NVIDIA's Fermi: Architected for Tesla, 3 Billion Transistors in 2010
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
A Different Sort of Launch
Fermi will support DirectX 11 and NVIDIA believes it'll be faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in 3D games. With 3 billion transistors, it had better be. But that's the extent of what NVIDIA is willing to talk about with regards to Fermi as a gaming GPU. Sorry folks, today's launch is targeted entirely at Tesla.
A GeForce GTX 280 with 4GB of memory is the foundation for the Tesla C1060 cards
Tesla is NVIDIA's High Performance Computing (HPC) business. NVIDIA takes its consumer GPUs, equips them with a ton of memory, and sells them in personal or datacenter supercomputers called Tesla supercomputers or computing clusters. If you have an application that can run well on a GPU, the upside is tremendous.
Four of those C1060 cards in a 1U chassis make the Tesla S1070. PCIe connects the S1070 to the host server.
NVIDIA loves to cite examples of where algorithms ported to GPUs work so much better than CPUs. One such example is a seismic processing application that HESS found ran very well on NVIDIA GPUs. It migrated a cluster of 2000 servers to 32 Tesla S1070s, bringing total costs down from $8M to $400K, and total power from 1200kW down to 45kW.
| HESS Seismic Processing Example | Tesla | CPU |
| Performance | 1 | 1 |
| # of Machines | 32 Tesla S1070s | 2000 x86 servers |
| Total Cost | ~$400K | ~$8M |
| Total Power | 45kW | 1200kW |
Obviously this doesn't include the servers needed to drive the Teslas, but presumably that's not a significant cost. Either way the potential is there, it's just a matter of how many similar applications exist in the world.
According to NVIDIA, there are many more cases like this in the market. The table below shows what NVIDIA believes is the total available market in the next 18 months for these various HPC segments:
| Processor | Seismic | Supercomputing | Universities | Defence | Finance |
| GPU TAM | $300M | $200M | $150M | $250M | $230M |
These figures were calculated by looking at the algorithms used in each segment, the number of Hess-like Tesla installations that can be done, and the current budget for non-GPU based computing in those markets. If NVIDIA met its goals here, the Tesla business could be bigger than the GeForce one. There's just one problem:
As you'll soon see, many of the architectural features of Fermi are targeted specifically for Tesla markets. The same could be said about GT200, albeit to a lesser degree. Yet Tesla accounted for less than 1.3% of NVIDIA's total revenue last quarter.
Given these numbers it looks like NVIDIA is building GPUs for a world that doesn't exist. NVIDIA doesn't agree.
The Evolution of GPU Computing
When matched with the right algorithms and programming efforts, GPU computing can provide some real speedups. Much of Fermi's architecture is designed to improve performance in these HPC and other GPU compute applications.
Ever since G80, NVIDIA has been on this path to bring GPU computing to reality. I rarely get the opportunity to get a non-marketing answer out of NVIDIA, but in talking to Jonah Alben (VP of GPU Engineering) I had an unusually frank discussion.
From the outside, G80 looks to be a GPU architected for compute. Internally, NVIDIA viewed it as an opportunistic way to enable more general purpose computing on its GPUs. The transition to a unified shader architecture gave NVIDIA the chance to, relatively easily, turn G80 into more than just a GPU. NVIDIA viewed GPU computing as a future strength for the company, so G80 led a dual life. Awesome graphics chip by day, the foundation for CUDA by night.
Remember that G80 was hashed out back in 2002 - 2003. NVIDIA had some ideas of where it wanted to take GPU computing, but it wasn't until G80 hit that customers started providing feedback that ultimately shaped the way GT200 and Fermi turned out.
One key example was support for double precision floating point. The feature wasn't added until GT200 and even then, it was only added based on computing customer feedback from G80. Fermi kicks double precision performance up another notch as it now executes FP64 ops at half of its FP32 rate (more on this later).
While G80 and GT200 were still primarily graphics chips, NVIDIA views Fermi as a processor that makes compute just as serious as graphics. NVIDIA believes it's on a different course, at least for the short term, than AMD. And you'll see this in many of the architectural features of Fermi.
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PorscheRacer - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
I have no clue what the red rooster thing implies, and I never understood why people called nVIDIA the green goblin. Until now. You, sir, have made it clear to me. They are called the green goblin, because that's where the trolls come from. Like wow. Your partisan and righteous thinking has no merit, no basis except conjecture and criticism. Save a keyboard, chill out and let's see if you can post anything in here without using the words, nVIDIA, ATI, red rooster, green goblin, and anything with ALL CAPS.It's fine to be passionate about something. But to exessive extents that push everyone else away and leave people ashamed, discouraged and embarrased; that's not how to win hearts and minds. I can already see you getting riled up over this post telling you to chill out....
SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Hmmmm, that's very interesting. First you go into a pretend place where you assume green goblin is something "they call" nVIDIA, but just earlier, you'd never seen it in print before in your life.Along with that little fib problem, you make the rest of the paragraph a whining attack. One might think you need to settle down and take your own medicine.
And speaking of advice, your next paragraph talks about what you did in your first that you claim noone should, so I guess you're exempt in your own mind.
kirillian - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Yall...seriously...leave the poor NVidia Fanboy alone. His head is probably throbbing with the fact that he found his first website (other than HardOCP) that isn't extremely NVidia biased.SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Gee, I find that interesting that you know all about bias at other websites...So that says what again about here ?
silverblue - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
The 5870 is but one single GPU. The 295 is two and costs more. The 4870X2/CF is also a case of two GPUs. A 5870X2 would annihilate everything out there right now, and guess what? 5870 CF does just that. If money is no object, that would be the current option, or 5850s in CF to cut down on power usage and a fair amount of the cost without substantially decreasing performance.By stating "if someone wants to get their next-gen performance now", of course he's going to point in the direction of ATI as they are the only people with a DX11 part, and they currently hold the single GPU speed crown. This will not be the case in a few months, but for now, they do.
SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
I kinda doubt the 5870x2 blows away GTX295 quad, don't you ?--
Now you want to whine cost, too, but then excuse it for the 5870CF. LOL.
Another big fat riotous red rooster.
Really, you people love lies, and what's bad when it's nvidia, is good when it's ati, you just exactly said it !
ROFLMAO
--
Should I go get a 295 quad setup review and show you ?
--
How come you were wrong, whined I should settle down, then came back blowing lies again ?
There's no DX11 ready to speak of, so that's another pale and feckless attempt at the face save, after your excited, out of control, whipped up incorrect initial post, and this follow up fibber.
You need to settle down. "I want you banned"
Finally, you try to pretend you're not full of it, with your spewing caveat of prediction, "this will not be the case in a few months" - LOL
It's NOT the case NOW, but in a few months, it sure looks like it might BE THE CASE NO MATTER WHAT, unless of course ati launches the 5870x2 along with nvidia's SC GT300, which for all I know could happen.
So, even in that, you are NOT correct to any certainty, are you...
LOL
Calm down, and think FIRST, then start on your rampage without lying.
silverblue - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
My GOD... you're a retard of the highest order.Why would I want to compare a dual GPU setup with an 8 GPU setup? What numpty would do that when it would logically be far faster? Even a quad 5870 setup wouldn't beat a quad 295 setup, and you know what? WE KNOW! 8 cores versus 4 is no contest. Core for core, RV870 is noticeably faster than the GT200 series, but you're the only person attempting to compare a single GPU card to a dual GPU card and saying the single GPU card sucks because it doesn't win.
And where did I say "I want you banned"? As someone once said, "lay off the crack".
SiliconDoc - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Aren't you the one who claimed only ati for the next gen performance ?Well, you really blew it, and no face save is possible. A single NVIDIA card beats the best single ati card. PERIOD.
It's true right now, and may or may not change within two months.
PERIOD.
silverblue - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
No, I said that ATI currently has the single GPU crown. Not card - GPU. In a couple of months, ATI may have the 5870X2 out, and that WILL send the 295 the way of the dodo if it's priced correctly.No face saving necessary on my part.
Zaitsev - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
^^LOL. I don't see what all the bickering is about. If you're willing to wait a few more months, then you can buy a faster card. If you want to buy now, there are also some nice options available. Currently there are 5 brands of 5870's and 1 5850 at the egg.