Volta- 12nm or not?

[NTMBK]

Recent article on the Motley Fool poo-pooed the idea that Volta will be on 12nm: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017...rumor-doesnt-hol.aspx?source=iaasitlnk0000003

My guess? I think Volta will be on both 16nm+ and 12nm. I think the Tegra version intended for automotive will be on 12nm, while the mainstream and professional GPUs will be 16nm+. It's the same basic plan as Maxwell- normal Maxwell came out on 28nm, but the Tegra got 20nm.

 

[Headfoot]

I thought "12nm" was just marketing spin for an upgraded 16nm process. Kinda like how 16nm is really just an upgraded 20nm

 

[Ajay]

Hmm, all that to say "I don't know" - basically. And yes, 12nm is just marketing spin for a slight more compact performance 16FF node.

 

[Mopetar]

Depends how much of a departure 12 mm is. Typically companies are hesitant to release a new design on a new process as it just compounds the issues they can run into.

If it's just a marketing name for a refined process they probably will, at least for some of the stack. For the big dies it's safer to use a known process with better yields if you're making some big architectural changes.

 

[Ajay]

I don't think TSMC's 12FF would be enough of a change for NV to design the GV100 to (actual, the process choice and design work are already done deals). On thing that probably driving 'big' Volta is large orders for massive HPC systems like the national labs due in 1H18, IIRC. Word was already out that NV & AMD were skipping 10FF, so I really don't know where that leaves NV at all. Perhaps there is a node in pre-production that TSMC hasn't spoken about publicly (and that's one thing Ashfar speculates on).