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Hardware NVIDIA Slips News of 65nm Production
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - October 26, 2006 2:02 PM

18 comment(s) - last by mindless1.. on Oct 27 at 12:12 PM

65nm in 2007

NVIDIA today announced it has shipped its 500 millionth product manufactured at TSMC. This includes GeForce graphics and nForce chipset products. In addition to the announcement, it appears NVIDIA is on-track with 65nm products. According to the press release:

NVIDIA and TSMC began high-volume production in 1998 when NVIDIA was developing processors on the 0.35 micron technology node. Today, NVIDIA leverages TSMC's process technology leadership and is producing processors on the 65nm node in state-of-the-art 300mm fabs.

This isn’t too surprising as TSMC is expected to start 65nm production in 2007 and 45nm production in Q4’2007. It is unknown which NVIDIA products will be the first to transition to 65nm, though it may initially be a budget graphics part or chipset part. Additionally, ATI is expected to start 65nm production in 2007 as well.

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hmm

By Hyperlite on 10/26/06, Rating: 0

RE: hmm

By walmartshopper on 10/26/2006 3:04:06 PM , Rating: 2

Maybe they'll do a refresh of the G80 on 65nm and bump up the clock speed, along with faster memory.

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RE: hmm

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 10/26/2006 3:07:19 PM , Rating: 5

Or just leave the power savings..... dunno about you guys but the nearly 1KW SLI reccomendation for G80 is just crap, nobody wants to feed that much power into a graphics card. Time for ATI and nVidia to jump on the Intel/AMD wagon and lower the damn power requirements.

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RE: hmm

By TomZ on 10/26/2006 3:11:56 PM , Rating: 4

New technology nodes create two parallel opportunities - for higher performance and for power savings. It's not necessarily either-or - I think that both dimensions will find their way to market.

You clearly see that in the CPU market - you have certain models that focus on performance at the expense of power consumption, and others that focus mainly on lower power consumption and sacrifice performance. Both have their value in the marketplace.

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RE: hmm

By ryandmiller1 on 10/26/2006 3:30:24 PM , Rating: 2

hmm looks like I'll have to invest in 2 G80 cards, one now and one when/if they transition them to 65

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RE: hmm

By clayclws on 10/26/2006 4:54:02 PM , Rating: 4

Hmm...last I read, Core 2 Duo improves performance AND lower the power consumption of Pentium D. Correct me if I am wrong. NVIDIA and ATI should do this...

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RE: hmm

By Griswold on 10/26/2006 5:30:49 PM , Rating: 3

Of course they should and I hope they will, but compare a high-end GPU to a high-end CPU and you'll see that there are not only worlds between them in complexity but also in transistor count (dont include the 4MB cache on a C2D...).
One is a highly specialized number cruncher and the other is a multi-purpose jack of all trades chip.

It's not fair to directly compare these two worlds like that. But they do have to get their act together and at least try to keep the power usage at a reasonable level (which they havent been doing as of late and from what we know, with the next generation).

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RE: hmm

By Aikouka on 10/26/2006 3:51:33 PM , Rating: 2

A lot of speculation is pointing toward SLi configurations of the G80 not requiring nearly that much power. Don't believe everything you hear. I'd say if I were to build a G80 SLi system, I'd probably just go with a 700W/750W at the most. I highly doubt I'd need anything more with 4 HDDs, 2 Opticals and the typical components (including the two GTXs). Note, I also don't mean your bargain brand PSU either :P.

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RE: hmm

By MonkeyPaw on 10/26/2006 5:49:29 PM , Rating: 2

Typically, ATI and nVidia (or even AMD) do not launch their best( (fastest) products on the newest nodes. I imagine the reasons are many, but a big one is because it's hard to get good yields on early process technology. More importantly, the price of high-end cards helps offset the massive die sizes of GPUs with high transistor counts, even when based on old process technology. Where new nodes are most effective (especially early on) is the low and mid-range, where the price of the card is cheaper, as are the components of the card. Likely once the process has shown improvement is when we will see the G80 "refresh," along with cut-down versions of the G80 for the upper mid-range.

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RE: hmm

By Sharky974 on 10/27/2006 5:37:56 AM , Rating: 1

EPA needs to start taking a close look at NVidia and their power hungry, massive electric gobbling, natural resource hogging SLI. Sure ATI has high power cards too, but they are not almost entirel built on the brutish concept of SLI as the Nvidia corporation is.

"When two politically correct organizations collide"

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RE: hmm

By mindless1 on 10/27/2006 12:12:37 PM , Rating: 1

Leaving power savings will not happen. Why? Products are marketed towards and benchmarked for performance as primary criteria and justification for high(er) price.

IF you really want this power savings, nobody is stopping you, just buy the same cards everyone else does and instead of exploiting the higher clock rates possible, underclock the card you use, and while you're at it, do a volt-mod to lower the voltage rather than raising it.

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A little fast

By dwalton on 10/26/2006 6:10:47 PM , Rating: 3

"This isn’t too surprising as TSMC is expected to start 65nm production in 2007 and 45nm production in Q4’2007."

No one finds it strange that TSMC claiming 45nm within a year's time and yet hasn't even started 65nm production.

RE: A little fast

By sxr7171 on 10/26/2006 9:15:43 PM , Rating: 3

I certainly do.

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No Way

By TheRequiem on 10/26/2006 7:48:14 PM , Rating: 2

There is no reason Nvidia cannot shift their cards to 65nm production. It lowers costs and allows them to produce more cores per wafer. Nivida has been lagging behind already with it's shift to 90nm. It would be a wise decision and one they will probably rush with their next iteration of cards if you ask me. However, I don't see them getting any 45nm production in 07, that would require an end to a 65nm production of cards at a time they will have new products shipping.

RE: No Way

By jimmy43 on 10/27/2006 1:01:38 AM , Rating: 3

mmmm wafers...

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Maybe...

By kuyaglen on 10/26/2006 3:54:55 PM , Rating: 2

I definately expect the refresh 8900's to be more power efficient but not necessarily on the new manufacturing process. I suspect that the 8950 refreshed refresh would though, but like in the 7 series most likely the mid/low end sku's will get the die shrinkange first due to their cores being "less" complicated.

RE: Maybe...

By Grated on 10/26/2006 4:24:30 PM , Rating: 2

And because they need a lot more of these chips and because have to sell for less money
The margins are high enough @ high-end to keep them longer @ 90 or 80nm but at the low-end, they "need" the shrink if possible, cheaper to produce => higher margins or lower price...

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Two Worlds

By xstangx on 10/26/2006 7:35:38 PM , Rating: 2

I will have to agree about the 2 totally different worlds part. They may be close in name, CPU/GPU, but thats it. WHo holds the market for the most amount of graphics cards, Intel with the integrated crap. So intel(the largest cpu company in the world, and possibly one of the biggest companies of anything) does have a much bigger budget for R&D, dont you agree? I am suprised to even see NV/ATI stepping up to 65nm anytime soon. They do have a big budget to spend, but nothing compared to the CPU market, everybody knows about Intel, but nobody knows anything about Graphics cards. When i say that i mean the average JOE. But with AMD at their back ATI now has an advantage, Nvidia might need to team up with Intel(lol), but you still cant compare cpu to gpu. The technologies are like jet engines to car engines. They do similar things and they both do something important, but arent that close to be alike, except they both need fuel, like both cpu's and gpu's need power.

And i also agree about the 65nm line-up. It will be like 7800gtx to 7900gt. ALmost same thing but just a 90nm instead of .11n, they will release the 90nm at first then after awhile release a lil better card with much lower heat and better overclocking, it has been this trend for years now in both the CPU/GPU market. 8900gtx then 8950gtx, or maybe 9900GT then after that a whole new name scheme, maybe a x50 or something, lol.