Although you wouldn't know it from the documentation, both the GK10X/GK11X silicon had serious problems with the global memory barrier instruction that had to be fixed in software after launch. All global memory barriers had to be implemented entirely as patched routines, several thousand times slower than the underlying, broken silicon. Amusingly, that same hardware defect forced the L1 cache to be turned off on the first two keplers. I suspect if you ran the same benchmark on GK110 and vs the GK210 used in the article, you'd be surprised to see no effect from the L1 cache at all.
Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Create? Perhaps lack of IP/talent. The exynos chips have been lagging a bit behind last I checked. However, they are adding capacity to their fabs for AI chips, so it’s possible they may be planning one in the future. https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20231121VL206/samsung-electr...
GPU architecture is just a simple core repeated a gazillion times plus some memory bus.
If GPUs are so easy, then why has Intel taken like three swings at making a GPU in the last ten years and haven't come close to NVDA perf even once?
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#43On a related topic: does anyone know why NVIDIA keeps reducing the bus width on their latest gen cards? A 2060 has a 192-bit bus. A 3060 has a 192-bit bus. A 4060 has a 128-bit bus! ### A 2070 has a 256-bit bus. A 3070 has a 256-bit bus. A 4070 has a 192-bit bus!
At most points in the product stack, memory frequency increased by enough to compensate for the narrower bus. Dropping to a narrower bus and putting more RAM on each channel allowed for some 50% increases in memory capacity instead of having to wait for a doubling to be economical. And architecturally, the 4000 series has an order of magnitude more L2 cache than the previous two generations (went from 2–6MB to 24–72MB), so they're less sensitive to DRAM bandwidth.
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Create? Perhaps lack of IP/talent. The exynos chips have been lagging a bit behind last I checked. However, they are adding capacity to their fabs for AI chips, so it’s possible they may be planning one in the future. https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20231121VL206/samsung-electr...
GPU architecture is just a simple core repeated a gazillion times plus some memory bus.
"just" is doing an astounding amount of heavy lifting here. Modern GPUs are extraordinarily complex systems.
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
GPU architecture is just a simple core repeated a gazillion times plus some memory bus.
If GPUs are so easy, then why has Intel taken like three swings at making a GPU in the last ten years and haven't come close to NVDA perf even once?
they haven't hired that guy you're replying to!
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well AMD marketing turned out to be a joke, remember Poor Volta? I still think AMD haven't even recovered from that. There marketing for GPUs have been terrible since.
You mean Vega. Volta is a Nvidia arch. Vega's marketing pushed Nvidia to make what is ending up to be the best product series they will ever make: series 10. That isn't much of a joke, it scared the shit out of Nvidia, and they blinked. Vega was too late in the pipeline to stop, and Raja was ultimately let go for his role in the whole thing. He refused to start making more gamer-friendly cards, and was obsessed with…
“Poor Volta” was the line from AMD’s marketing team.
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#47Samsung has a fab. Anyone knows why they don't want to enter the game and create an AI chip.
They fabbed a lot of AI chips. Nvidia's Ampere chips up to 3090 were made by Samsung in 8 nm.
Interestingly the chips bigger than those found in the 3090 (so GA100s for A100s) were made by TSMC on a 7 nm node.
Maybe Samsung's yield was not high enough to produce those large chips (AD100 is 826 mmsq and would probably be even bigger on Samsung's node).
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#48On a related topic: does anyone know why NVIDIA keeps reducing the bus width on their latest gen cards? A 2060 has a 192-bit bus. A 3060 has a 192-bit bus. A 4060 has a 128-bit bus! ### A 2070 has a 256-bit bus. A 3070 has a 256-bit bus. A 4070 has a 192-bit bus!
At most points in the product stack, memory frequency increased by enough to compensate for the narrower bus. Dropping to a narrower bus and putting more RAM on each channel allowed for some 50% increases in memory capacity instead of having to wait for a doubling to be economical. And architecturally, the 4000 series has an order of magnitude more L2 cache than the previous two generations (went from 2–6MB to 24–72M…
With respect: Have you actually measured performance or are you merely quoting Nvidia marketing?
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well AMD marketing turned out to be a joke, remember Poor Volta? I still think AMD haven't even recovered from that. There marketing for GPUs have been terrible since.
You mean Vega. Volta is a Nvidia arch. Vega's marketing pushed Nvidia to make what is ending up to be the best product series they will ever make: series 10. That isn't much of a joke, it scared the shit out of Nvidia, and they blinked. Vega was too late in the pipeline to stop, and Raja was ultimately let go for his role in the whole thing. He refused to start making more gamer-friendly cards, and was obsessed with…
>Its why AMD won against Nvidia.
Won how?
>Nvidia still has no real answer to AMD's success
Which success? Answer to what? Are you from a paralel multiverse?
In this reality, it's the other way around. Nvidia is making so much money from the AI hype than AMD is the one trying to play catch-up.
Re: Kepler, Nvidia's Strong Start on 28 nm
#50On a related topic: does anyone know why NVIDIA keeps reducing the bus width on their latest gen cards? A 2060 has a 192-bit bus. A 3060 has a 192-bit bus. A 4060 has a 128-bit bus! ### A 2070 has a 256-bit bus. A 3070 has a 256-bit bus. A 4070 has a 192-bit bus!
At most points in the product stack, memory frequency increased by enough to compensate for the narrower bus. Dropping to a narrower bus and putting more RAM on each channel allowed for some 50% increases in memory capacity instead of having to wait for a doubling to be economical. And architecturally, the 4000 series has an order of magnitude more L2 cache than the previous two generations (went from 2–6MB to 24–72M…
Seems to have gone badly for the 4060 & 4060 Ti specifically though, as they're at the same performance level as the previous gen 3060.
People could buy a 2nd hand 3070 for less money.