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Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

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Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#41

Post by norea-armozel »

noir_lord wrote: post #24
norea-armozel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this may be specs for their Tesla cards. I doubt they would throw 32 HBM2 even on a Titan unless they can keep the price point the same (even for folks who can spend 1k USD have limits on their budget or at least their perception of a budget). But I wouldn't doubt by Q2/2016 Nvidia will be bringing more competition to the market with chips based on HBM usage. IMO, AMD pulled the trigger a tad too soon on thei…

Surprises me that RAM hasn't increased more, the machine I'm on is 5 years old and it has 2GB of RAM on the GPU (HD6950) which I paid ~200 quid for 5 years ago.

I think it's due to the heating issue on the boards themselves. HBM promises to make that issue a bit better since the memory chips are closer to the GPU which makes it easier to cool off than before. But there's a limit due to HBM growing vertically. So, I doubt we'll see massive memory chips on consumer graphics cards in the near future.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#42

Post by icegreentea »

cwyers wrote: post #37
bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So has Intel. Skylake (2016) and Sandy Bridge (2010) have roughly comparable single core desktop benchmarks. Power/performance ratios have increased drastically, but that's mostly because of process improvements. AMD has been stuck on 28nm for a long time, but that's not AMD's fault.

> AMD has been stuck on 28nm for a long time, but that's not AMD's fault. How isn't it?

AMD is a fabless chip designer (like nearly everyone except Intel and Samsung). They rely on foundries for manufacturing. AMD relies on GlobalFoundries (and NVidia relies on TSMC). Both manufactures have skipped on either foundries 20nm process since apparently the output didn't suit GPU performance requirements.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#43

Post by zokier »

steckerbrett wrote: post #36
zokier wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definitely are inductors (being labeled "Lxx" on PCB is a sure tell-tale sign), and the small 48ish pin packages near them are most likely SMPS controllers. Seems bit crazy that there are total of 18 of them, but I suppose that's what you gotta do when you are pushing possibly hundreds of amps of current.

Makes the normal buck converter arrangement too. Controller, inductor, diode. The GPU will be taking like half a volt so things are definitely going to be getting toasty.

Those big two-legged components look like caps to me though.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#44

Post by icegreentea »

noir_lord wrote: post #24
norea-armozel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this may be specs for their Tesla cards. I doubt they would throw 32 HBM2 even on a Titan unless they can keep the price point the same (even for folks who can spend 1k USD have limits on their budget or at least their perception of a budget). But I wouldn't doubt by Q2/2016 Nvidia will be bringing more competition to the market with chips based on HBM usage. IMO, AMD pulled the trigger a tad too soon on thei…

Surprises me that RAM hasn't increased more, the machine I'm on is 5 years old and it has 2GB of RAM on the GPU (HD6950) which I paid ~200 quid for 5 years ago.

Memory bandwidth/throughput has been a far larger bottleneck on gaming performance than total video memory for the last few years. They've been trying to deal it by using ever faster and slightly wider memory interfaces, but now they've hit the wall, thus the move to HBM.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#45

Post by minthd »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #9

> The 17 Billion transistors on the Pascal GPU are twice the transistors found on the GM200 Maxwell and the Fiji XT GPU core which is literally insane Seems like Moore's law is alive and well in the graphics/attached processor space.

Moore's law is also about cost per transistor.It has risen, so expect to see a very expensive card. Most of the cost/benefit ratio of this card would be probably due to the huge fast memeory, and not the 17 billion transistors.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#46

Post by ris »

raverbashing wrote: post #20
bryanlarsen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be argued that AMD does have it together. If you look at the benchmarks for pretty much any particular price point, AMD & nVidia cards are roughly comparable. AMD is better at some games and resolutions, and nVidia is better at others. Rarely is the difference more than 10%. nVidia used to have a sizable power/noise advantage, but Fury appears to close that gap. AMD even seems to be closing the driver stabil…

Not sure about their graphics division, but AMD has stopped innovating in the CPU department...

Is this a joke? AMD are currently pioneering the biggest shake up in CPU architectures in decades through the Heterogenous System Architecture.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#47

Post by cwyers »

icegreentea wrote: post #42
cwyers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AMD has been stuck on 28nm for a long time, but that's not AMD's fault. How isn't it?

AMD is a fabless chip designer (like nearly everyone except Intel and Samsung). They rely on foundries for manufacturing. AMD relies on GlobalFoundries (and NVidia relies on TSMC). Both manufactures have skipped on either foundries 20nm process since apparently the output didn't suit GPU performance requirements.

> AMD is a fabless chip designer (like nearly everyone except Intel and Samsung)

Okay, but they didn't used to be. They sold all their fabs. And when their reliance on third-party fabs meant they couldn't keep up with Intel, they did... nothing. Now, you could argue that they don't have the resources to do anything. But that doesn't mean it's not their fault that they didn't do something, it just means they couldn't.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#48

Post by lookbothways »

spott wrote: post #11
[deleted] wrote: post #4

[deleted]

>general compute (CPU cores and system RAM) than graphical compute. Why? As a gamer I would expect you would want the opposite. Is there a particular reason you have this rule of thumb?

People underestimate the CPU load of modern games. There's a lot of graphics API overhead in current D3D and GL (though D3D12 and Vulkan will improve upon that), use of dynamic scripting languages (most notably Lua), and most engines don't make the best use of all cores either. And of course, your game is probably sharing the CPU with a number of other applications, which probably aren't hitting the GPU nearly as hard.

Given that, plus the fact that it's a lot easier to upgrade a graphics card than a CPU, makes me think it would make sense to spend more on your CPU than GPU on a fresh build.

(the grandparent comment has been deleted, so I don't know what the context of this discussion is, just throwing my thoughts out there)

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#49

Post by SEJeff »

jfb wrote: post #33
ak217 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also seems to be the motivation behind the already available Titan X with its 12GB of RAM. Some of the gaming hardware reviewers are scratching their heads as to why anyone would need 12GB attached to one die. I chuckled when I saw those reviews that were totally oblivious to the deep learning applications.

It's easy to get lost in the noise of the "enthusiast" webring with their semiliterate "benchmarks" and overly paginated "reviews". They punch well above their actual purchasing weight and thus think they're a lot more important then they actually are.

Versus the data scientists and HPC communities that buy hundreds of Nvidia GPUs for CUDA and associated applications.

Re: Nvidia Pascal GPU to Feature 17B Transistors and 32GB HBM2 VRAM

#50

Post by samch »

Now, if only I could get a MackBook Pro with 32GB of system memory... Does anybody happen to know why that is such a difficult thing to achieve? It's amazing that, starting next year, there will be mainstream graphics cards with more memory than top-of-the-line laptops.
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