The RV870 Story: AMD Showing up to the Fight
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 14, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Unlike a product review, there’s very little I can do to conclude here. There’s no buying recommendation, no performance to summarize. Even as an analytical piece there’s not much for me to conclude based on what I’ve learned at this point. When I wrote The RV770 Story I was convinced that ATI had embraced a new, refocused approach to GPU design, only to learn that they nearly threw out all of the learnings with the RV870.
The Northern Islands GPUs, due out later this year, were surely designed before anyone knew how RV870 would play out. Much less whether or not Fermi/GF100 would be this late.
I’m not sure any of what we’ve seen thus far in the history leading up to the RV770 or RV870 can tell us what we should expect from Northern Islands. While we can’t conclude about ATI’s future products, I do believe I have learned a considerable amount about how AMD’s graphics division works.
Carrell told me that the process of doing a product is not a logical process. There's logic in it, but it's not a logical process. It's an argumentative process. Not in the sense of having conflicts, but rather developing new data when the data isn't all there. When companies like AMD and NVIDIA do a product the engineers don't know all of the answers, and the knowledge they do have isn't binary - it's probability, it's weight, it's guesses. Sometimes they guess right, and sometimes they guess very wrong. The best they can do is to all weigh in with their individual experiences and together come up with the best group of guesses to implement. Over the years it seems that ATI has learned to, as much as possible, have all members of its team bought in to the product they're building.
The graphics team’s dedication and experience in jumping to new process technologies seems to have paid off with this generation. The move from TSMC to Global Foundries will surely challenge them once more. It’s not all about process technology though. The team’s focus on schedule and execution was a much needed addition to the company’s repertoire.
Carrell Killebrew helped turn ATI from a traditional GPU company with a poor track record, to one that could be known for its execution. The past three product generations have been executed extremely well. Regardless of whether you're an AMD, Intel or NVIDIA fan, you must give credit where it's due. The past couple of years have shown us a dramatic turn around from the graphics group at AMD. To go from the shakiness of the R500 and R600 GPUs to solidly executing on the RV670, 770 and 870 year after year is praiseworthy. I almost wonder if AMD’s CPU team could learn from the graphics group's execution. I do hope that along with the ATI acquisition came the open mindedness to learn from one another.
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tomoyo - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
Another awesome article about the real situation behind the hardware from you Anand! I was on the USS Hornet and wish I had talked to you, but it was a great time nonetheless. It's interesting the change in their thought process between the RV770 and RV870, I hope they keep the winning streak up for the next refresh cycle (which hopefully will stay on the market bulges).WT - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
*sigh* ^^^There's always one in the crowd.
Take care in the fact that you are the only person who hasn't enjoyed this read.
MegaManX4 - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
Reminds me much of the Anglo-Saxon "documantaries", where it is always of tertiary relevance WHAT is actually discussed, but it is always of utmost interest how the responsible person "feels" about what he is just seeing, other than just stating the facts.There seems to be a huge crowd vowing for that kind of journalism, Whatever pleases the canaille.
"Jedem das Seine" or "to each his own" then
MegaManX4 - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
This was actually the worst article i have ever read at anandtech. I know that you Americans always strive for emotionally .Driven stories, but this outright borders on silly exaggeration."Heroes of our Industry", what a Schmalz.
Also, if one would take the real informations presented in that article, it wouldn't justify even a 2 Page Article, let alone that 11 Page behemoth.
They are engineers, they do their jobs. Nothing more, nothing less.
Greetings from Germany
blowfish - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
hmm, with an attitude like that you'll never get past middle management!Like most here, I loved this article. Anand obviously has the friendship and respect of some very senior players, and we were treated to some great insights into how things work at AMD ATI.
As the reader, you can choose to read or not read the article, simple as that. Maybe you should up your medication.
MegaManX4 - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
unreasonable polemicpmonti80 - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
You are the one being unreasonable. This may not be a "scientifically written" article, but no one is claiming it to be. And that's the reason this article is so interesting.saiga6360 - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
Apparently German engineers are just soulless robots. His confusion is understandable.BelardA - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
I enjoyed this article even more than the RV770. I do recommend that everyone read that one too.Kind of shocking that Nvidia didn't use that info from the RV770 article to learn to NOT make big GPUs like the GTX 2xx. yeah yeah, it takes 2-4 years to design a chip.
I thank ATI (and AMD) for not playing marketing games like Nvidia does... I think they have a bigger marketing department than engineers nowadays. They started with the GF2-MX 400 & GF4-MX cards (which were re-labeled updated GF2 cards that were not up to GF3 standards)... but the latest cluster-muck of Nvidia products is nothing but a mess. 8800 re-badged as a 9800 re-badged into the gts 250. Code-name of NVxx go to G80 to G92 to G100. The GT-1xx products that are actually low-end 9xxx products, same with most G200 & G300. I'm not going to be surprised when the GTX 285 gets renamed into the GTS450 at $200! I've seen people who bought the GTS250 and post on the internet "why isn't my new gts250 much faster than my old 8800GT"... because you bought a faster version of your card and thought it was something new. Wow, 3 years with 3 names for the same product, that is marketing.
ATI does good with the entire 4000 series being DX 10.1 products and 5000s are DX11. (Does anyone really use HD-5xxx?) It doesn't feel like ATI is pulling our chain with their products.
AMD should be learning from ATI, they are getting better with CPUs - 2 years late, but AMD CPUs are now faster than Core2 and compete well against the lower end intel i-confused model CPUs. There is still room for improvement which was recommend to them some time ago, but AMD is just going to come out with a new design for next year. But had AMD tweaked their CPUs a bit for another 10~20% performance, they'd be up there with i7s.
I hope in the next ATI GPU, some form of Physics engine is added to go up against nvidia's PhsyX. But perhaps that'll be part of DX12... but Microsoft no longer supports Games for Windows.
Actually, with more and more games going ONLY to consoles, I don't think the need for high-end gaming cards will be needed anymore in the next few years. If there are no games, who needs a $300 3D Gaming card?
Zink - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
Would also like to say great article. I can't wait for new distributed computing cores come out optimized for ATI's architectures.