NVIDIA lets loose extra details about the incoming Pascal

Sep 22, 2015 14:20 GMT  ·  By

NVIDIA seems to have finished taping out the Pascal and started the QA process of the new GP100 chips. This testing period consists of having a limited batch of completed chips sent to an NVIDIA partner for testing and evaluation.

After being taped out in a fab, usually the prototypes are the first that need to be evaluated in order to really lay out some specs and see which processing cores are active and which are not. Apparently, a leak on Zauba Import Database found the new chips since they tripped speed traps on changeover airports, on their way to NVIDIA.

According to 3D Center, the new Pascal will likely be launched sometime in March or a bit later since the old Maxwell was taped out in June 2014, while trial began in July 2014. A similar testing phase will probably also be experienced by the new Pascal, and if it won't come out in March, it will most certainly arrive in summer.

A similar track by Maxwell can tell us when the Pascal will come out

Another bit of speculation is that NVIDIA will supply the professional segment first, and then the gamer market in the form of a smaller GP104 chip, following the same example with the previous Maxwell GM200 chips, which basically gave NVIDIA the opportunity in launching the same die twice in the guise of two different graphics cards, the GTX 980 and GTX 980Ti.

The German site believes that the specs speculated so far are as follows: it will enjoy a Pascal architecture, a DirectX 12.1 in hardware (DirectX 12 feature level 12_1), will be planned for the enthusiast and professional segment (similar to the GM200 chips), will carry around 17 billion transistors, it will have a manufacturing process of 16nm FinFET + production by TSMC, will contain 4500-6000 shader units. Moreover, memory-wise, it will have an HBM2 memory interface with up to 32 GB HBM2 memory (probably a maximum of 16 GB for gamer variants).

Roughly 60% to 90% more powerful than the Maxwell

The new GP100 will also have a 4096 bit DDR interface width (yields on 1000 MHz memory bandwidth of 1024 GB / sec). Floating point formats will be split between single and double precision while also enjoying the NVLink feature for coupling of GPUs with CPUs in supercomputing applications, something that will be disabled in gaming versions.

The new GPU will be 60% to 90% more powerful than the Maxwell and will come out in Q2 for professional users, and gamers will enjoy the card probably in the third quarter next year.

This is fairly impressive news, but the question is, of course, how well the new HBM2 memory will work in NVIDIA's new cards, and if it can stand up to AMD's own HBM2 Arctic Islands GPUs.

The unnamed GPUs are the new cutting edge Pascals
The unnamed GPUs are the new cutting edge Pascals

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NVIDIA starts the Pascal trial tests
The unnamed GPUs are the new cutting edge Pascals
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