Nvidia NV30 in Q1 next year?

Updated 19:13 BST The PR director of Nvidia worldwide gave his official reply to the story below. He said: "Over the next 6 months, we will be making a quantum leap forward in our technology. The next generation GPU requires the capabilities of 0.13 micron process. With 0.13um (micron), our architects and engineers have made a quantum leap in algorithms and for the first time, enable cinematic rendering in real-time. We believe we are well ahead of our competition in making this important jump to 0.13um and cinematic rendering. This next generation GPU is targeted to be available for the holiday season."

He would not comment on rumours, but we'd say reading between the lines, that we're right -- Comdex Fall will be the venue for a big launch, with products following in December. MM

A JAPANESE WEB SITE claims to have inside information that indicates Nvidia will introduce its next graphics chip technology in the first quarter of new year, so missing the hectic Yuletide selling season.

But we still think the company is on target for the margins of Q4 and believe Nvidia will show off the NV30 at the Comdex jamboree in the US this year, to a massive roll of publicity.

Other sites base their take on a page at Japanese site PC Watch, which publishes a projected roadmap of future introductions over at this Web page.

VR Zone, interpreting the info, gives a neat little table which seems to indicate we'll NV35 in the fourth quarter of next year and the NV40 in Q3 of 2004.

That site indicates an introduction in February next year, which is way beyond the date that Nvidia originally suggested for this technology.

The DirectX 9 chips will include CineFX architecture, and support for the Cg shader language, the sites indicate, and when NV30 is released it will come in a 130 nanometer version.

As well as the analysis of the PC Watch page at VR Zone, there's a German take on the page at K Zone, which suggests that these documents pose more questions than answers. µ

* NVIDIA HAS JUST posted a presentation it made in Hong Kong today. That describes the NV30 as the "next generation cinematic GPUs" with 100+ million transistors, and says NV30 and Cg will "lead the programmable revolution". It also says there is a "platform transition" in the shape of AMD's Opteron and AGP8X. The slide PDF starts here (31 slides).