14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the launch of the next-generation CUDA architecture known as Fermi was postponed until next year, it seems that there are already working samples of the GeForce 100 Fermi-based graphics cards. Earlier today, a picture was posted on NVIDIA's twitter page, which showed the NVIDIA Director of Technical Marketing, Tom Peterson, holding a working system using two GF100 cards in an SLI configuration.
NVIDIA is somewhat behind AMD/ATI in the area of products aimed at the high-end graphics market. The GPU manufacturer decided to use this twitter picture as a means of rekindling end-users' anticipations for its own product, in the wake of the Radeon HD 5970 mania. Still, NVIDIA might benefit from this delay by having the AMD card as a subject of comparison. Also, the HD 5970 mania will likely tone down (at least somewhat) by January, which means that the consumer interest in Fermi might actually end up greater than if the actual release had been done sooner.
The GeForce 100 will be the first graphics card from NVIDIA to use the next-generation CUDA. The card employs a 40nm chip with 512 CUDA cores, GDDR5 VRAM and has DirectX 11 support and a memory interface of 384 bits. The card also has the Fermi features of the NVIDIA Parallel DataCache technology and the NVIDIA GigaThread engine.
The Radeon HD 5970 graphics card has stirred much admiration among consumers worldwide and this, in turn, has likely raised the general expectations concerning the upcoming Fermi architecture. NVIDIA has to deal with the pressure of developing a technology capable of yielding graphics adapters with performance capabilities at least on par with those of the Hemlock.
A clear release date for the Fermi architecture has yet to be revealed. The technology will debut sometime during the first quarter of 2010. It is possible that the samples will be demonstrated at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, but this has yet to be confirmed. Still, the architecture itself is very complex, likely the most ambitious project on NVIDIA's part so far, which also explains the rather large size of the actual GF100 (about 10.5 inches long).
Regardless of rumors, however, the mere fact that there are working samples of the NVIDIA GF100 Fermi card shows that the actual technology has progressed quite far and is already in testing stage. This means that hopefuls might not have to keep waiting for as long as they had originally thought.