NVIDIA's Fermi: Architected for Tesla, 3 Billion Transistors in 2010
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ECC Support
AMD's Radeon HD 5870 can detect errors on the memory bus, but it can't correct them. The register file, L1 cache, L2 cache and DRAM all have full ECC support in Fermi. This is one of those Tesla-specific features.
Many Tesla customers won't even talk to NVIDIA about moving their algorithms to GPUs unless NVIDIA can deliver ECC support. The scale of their installations is so large that ECC is absolutely necessary (or at least perceived to be).
Unified 64-bit Memory Addressing
In previous architectures there was a different load instruction depending on the type of memory: local (per thread), shared (per group of threads) or global (per kernel). This created issues with pointers and generally made a mess that programmers had to clean up.
Fermi unifies the address space so that there's only one instruction and the address of the memory is what determines where it's stored. The lowest bits are for local memory, the next set is for shared and then the remainder of the address space is global.
The unified address space is apparently necessary to enable C++ support for NVIDIA GPUs, which Fermi is designed to do.
The other big change to memory addressability is in the size of the address space. G80 and GT200 had a 32-bit address space, but next year NVIDIA expects to see Tesla boards with over 4GB of GDDR5 on board. Fermi now supports 64-bit addresses but the chip can physically address 40-bits of memory, or 1TB. That should be enough for now.
Both the unified address space and 64-bit addressing are almost exclusively for the compute space at this point. Consumer graphics cards won't need more than 4GB of memory for at least another couple of years. These changes were painful for NVIDIA to implement, and ultimately contributed to Fermi's delay, but necessary in NVIDIA's eyes.
New ISA Changes Enable DX11, OpenCL and C++, Visual Studio Support
Now this is cool. NVIDIA is announcing Nexus (no, not the thing from Star Trek Generations) a visual studio plugin that enables hardware debugging for CUDA code in visual studio. You can treat the GPU like a CPU, step into functions, look at the state of the GPU all in visual studio with Nexus. This is a huge step forward for CUDA developers.
Nexus running in Visual Studio on a CUDA GPU
Simply enabling DX11 support is a big enough change for a GPU - AMD had to go through that with RV870. Fermi implements a wide set of changes to its ISA, primarily designed at enabling C++ support. Virtual functions, new/delete, try/catch are all parts of C++ and enabled on Fermi.
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silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Am I hearing you right - you say GT300 isn't a paper launch despite there being no cards for sale for the next few months, yet you said the 5870 was AND THERE WERE CARDS FOR SALE WHEN YOU MADE THE COMMENT! I don't care that you couldn't locate one, the simple fact is people had already bought cards from the first trickle (emphasis on the trickle part) and as such made your statement completely invalid.How much more rubbish are you going to spew from your hole?
(note: I needed to have caps above to make a salient point and not just because I felt like holding the shift key for no particular reason)
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
roflmao - If you're hearing anything right, you'd keep your text yap shut.Please show me the LAUNCH information on GT300, there, brainless bubba, the liar. I really cannot imagine you are that stupid, but then again, it is possible.
Congratulations for being a COMPLETE IDIOT AND LIAR! Really, you must work very hard to maintain that level of ignorance. In fact, the requirement to be that stupid exceeds the likelihood that you actually are purely ignorant, and therefore, it is more likely you're a troll. My condolences in either case in all seriousness.
silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
The proposed launch is late November but even Fudzilla concede that any problems will delay this. The earliest we'll see a GT300 on the shelves is just under 2 months. There, that's information for you. I want nVidia to launch GT300 this year but we don't always get what we wish for.Where did I lie in any of my previous posts? Oh right... I didn't bow down to worship the Green God(dess). If you had any semblance of an open mind or any stability at all, your nose wouldn't need cleaning. Calling me a troll is pure comedy gold and offering me your pity is outstanding to say the least :)
Keep trying. Or don't. Either way, I doubt many people care for your viewpoints anymore.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Oh jeeze, one red rooster who finally gets it.Congratulations, you're not the dumbest of your crowd.
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No shirking here comes the QUOTE !
" The proposed launch is late November " !!! whoo hoo !
Now a proposed launch is not an official launch- try to keep that straight in the gourd haters when the time comes.
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Pass it along to all the screaming tards, won't you please, you talk their language, or perhapos we'll just say you already have, because, by golly, they can believe you.
ROFLMAO
rennya - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
'Nvidia LAUNCHED TODAY... se page two by your insane master Anand.'This what you have said yourself somewhere in this very discussion. So you must have known about this so-called launch yourself.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
That's called sarcasm dear. Jiminy crickets.palladium - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
How can you tell if that's not a GTX285 with redesigned cover/cooler/PCB?samspqr - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
it is SO funny that that thing silicondoc's master/god is holding in his hand ended up revealing itself as nothing more than a mock-up...SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
PS THE SILICON IS ALREADY CUT AND IN PRODUCTION!---
Yes anand at the bottom of page 1 claims "it's paper" - DECIEVING YOU, since the WAFERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN BURNED AND YIELDS ARE REPORTED HIGH ! (in spite of ati's marketing arm lying and claiming "only 9 cores per wafer yields" - A BIG FAT LIE NVIDIA POINTED OUT !
Where have you been with your head in the sand ?
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So at the bottom of page 1 Anand leaves you dips with the impression "it's all paper" (but the TRUTH is DEVELOPER CARDS ARE ALREADY ASSEMBLED and being DEBUGGED and TESTED) just anand won't get one for 2 months.
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THEN BY PAGE 2 ANAND CALLS IT A PAPER LAUNCH !
roflmao
Yes, the red rooster himself has convinced himself "today's nvidia LAUNCH" (that LAUNCH word is what anand made up in his deranged mind) is a paper launch "JUST LIKE ATI'S!".
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It is nothing short of absolutely AMAZING.
The red rooster fan has boonswoggled his own gourd, stated in fasle terms, bashed it to be as bad as what ati just did with 5870, and IT'S NOT EVEN A LAUNCH DAY FOR NVIDIA !
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Congratulations, the massive bias is SCREAMING off the page. LOL
It's hilarious, to say the least, that the master can be that deluded with his own spew!
gx80050 - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Die painfully okay? Prefearbly by getting crushed to death in a
garbage compactor, by getting your face cut to ribbons with a
pocketknife, your head cracked open with a baseball bat, your stomach
sliced open and your entrails spilled out, and your eyeballs ripped
out of their sockets. Fucking bitch
I would love to kick you hard in the face, breaking it. Then I'd cut
your stomach open with a chainsaw, exposing your intestines. Then I'd
cut your windpipe in two with a boxcutter.
Hopefully you'll get what's coming to you. Fucking bitch
I really hope that you get curb-stomped. It'd be hilarious to see you
begging for help, and then someone stomps on the back of your head,
leaving you to die in horrible, agonizing pain. Faggot
Shut the fuck up f aggot, before you get your face bashed in and cut
to ribbons, and your throat slit.