A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal - Oscar Wilde
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Nvidia announces a Fermi chip for laptops
DESIGNER OF WARM GPUS Nvidia has released its solution for birth control by announcing the Geforce GTX480M for laptops.
The mobile GPU, based on the Green Goblin's troublesome Fermi architecture, is slated to tip up in laptops next month. Nvidia claims that the GTX480M is "the world's fastest notebook GPU", a claim that has yet to be independently verified. However, it is certainly the odds-on favourite for being the hottest.
Nvidia says that its GTX480M will have 352 'Cuda' cores running at 850MHz. On board memory configurations will vary, though the memory chips will be 256-bit GDDR5 running at 600MHz. The Direct X11 chip also has Physx support and will be part of what the firm is calling its Verde driver programme that aims to keep its laptop drivers up to date.
The chip is intended for desktop replacement models used for gaming, meaning the machines will be cumbersome and heavy, presumably from all the cooling required to keep the GTX480M from melting. All this might in turn deter users from placing a GTX480M equipped laptop on their laps, or could make the heat of the battle an altogether more immersive experience.
Given that Nvidia didn't publically release any information on the thermal design power (TDP) of the chip, something it did even with its "mobile workstation oriented" Quadro FX chips. This leads one to wonder how high the figure must be in order for the Green Goblin want to hide it.
Those who want to own a mobile sauna will have the chance to do so as the graphics chip designer has allowed multi-chip SLI support. Quite how long it will take laptop designers to shove two or three of these GPUs along with the associated industrial strength cooling system into a 'portable' package is anyone's guess.
For Nvidia, putting Fermi into a laptop one way or another was vital to showing that it has been able to rein in, at least by some small margin, the power consumption of its folly in chip design. The remaining question is how many notebook vendors will be willing to put up with all of the associated baggage that Nvidia's latest and largest graphics chip brings.
Those considering purchasing a notebook equipped with a GTX480M GPU chip perhaps might do well to consider some form of protection from the heat. µ
Tags: Nvidia
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So the HPC crowd are now going to use laptops for their supercomputing ?
It is a laptop chip that was launched, so why all this crap/spin about how great nvidia is and x86 will die ?
I would prefer that the mobile parts were named correctly by BOTH amd and nvidia. Neither of their top mobile parts are anywhere near the spec of their top desktop parts, but they label a midrange desktop component (equivalent)as a top end mobile component. Lies or marketing ? Can you tell the difference.......
HHHmmmm....Nvidia on top...yes, maybe in the HPC space. But they are already losing market share everywhere else.
Could it be because they are a year late to the DirectX 11 game?
Could it be because the manufacturers already know that their chip will be too hot to put in most thin & lights where the bulk of the market is going?
Could it be because Big Players like HP, Dell, and Apple are still gun-shy from "Bumpgate"?
Could it be that as manufacturers you look out a year in advance and see that AMD will have higher performance cards and chips that STILL run cooler not to mention the Fusion hybrid CPU/GPU which will go 32nm next year.
Can Nvidia hope to significantly increase market share and profit by just catering to the HPC crowd? Seems a little "rare atmoshphere" to me.
Don't get me wrong. I work with dozens of Nvidia Quadros in high end 3D graphic machines for sporting events. I have an Nvidia 9500GT PCI card in my old converted IBM server turned workstation because Sparkle makes the highest performance video card there is for old PCI and its an Nvidia.
But damn....every single one is do DAMN HOT! The temp sensors in my servers caused all six fans to jump up in revolutions just to cool the damn thing down. But it beat the alternative in AMD PCI which was an Radeon X1300.
But don't be such a fanatic. In this day and age of increasing energy demands but faster DECREASING amounts of CHEAP energy, Nvidia will have an increasing problem on their hands explaining just why they can't make a high performance AND a cooler, more energy effecient chip.
On Double Precision performance, Fermi is 3 times faster than ATI at the same price point and power, for graphics work Fermi is still on top by 5 to 20%. Even more, Fermi is a general purpose multi-threaded processor, while ATI cards aren't good for anything but graphics, they lack the architecture, cache, DPFP performance and everything else necessary for decent execution of general purpose tasks.
Fermi is already used in high performance computing, since Fermi was released the Fermi-based Tesla line has broken all sales records. No one is even considering using ATI for High performance work. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is on its way to creating the most powerful super computer based on Fermi.
NVidia cards will be in servers, workstations, desktops and laptops giving them around 10 times more computing power than their outdated x86 processors. This is the performance boost that we've needed so desperately since the badly engineered x86 processors cluttered the desktop space (due to legacy applications).
What with Intel falling back to making subpar integrated graphics after the Larrabee bust and with Nvidia more and more becoming a space heater company ("Hey, warm your room this winter AND surf the internet at the same time! Now THAT's multitasking!"), AMD has a golden opportunity to claw back major market share in the integrated motherboard market for desktops AND thin and light notebooks with their Fusion hybrid CPU/GPU. Just from a reduced BOM cost for motherboard makers should be incentive enough much less the thermal characteristics compared to the Fermi NRPU (Nuclear Reactor Processing Unit).
Can you imagine the size of the power brick for the notebook this beast is crammed in? It really WILL be the size and weight of an ACTUAL brick.
This will be greats for those followers of silly religions that do not approve of birth control. I'm looking at you, Roman Catholics.