ATI's Southern Islands tapes out
Game over for Nvidia
by Charlie Demerjian
April 21, 2010
Nvidia worldATI IS ON A ROLL, having taped out its next generation GPU family called Southern Islands. ATI might call it the HD6xxx series, and it could be out before Nvidia gets its GTX4xx line of GPUs fully fleshed out and to market.
The news is straightforward enough. Southern Islands (SI) taped out recently, and is now moving through TSMC. Although the schedule is very tight, if all goes really well we could see a demo or two at Computex in just over a month. This puts SI slightly behind where Evergreen was a year ago, but not by much.
Southern Islands is said to be a hybrid between the all new Northern Islands (NI) and the current HD5xxx Evergreen family. Those in the loop say that Northern Islands was meant to be on TSMC 32nm before that process was killed. Due to the ever-slipping nature of TSMC's 28nm high-K metal gate node, the SI hybrid GPU was slapped together to be fabbed on TSMC's current 40nm process.
Sources tell SemiAccurate that SI uses some of the NI uncore (unshader?), and wraps that around a mildly updated Evergreen shader. RAM is more of an open question. NI was set to use GDDR5+, but since DRAM makers might not be ready, we may end up with only GDDR5 on SI.
In any case, Nvidia has come out fighting with its GTX470 and GTX480, shipping hundreds, some say thousands, of units since ATI shipped Evergreen last September. If all goes well, and it appears to be doing just that, ATI might have Southern Islands on sale before Nvidia gets all of the GTX4xx variants out the door. The end of 2010 will see Nvidia fighting a new ATI line with a year late part that doesn't work within the promised specs, and can't be manufactured.
By the time Nvidia gets to 28nm next year, or possibly in 'GTX480' quantities this year, it is going to be fighting yet another new generation of ATI parts, Northern Islands. If the rumors are true, and the upcoming Fermi II is on TSMC's 28nm bulk process, and NI comes out on GloFo's 28nm high-K metal gate process, Nvidia won't even be in the game.
At this point, you really have to ask yourself if Nvidia will survive. Its chipset business is gone because it didn't understand Moore's law. Its GPU business is like a floating goldfish circling the drain. Its GPU compute business is wounded. And Tegra is being laughed out the door. Meanwhile, ATI is on a roll.S|A作者: nottold 时间: 2010-4-22 01:49
唉...只知道 game over....for some one........作者: AFXIF 时间: 2010-4-22 01:54
流片一次成功的话,3个月后就是芯片量产,6个月后就是产品上市。作者: lunew 时间: 2010-4-22 01:54
不知这次charlie说的准不准作者: henghahengha 时间: 2010-4-22 08:13
提示: 作者被禁止或删除 内容自动屏蔽作者: yeemartin! 时间: 2010-4-22 08:16
怎么办怎么办怎么办怎么办作者: 870717 时间: 2010-4-22 08:20
Charlies 说HD6XXX 比GT4XX 铺完产品线都要早上市
说NV 工艺上又要落后 说NV没战斗力作者: 苯苯小哥 时间: 2010-4-22 08:41 AMD 40nm大块头来了?作者: Bohr 时间: 2010-4-22 08:45
提示: 作者被禁止或删除 内容自动屏蔽作者: airforce18 时间: 2010-4-22 08:46
希望别悲剧啊作者: ykx2000 时间: 2010-4-22 08:46
南岛是40NM工艺,有点不爽。作者: erodeox 时间: 2010-4-22 08:46
大意是说:ATI可能在下个月的Complex就发布南岛的样卡,然后在Nv的GTX4xx家族完全量产铺货前发售新的南岛系列,即使是下一代显卡nv使用台积电的28nm bulk工艺,它的对手也将是GolobalFoundry的28nm High-K工艺,完全不占优势.作者: 鱼儿水中游 时间: 2010-4-22 09:28
很好,nv大悲剧。作者: chery66 时间: 2010-4-22 09:29
我想问一句,Charlie预言到现在,有哪次失败过么?作者: 南京小钱 时间: 2010-4-22 09:38
对nVidia不太好的消息。AMD是否最好把产品上市日期推迟到九月以后呢?作者: angeldiy 时间: 2010-4-22 09:41
期待中ati加油作者: minijia 时间: 2010-4-22 09:44
看来5xxx要被自家人逼降价了。作者: hw12321 时间: 2010-4-22 09:44
要是真的,那对现在的5870等等卡销售不是也有影响?作者: gz_easy 时间: 2010-4-22 09:48
根据Charlie Demerjian,NV的生存几率接近Zero。
E大此贴一出又将引发一场mouth gun大战,坐观。。。作者: gzpony 时间: 2010-4-22 09:52
说fermi今年不可能出来,要推倒重来是不是此君?
明明就说错还要强辩作者: 星际外观望 时间: 2010-4-22 12:51
这里有人言下之意好象也说A也在为良率苦苦挣扎呢作者: thr33 时间: 2010-4-22 13:38 回复 5#mach8
i love total beiju作者: asdfjkl 时间: 2010-4-22 14:02 回复 1#Edison
文章里面提高:
The news is straightforward enough. Southern Islands (SI) taped out recently, and is now moving through TSMC.
就是说南岛已经送往台积电去流片了;一般的话,流片大概要1个多月得到到芯片;回来后有bring up等等工序。。。
看了不少报道直接说:南岛流片成功!
到底那个是对的? 特别是驱动之家的那个标题,直接就说:流片成功! --- 他是有内幕,还是翻译点英文,自己加点料?作者: Enio 时间: 2010-4-22 15:46
查理的预言哪次准过,看看查理刚刚发表的预言:
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/12/13/secret-amd-6900s-second-switch/
What does it do? Easy enough, it swaps the shader count. The 'normal' count is 1920 for a 205W 6970 card, and the switch opens up the full force of all 2520 shaders. The reason this switch is set to 'low' is that between the clock speed advances, 730MHz/1920 shaders to 920MHz/2520 shaders, it blows the card through the 300W cap for PCIe cards.
This switch is an elegant way of going from sub-GTX570 performance to way way way over GTX580 performance, and still getting PCIe certification.