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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SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Good for you, one of 7 billion, and then again one of perhaps 20, as reported for Europe.But, all you see is yourself, because you're just that selfish. And, you're a big enough liar, that you even posted your insane smart aleck stupidity, like a little brat.
That's what you're about. Case closed.
bobvodka - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Ah, I see, you have no facts to refute me with thus you fall back to unfounded insults safe in the knowledge that you are nothing but a troll hiding behind a keyboard.Sorry I wasted my time with you, clearly you aren't able to deal with the world in logical terms.
rennya - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Uhmm... maybe because it is common knowledge that ATI can actually get 5870 launched properly, with multiple manufacturers on board, and get the retail stores stocked up?20 for the whole Europe? What a joke. If I am a millionaire, I can get 20 of those 5870 GPU thing easily.
SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
This is October 1st, not September 23rd, so for being a millionaire, you certainly are one ding dang dumb dumb.gx80050 - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Isn't the internet great. It allows shitheads like yourself to say shit that would, in real life
get your head cracked open.
Hopefully you'll suffer the same fate fucking cunt.
Please turn to the loaded gun in your drawer, put it in your mouth, and pull the trigger,
blowing your brains out. You'll be doing the whole world a favor. Shitbag.
rennya - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Hahahaha.... even that today is already 1 October, you are still claiming that 5870 GPU is paper launch, when it is definitely not.rennya - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
What paper launch? Is Newegg is the only place to get one? Here somewhere in SE Asia getting one of this 5870 GPU is as easy as going to a store, flash your wad of cash at the cashier and then returns home with a box with pre-rendered 3D objects/characters on it (and of course an ATI 5870 GPU in it). In fact, after a week from the release date, there is a glut of them here already, mainly from Powercolor and HIS.SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
LOL - roflmao - So announce in the foreign tongue, and move to the next continent when ready, you dummy. They didn't do that. They LIED, again, and failed.A week late is better than several or a month or two for the 4870.
You can't buy quantity yet either, but for peons, who cares.
rennya - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Uhmm... the second language in SE Asia is English. What, just because I can prove to you that 5870 launch is real, you started to deny it? Are you the typical American that thinks the rest of the world doesn't exists?SiliconDoc - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Yuo can't prove anything to me, since you won't be proving the GT300 LAUNCHED like the author claimed.Instead, none of you quacking loons have anything but "foreign nation", no links and it's too late, and strangely none of you type in the Asain fashion.
LOL
So who the heck knows what you liars are doing anyway.
The paper standard was set by this site and it's authors, and the 4870 was paper, the 4770 was paper, and this 5870 was paper, PERIOD, and as of this morning the 5850 was also PAPER LAUNCHED.
What's funny is only you morons deny it.
All the other IT channels admit it.
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Good for you red roosters here, you're the only ones correct in the world. ( no, you're not really, and I had to say that because you'll believe anything )