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
Final Words
Today's launch is strange. I tried to convince NVIDIA to release more information about Fermi but was met with staunch resistance from the company. NVIDIA claims that by pre-announcing Fermi's performance levels it would seriously hurt its existing business. It's up to you whether or not you want to believe that.
Last quarter the Tesla business unit made $10M. That's not a whole lot of money for a company that, at its peak, grossed $1B in a single quarter. NVIDIA believes that Fermi is when that will all change. To borrow a horrendously overused phrase, Fermi is the inflection point for NVIDIA's Tesla sales.
By adding support for ECC, enabling C++ and easier Visual Studio integration, NVIDIA believes that Fermi will open its Tesla business up to a group of clients that would previously not so much as speak to NVIDIA. ECC is the killer feature there.
While the bulk of NVIDIA's revenue today comes from 3D graphics, NVIDIA believes that Tegra (mobile) and Tesla are the future growth segments for the company. This hints at a very troubling future for GPU makers - are we soon approaching the Atom-ization of graphics cards?
Will 2010 be the beginning of good enough performance in PC games? Display resolutions have pretty much stagnated, PC games are first developed on consoles which have inferior hardware and thus don't have as high the GPU requirements. The fact that NVIDIA is looking to Tegra and Tesla to grow the company is very telling. Then again, perhaps a brand new approach to graphics is what we'll need for the re-invigoration of PC game development. Larrabee.
If the TAM for GPUs in HPC is so big, why did NVIDIA only make $10M last quarter? If you ask NVIDIA it has to do with focus and sales.
According to NVIDIA, over the past couple of years NVIDIA's Tesla sales efforts have been scattered. The focus was on selling to any customers that could potentially see a speedup, trying to gain some traction for the Tesla business.
Jen-Hsun did some yelling and now NVIDIA is a bit more focused in that department. If Tesla revenues increase linearly from this point, that's simply not going to be enough. I asked NVIDIA if exponential growth for Tesla was in the cards and if so, when would it happen. The answer was yes and with Fermi.
We'll see how that plays out, but if Fermi doesn't significantly increase Tesla revenues then we know that NVIDIA is in serious trouble.
The architecture looks good, Fermi just needs to be priced right. Oh and the chip needs to hurry up and come out.
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SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Nice rebuttal to page 2: " Another kind of LAUNCH "--
write it down, nvidia launched today....(according to lunatic lying red roosters)
tamalero - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
weird.. they still said its "coming soon", I dont see any GF300 firm chips.when ATI said "we present the 5870" they were already on newegg.com
Silicon, let's face it, you're the biggest pro-nvidia troll I've ever seen.
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
You are also the person that went into a tirade about nvidia not replacing laptop gpu's with the faulty substrate and instead puttig on a heftier fan.You waxed on about how much you hate nvidia, and how they harmed the children (you claimed to be a teacher of some sort) then you screeched about nvidia reps, wished violence upon them, and claimed you'd love to show them how to do their jobs correctly.
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That's YOU tamalero.
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Now it's pretty amazing I tell the simple plain truth, you deny it a week late, lying for ati, have you public hate and rage on this board for nvidia, and yet claim it is I that is a fanboy.
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One Q, has your raging hatred for nvidia receded, or does lying about the 5870 release give you a sense of vengeful pleasure ?
tamalero - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
what truth?you're just inventing random crap your brain somehow imagines in illusions.
and what the hell are you talking about?
I never claimed to be a "teacher", wished violence? what the hell are you smoking?
harmed the children.. jesuchrist... are you on some sort of scientologist brainwashing group ?
SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Since you have lied, I will get the link and your quotes.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
no they wre not already on newegg - listed and greyed out- the first one available in a trickle -and only today have those listed appeared available, before that it was on for a few seconds, card gone - all GREYED OUT again.---
Sept. 23rd was launch, this is 7 days later.
They were a WEEK of paper. (no one can fairly count a sickly 1,2 or half dozen trickle)
tamalero - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
they were grey, because they sold out, note..., there were on amazon and tigerdirect.com as well. I woudlnt be surprised if newwave and other sites had the 5870 as well.you're just a person with mental problems who cant really accept anything outside your tiny world.
SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
TigerDirect was pre-order, as well as Amazon was reserve - you just haven't got clue one.fikimiki - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
In Poland, (it is Europe cause you don't know for sure)it is available in shops.
Also you can grab one from newegg.com
bobvodka - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
I woke up on HD5870 launch day.I logged onto a website in the UK.
I ordered an HD5870.
It shipped the same day.
I had it the next day and have been enjoying it ever since.
Looks like a non-paper launch to me.