14 DAY TRIAL // Nvidia won't release its first graphics cards based on the 28nm Kepler architecture until the start of 2012 although mass production will start in the last part of this year, said a company representative in a recent interview.
This information was provided by Nvidia PR representative Ken Brown, which had a talk with Fudzilla about the state of the company's next-generation graphics chips.
A definitive release date wasn't announced, but it seems like Kepler will arrive in the first quarter of 2012.
What's interesting to note is that, according to the latest rumors cited by VR-Zone, Nvidia has opted to release the 28nm die shrink of Fermi for notebook computers before its first Kepler GPUs.
Nvidia has reached this decision since the first chip based on the Kepler architecture will be a replacement for the current GF110 (used in the GTX 580 and GTX 570), such a part being much to power hungry for a notebook GPU.
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 CPU 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.