Keysplayr
Elite Member
Until GF100 nVidia always released the full chip. There is no reason to believe that they will change their behavior.
Not to mention that the 28nm process at TSMC is now rather mature.
Until GF100 nVidia always released the full chip. There is no reason to believe that they will change their behavior.
Until GF100 nVidia always released the full chip. There is no reason to believe that they will change their behavior.
That is not correct. G92 was first released as the 8800GT, which had some fused off cores. The 8800GTS 512 came six weeks after, which was fully the functional G92.
I only wished AMD would have some cash to invest this area as well. But NVIDIA is really doing an amazing job especially w. their toolkit support.
The problem is AMD has no chance in HPC markets, they are playing catch up in a field thats evolving rapidly. They are years behind. Their software support is pathetic compared to CUDA's wide usage. The only reason for server makers to consider AMD is if they only care about SP ops or bitcoin-esk code.
I don't see AMD having much success in HPC for a long long time. There's other markets they should be pushing their GPU lead for: smartphones, tablets, mobile space and raping intel iGPU. These consumer markets are easy to penetrate if your product is superior perf/w, these users arent going to care what chip is in the phone, as long as its fast and has a long battery life. Wasting R&D to compete with NV in HPC is a wasted effort, IMO.
8800GT was a counter to AMD's rv670 and g92 was nVidia's first 65nm product.
But itt was still cut down and it was still released before Fermi, making your statement as you said it incorrect.
8800gt was released as a counter. But at that time there was not even real supply for g92. So they released g92 with 7 cluster to put out "enough" cards but until 8800GTS there was nearly nothing on the market.
I am neither arguing nor disagreeing with your assessment of G92, I merely pointed out that you incorrectly stated "until GF100 Nvidia always released the full chip." G92 came before Fermi, and the first product based on G92 had fused off cores. Plain and simple.
Charlie implies here that the 14 SMX K20s are "special" chips for ORNL (and maybe other supercomputers), and the 13 SMX K20 is the "real" version that will actually be available on the market.
The problem is AMD has no chance in HPC markets, they are playing catch up in a field thats evolving rapidly. They are years behind. Their software support is pathetic compared to CUDA's wide usage. The only reason for server makers to consider AMD is if they only care about SP ops or bitcoin-esk code.
I don't see AMD having much success in HPC for a long long time. There's other markets they should be pushing their GPU lead for: smartphones, tablets, mobile space and raping intel iGPU. These consumer markets are easy to penetrate if your product is superior perf/w, these users arent going to care what chip is in the phone, as long as its fast and has a long battery life. Wasting R&D to compete with NV in HPC is a wasted effort, IMO.
The problem is AMD has no chance in HPC markets, they are playing catch up in a field thats evolving rapidly. They are years behind. Their software support is pathetic compared to CUDA's wide usage. The only reason for server makers to consider AMD is if they only care about SP ops or bitcoin-esk code.
I don't see AMD having much success in HPC for a long long time. There's other markets they should be pushing their GPU lead for: smartphones, tablets, mobile space and raping intel iGPU. These consumer markets are easy to penetrate if your product is superior perf/w, these users arent going to care what chip is in the phone, as long as its fast and has a long battery life. Wasting R&D to compete with NV in HPC is a wasted effort, IMO.
HPC margins are like no other. AMD is probably tempted by the fact that incremental effort on top of GPU can get them into a market with significant profits. Maybe its working a bit, they do have several design wins in Top500. But then NVIDIA seems to have a bigger chunk of the market.
HPC is a lucrative market with very little competition.
Sorry, but what you are saying doesn't make sense. HPC is a lucrative market with very little competition. AMD has the product to compete. That wasn't always true, but Tahiti has changed that. The gaming card market doesn't have a lot of growth opportunity.
AMD is going to have to compete with NV.. and NV owns the market. Its worse than the CPU story vs Intel domination.
I disagree about competing with nVidia being worse than competing with Intel. Intel is 14X the size of nVidia. Intel is miles ahead of TSMC and GloFo (AMD/nVidia suppliers) on manufacturing process. nVidia does own the market. That can be changed, though.
AMD has the product to compete. That wasn't always true, but Tahiti has changed that.
The workstation video and animation market is the one that they are going to have the most difficulty with. They need to schmooze Autodesk.
Sorry, but what you are saying doesn't make sense. HPC is a lucrative market with very little competition. AMD has the product to compete. That wasn't always true, but Tahiti has changed that. The gaming card market doesn't have a lot of growth opportunity.
The workstation video and animation market is the one that they are going to have the most difficulty with. They need to schmooze Autodesk.
True. Although margins will shrink in HPC if AMD is successful with OpenCL.
Intel is 14x the size of Nvidia but can't compete against Nvidia in the compute arena. Not even with a two node process advantage could they compete. Not even with Knights Corner. So it isn't the behemoth size that makes you superior. It surely makes it easier to "become" superior but the product is key.
Anyway, just thinking out loud.
Unfortunately OpenCL is miles behind CUDA features. 🙁
My comment was on the high HPC margins which will vanish if OpenCL is successful. Not on OpenCL vs. CUDA.
Not really, not even really that close. nV's actual throughput is ~20% higher then the S9000's theoretical peak. They have strong parts for SP throughput to be sure, but SP doesn't get you into the big boy game.
They need to have a better driver team. People can say what they want about AMD's consumer Windows based drivers, once you step away from that narrowly defined segment AMD's drivers have a well earned reputation for being crap. They don't need Autodesk's support, they need to support Autodesk.
And the reason for that is? 😕
Consumer cards run OpenCL as well as the workstation equivalent. It's not something that's driver optimized. A 7970 is just as good as a W9000.