[Supercomputers] 1st design wins for Nvidia Volta and IBM PowerPC

[Ryan Smith]

Big question: Does this mean NV will go straight from 28nm Maxwell GM200 (2015) to 16nm Pascal GP200 (2016) and then 14-16nm Volta (2017)? Not likely, which means there is likely a confusion in the article regarding what Volta is. Unless in this case the name "Volta" and "Pascal" are interchangeable, then it would make sense because originally NV had Volta+HBM for its 2016 roadmap.

I can confirm that it is in fact Volta, and not Pascal. Pascal and Volta are different, distinct products, and these systems will be built out of Volta.

 

[NostaSeronx]

Pascal -> High Bandwidth Memory, Consumer
Volta -> Hybrid Memory Cube, High Performance Computing

Based on olde roadmaps and nu roadmaps.

Now the big thing is if POWER9 and Volta are on the same node; 14-nm SOI FinFETs.

IBM & Nvidia are both SOI consortium members.
http://www.soiconsortium.org/about-us/list-of-members.php

 

[tviceman]

Perhaps Pascal will be on 16nmFF, and Volta will be on 16nmFF+ and the differences between the two architectures won't be nearly as large (from a performance/watt standpoint) as the difference is between Kepler and Maxwell.

 

[dangerman1337]

When's this supercomputer going to be built?

 

[witeken]

When's this supercomputer going to be built?

Source, ExtremeTech:

The two computers — Summit, which will be built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sierra, built at Lawrence Livermore — will have peak performance of around 150 petaflops when they’re completed in 2017-2018.

 

[RussianSensation]

I can confirm that it is in fact Volta, and not Pascal. Pascal and Volta are different, distinct products, and these systems will be built out of Volta.

Thanks for the confirmation Ryan. :thumbsup:

I am actually positively surprised that the supercomputer will be built on an architecture 2 generations ahead of Maxwell. Impressive! With 2017 as their target, it seems that we could be in for a treat in terms of graphical performance increases if NV is going to be so aggressive with their Maxwell--> Pascal --> Volta launch schedules. Of course NV did provide Oak Ridge with GK110 a lot earlier than when Titan hit the market for us desktop gamers.

 

[witeken]

Thanks for the confirmation Ryan. :thumbsup:

I am actually positively surprised that the supercomputer will be built on an architecture 2 generations ahead of Maxwell. Impressive! With 2017 as their target, it seems that we could be in for a treat in terms of graphical performance increases if NV is going to be so aggressive with their Maxwell--> Pascal --> Volta launch schedules. Of course NV did provide Oak Ridge with GK110 a lot earlier than when Titan hit the market for us desktop gamers.

Their target is not 2017. It's 2017-2018. Nvidia has a 2 year cadence, so with Maxwell having launched in 2014, Pascal launching in 2016, then Volta could simply be released somewhere in 2018.