Nvidia tight lipped about next gen core

[JHunter]

WE STILL DON'T know the codename of next generation Nvidia card but we know its definitely not NV48 or NV50. Someone denied it was called the NV47, but then again someone at Nvidia it as an option perhaps just to confuse us. A core similar to NV50 will come later, possibly in 2006, or at least Nvidia will use some marchitecture that it meant to use on the NV50 closer to the Longhorn launch. Longhorn comes in 2006 but probably later, rather than early we think.

NV50 was meant to have Shader Model 4.0, and to have full support for Avalon and all of the other DirectX 10/Next features. As we said, Nvidia cancelled it as it realised that it does not make any sense to launch the core by the end of 2005 with features that could be used sometime in 2006, after Microsoft releases Longhorn.

As for the next re-generation Nvidia chip, the company is keeping everything so quiet as it wants to surprise us all. From what we heard, the new chip might be made by TSMC as Nvidia is not that happy with IBM.

What we heard many times about the next gen Nvidia core is that it's going to be an extension of existing NV40 architecture with a fixed video engine and more pipelines. I could guess 20 to 24 pipes and of course faster memory - whatever the fastest GDDR3 reaches by the end of the planning and testing phase. I could say that memory might end up as a maximum of 1500MHz but that might be a fantasy number. To be honest we don’t know what else Nvidia might pack inside. We are still in the dark which development process Nvidia plans to use for its new chip. We strongly believe that it might be 110 or 90 nanometres but as yet, don’t have any solid indication.

Information might be out in Taiwan but only the highest ranking officers of Nvidia partners will know what's coming. Taiwan is a very leaky place. Nvidia is positive about its new core success but you never know what will happen until the last minute. Maybe Nvidia got it right this time, but maybe ATI has a better horse to run.

ATI is very positive about its R520 "Fudo" chip. Nvidia might code name its chip Anand, Lars, David, Wil, Spode, Brandon or something else but we still don't know that. I believe that there will be more information at SnowBIT, a big IT show that starts on 10th in the Hangover Messe, formerly a part of England. µ


Source: The Inquirer