14 DAY TRIAL // The transition to the 28nm fabrication process seems to take Nvidia longer than expected since the latest rumors to arrive suggest the Santa Clara graphics chips maker won't start the production of the first GPU based on this advanced node until December of 2011.
The first 28 graphics chips to enter mass production are a die shrink of the current Fermi-based GPUs already available in the market and will target the mobile sector.
While the exact shipping date of these GPUs is not yet known, Nvidia will most probably try to get them out right before Intel launches its 22nm Ivy Bridge processors in order to get into as many notebook designs as possible.
According to Fudzilla, the delay was caused by TSMC's slow transition to the new process node, as yields are still an issue.
Together with its first 28nm mobile parts, Nvidia is also expected to launch the company's first Kepler GPUs.
Kepler is the code name used by Nvidia to refer to its next-generation graphics processing unit architecture, which, just like AMD's Southern Islands GPUs, will be manufactured using TSMC's 28nm fabrication process.
The new graphics core is expected to be more flexible in terms of programmability than the current Fermi architecture.
In the second half of 2010, Nvidia promised that Kepler, and its successor Maxwell, will include virtual memory space (allowing both the GPU and the CPU to use a unified virtual memory) and pre-emption support, as well as a series of other technologies meant to improve the GPU's ability to process data without the help of the system's processor.
According to previous Nvidia estimates, these changes, combined with the new manufacturing process, should deliver 3 to 4 times the performance per Watt of the Fermi architecture in double-precision 64-bit floating point operations.
In the consumer market, Kepler-based graphics cards will most likely carry the GeForce 600 designation.