maybe things are sorted out and they are actually getting decent yields? It's possible I guess, but I tend to believe that is not the case seeing as their top end part is still 'crippled' from the specs they announced before Fermi's launch.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2918/2

Nvidia clearly stated that this was a 512SP part. So, I tend to believe yields are not fantastic seeing as their top end part is still a 480SP part. But, maybe things are improving and we'll see a 512SP part some time sooner than later?

 

[WelshBloke]

Nvidia does not comment on unannounced products; however, we have a chance to launch a graphics chip with 512 cores in the future.
TSMC's yields for its 40nm process has met our expectations and market rumors about the yields being lower than 20% are completely untrue. We currently have everything under control.

To me those are two separate statements.

It could mean that overall 40nm yields are fine but says nothing specifically about Fermi yields.

 

[SolMiester]

In comparison, what is the yield for 5850/5870's?

Who cares, we are discussing Nv, not Ati!

 

[happy medium]

And are we surprised by this?
It's fairly easy to assume the following...

gtx 485 512 sp will come in time for the semi refresh of the 5870 (A.K.A. 5890) this fall and beat it.
or ATI is a little late for their refresh and the gtx 4xx series has its own refresh and totally smokes the 5890 with a cooler,less power hungry,higher clocked gtx 485 with 512 sp's.

Unless Ati makes a 1.3 ghz core speed part there not taking the single gpu crown back anytime soon.

The gtx 4xx line is hot and power hungry, but its just too fast for 58xx architecture. They could fight with a x2 5850 ,that would be nice, but thats basically a 5970.
ATI needs the 68xx series soon.

It's been this way for years now, come on guys.

 

[Will Robinson]

Umm,no...more likely ATi will drop the price of HD5850 to dominate the lower performing GTX460(if they even need to) and stick to their release schedule for the SI chip due later this year.
The 512 GTX485 or whatever is a dream,without drastic modification the card would be a power hungry furnace.
As for the "single GPU crown" ...I guess most people buy video cards,not GPUs.If they really want the Fastest Video Card then HD5970 Hemlock is King.
()

 

[Sylvanas]

And are we surprised by this?
It's fairly easy to assume the following...

gtx 485 512 sp will come in time for the semi refresh of the 5870 (A.K.A. 5890) this fall and beat it.
or ATI is a little late for their refresh and the gtx 4xx series has its own refresh and totally smokes the 5890 with a cooler,less power hungry,higher clocked gtx 485 with 512 sp's.

Unless Ati makes a 1.3 ghz core speed part there not taking the single gpu crown back anytime soon.

The gtx 4xx line is hot and power hungry, but its just too fast for 58xx architecture. They could fight with a x2 5850 ,that would be nice, but thats basically a 5970.
ATI needs the 68xx series soon.

It's been this way for years now, come on guys.

Except according to rumours (which is just as credible as rumours about an Nvidia refresh) ATIs refresh by the end of the year may infact be Southern Islands in which case all Nvidia looks likely to be able to produce is perhaps a Fermi 512 to compete (which may have to be lower clocked to account for increasing heat/power dissipation in accordance with the PCI-E spec).

and the gtx 4xx series has its own refresh and totally smokes the 5890 with a cooler,less power hungry,higher clocked gtx 485 with 512 sp's.

This is unlikely if your design is inherently a high leakage part- theres only so much you can do with the same architecture and manufacturing process. Higher clocks AND 512SP's has to have a trade off in higher power consumption and heat dissipation. The GTX480 is a die harvested part, if you were to change the silicon in a later revision drastically that would be a sizable investment, in the millions of $ and take time to evalute and tape out on TSMCs existing process. If I were Nvidia I'd see that as wasted resources that could be spent on other concurrent projects.

The gtx 4xx line is hot and power hungry, but its just too fast for 58xx architecture. They could fight with a x2 5850 ,that would be nice, but thats basically a 5970.
ATI needs the 68xx series soon.

They don't need to 'fight' as the 5870 is in a lower price bracket to begin with yet out performs a 480 in some games while in most cases is 10% slower across the board. If the 480 falls to 5870 prices then I would see a need perhaps for a filler card ie. 5890.

 

[Lonyo]

And are we surprised by this?
It's fairly easy to assume the following...

gtx 485 512 sp will come in time for the semi refresh of the 5870 (A.K.A. 5890) this fall and beat it.
or ATI is a little late for their refresh and the gtx 4xx series has its own refresh and totally smokes the 5890 with a cooler,less power hungry,higher clocked gtx 485 with 512 sp's.

Unless Ati makes a 1.3 ghz core speed part there not taking the single gpu crown back anytime soon.

The gtx 4xx line is hot and power hungry, but its just too fast for 58xx architecture. They could fight with a x2 5850 ,that would be nice, but thats basically a 5970.
ATI needs the 68xx series soon.

It's been this way for years now, come on guys.

Um, did you miss the memo about ATIs business plan? It's that way by design. They don't want a single dominant GPU.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2556/2

When the smoke clears, AMD's strategy is to simply build a GPU for the masses and attempt to scale it up and down. While NVIDIA is still building its GPUs the same way it has for decades, starting very large and scaling down.

That AMD managed to have the single GPU crown for 6 months wasn't a design decision or a goal they had, it was the result of NV being late.

 

[RussianSensation]

That AMD managed to have the single GPU crown for 6 months wasn't a design decision or a goal they had, it was the result of NV being late.

Exactly! Thanks Lonyo.

Everyone got too caught up on comparing 5870 to GTX480. AMD new strategy has been to use a dual-gpu card to compete with a single large monolithic die of NV. The fact that GTX480 only beats 5870 by 15&#37; while being ~ 530 mm^2 vs. 334 mm^2 on the 5870 shows just how competitive ATI's chip is. ATI's original prices on 5850/70 only validate their strategy.

I don't think ATI ever imagined using their $260 5850 to compete with a $350 GTX470 because they thought GTX470 would compete with their 5870 and GTX480 would compete with their dual-gpu card. But that obviously didn't happen because NV missed the mark completely (other than the great surprise related to GTX4xx series tessellation performance).

 

[Matrices]

That is nonsense. Why are you trying to pretend you know ATI's reasoning behind their business decisions and their predictions about the competition's capability?

It is ridiculous to say that ATI was expecting Nvidia's single GPU part to compete with ATI's own dual GPU part. That would mean ATI was expecting Nvidia to produce a part twice as powerful as its own. Meanwhile, back in the real world, video cards are only (barely) twice as powerful as video cards of the last generation.

Fermi and Cypress are of the same generation. The problem isn't the performance - Fermi is faster, period - the problem is whether you want to put up with the extra heat and power consumption.

 

[Lonyo]

That is nonsense. Why are you trying to pretend you know ATI's reasoning behind their business decisions and their predictions about the competition's capability?

It is ridiculous to say that ATI was expecting Nvidia's single GPU part to compete with ATI's own dual GPU part. That would mean ATI was expecting Nvidia to produce a part twice as powerful as its own. Meanwhile, back in the real world, video cards are only (barely) twice as powerful as video cards of the last generation.

Fermi and Cypress are of the same generation. The problem isn't the performance - Fermi is faster, period - the problem is whether you want to put up with the extra heat and power consumption.

Please, tell me where someone said that.
And I don't think anyone talked about reasoning, just about results. The result of their business decisions (design decisions) is a product which is slower. Intentionally.

Someone tried to argue that ATI needed to try and take back the single GPU crown.
I answered simply that they never intended to take the single GPU crown based on their design philosophy.
Whether they end up 50% or 5% slower doesn't matter, ending up slower is basically what they intended, so they have no need to try and take back a crown they only got through chance and luck.

 

[SlowSpyder]

That is nonsense. Why are you trying to pretend you know ATI's reasoning behind their business decisions and their predictions about the competition's capability?

It is ridiculous to say that ATI was expecting Nvidia's single GPU part to compete with ATI's own dual GPU part. That would mean ATI was expecting Nvidia to produce a part twice as powerful as its own. Meanwhile, back in the real world, video cards are only (barely) twice as powerful as video cards of the last generation.

Fermi and Cypress are of the same generation. The problem isn't the performance - Fermi is faster, period - the problem is whether you want to put up with the extra heat and power consumption.

AMD has said themselves, they plan to make their highest end single GPU's for the 'performance' crowd. For ultra highend enthusiast area they plan on using multiple 'performance' GPU's on a single card. Nothing new here...