NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 (G80): GPUs Re-architected for DirectX 10
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 8, 2006 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Branching
In order to talk generally about SPs and their capabilities, all the vertices, primitives, pixel components, etc. to be processed are referred to as threads. This way we can look at each SP as handling its own thread no matter what type of data is being processed. G80 is able to sustain "thousands" of threads at a time, but the actual number of threads that can be active at any given time is not disclosed. While all SPs can handle any type of thread, SPs that share resources must be running the same type of thread at any given time. In this way, each block of 16 SPs can be running one type of shader program on 16 threads. This indicates something about branch granularity as well. For vertex shaders, branch granularity is 16 vertices. For pixel shaders, branch granularity is 32 pixels (arranged in pairs of blocks of 4x4 pixels).
Branch granularity defines how many threads must follow the same path through data. When a group of 32 pixel threads all take the same branch, we don't have a problem. If even one thread must take a path that is different from the others, all 32 threads must be evaluated with both paths following the branch. The branch then defines what result each individual thread will keep and which it will discard. It's easy to see that optimum granularity is 1 thread, as no unnecessary work would be done. The way resources are allocated and the way instructions are run on SPs grouped together currently doesn't allow any more fine-grained branching. Here's a chart that address branch granularity:
| GPU | Branch Granularity |
| NVIDIA NV4x | ~1K pixels |
| NVIDIA G70 | ~256 pixels |
| ATI R580 | 48 pixels |
| NVIDIA G80 | 16 vertex 32 pixels |
Clearly G80 has the advantage here, as it's less likely that smaller groups of pixels will take different directions through a branch. This gives programmers the ability to more easily integrate branching into their code without getting a massive performance hit. If programmers are able to incorporate more branches, shader code can become more general purpose and we will see many more effects make their way into games. Now that G80 has caught up to ATI in terms of potential branch performance, we hope developers will take the reality of more complex code seriously.
Early-Z, Memory Interface
NVIDIA has added hardware for Early-Z to G80, after their current Z-Cull hardware which removes regions of pixels completely occluded by other geometry. Early-Z is a more fine-grained occlusion culling method that looks at a calculated Z value of a fragment before it hits the pixel pipeline. Z-Cull doesn't look at per fragment Z values, but uses a Z value based on geometry. While Z-Cull can get rid of large blocks of data it has issues handling surfaces that are only partially occluded or intersecting surfaces. Looking at individual depth values per pixel can help remove unnecessary fragments from heading down the pipeline only to be thrown out when the ROPs get to them.
The memory interface has been dramatically redesigned to support the access patterns of all of G80's independent stream processors. Given the theme of increasing granularity within G80 it's no surprise that we are now seeing 5 and 6 channels of GDDR rather than the 2 or 4 channels we have been used to for the past few years. 8800 GTX will have a 384 bit bus (6 x 64-bit channels), while the 8800 GTS will have a 320 bit wide connection to DRAM (5 x 64-bit channels). We would love to delve further into the details of G80's new memory interface, but NVIDIA isn't discussing the details of this aspect of their hardware.
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DerekWilson - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
i'm sure there was a lot burried in there ... sorry if it wasn't easy to find.8800 gtx and gtx are both no louder than 7900 gtx. 1950 xtx still takes the cake for loudest graphics card around by a long shot -- especially after it heats up in a game.
crystal clear - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
My comments in Daily Tech on this subject-More "G80" Derivatives in February R
E: More info would be nice
By crystal clear on 11/8/06, Rating: 2
By crystal clear on 11/8/2006 8:03:43 AM , Rating: 2
If you link VISTA -SANTA ROSA platform-Core2DUO(merom)CPU line up(T7300,7500,7700 models)then a matching Graphics card
to complete the link.
So a G80 for laptops/notebooks?
The pairing of Intels Santa Rosa platform with Vista in the 2Q 07 is next big thing for the first tier notebook manufacturers & all they need is a matching G80 for this setup.
Unquote-
Nvidia currently caters to Desktop requirement/needs with the new G80 releases,wonder how the notebook/server versions will be-with Vista ofcourse.
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Vitual memory is probably a good thing for most cases, but in the graphics arena, this *could* potentially make for sloppy/ bad coding practises. Knowing a lot of game devers (some of which actually work for well known companies), I've heard them from time to time complain about maxing a 16x PCI-E pipe. What I'm trying to say here, is that while it would be a good thing for never having to run out of texture memory, but that system memory, and definately the swap disk can not hold a candle to the memory bandwidth that most Video cards are capable of. End result, is that you definately *will* get a performance hit. All this, and we already know the memory bandwidth capabilities of modern PCs, suffice it to say, the most we'll see from current systems is what ? 12-13K GB/s ? Even a 7800GS can do roughly 35 GB/s on card. A 7600GT ? 22GB/s ?Still I think Directx10 is a very good thing, and as I didnt read the whole article, perhaps a missed a little ? Reason being, I've been reading about Directx10 since April, and a friend of mine was privy to some of this information after an interview with ATI.
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu...">http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu...
saratoga - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
I don't know how they threading really works, but its quite possible VM support is required in order to allow multiple threads to run without stepping all over each other,.saratoga - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Sorry, should read "I don't know how THEIR threading works"falc0ne - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
I don't know what is the problem but I'm really unable to see the images within the latest articles from Anand...Can anyone give me a suggestion? What might be the cause of that?The thing is I'm really, really interested in these articles and I need to see those images. Thanks
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Oh, er, then in the options tab of Firefox, (tools->options->content) check the "load images" check box ;)falc0ne - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
well...it would've been simple but I'm afraid is not that...It might be the addblock extension from firefox, other than that I have nooo ideeea...Well I will use the IE tab option instead and load the pages using IE 7. Thanks anyway:)yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Checked the exceptions list ? I know that firefox makes it really simple to block images from a site (to a point of being too easy).JarredWalton - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
If you've got AdBlock on Firefox, press Ctrl+Shift+A and you can see what it's blocking. If it blocks the images.anandtech.com stuff, you can then see which RegEx isn't working right and edit that.