News - Nvidia's GPU roadmap updated to include 'Pascal'

[HEXUS]

Pascal will follow this year's Maxwell GPUs and include 3D memory and 'NVLink' tech.

Read more.

[shaithis]

Ooooo....UMA, on-die RAM, increased bandwidth (and presumably DX12 support completely in hardware).....some pretty serious changes.

Interesting to see what gains we get and whether XBO ports will need much tweeking for the UMA/HSA.

[kalniel]

No word on Maxwell, and Volta's gone poof!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

No word on Maxwell, and Volta's gone poof!

Seems CD picked up on it too:

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/25/n...ct-denver-gtc/

The Denver core is absent too.

[Agent]

Interesting to see what gains we get and whether XBO ports will need much tweeking for the UMA/HSA.

With so many devs using one of big games engines today, once they are updated (which is normally very fast) then anything built on them will benefit quickly.

[maffiou]

No word on Maxwell, and Volta's gone poof!

It seems to me that Pascal is just Volta renamed, no? Stacked DRAM and 3D memory is the same thing...

[CK_1985]

So if they're not using PCI-E, how are these going to plug into your motherboard? Are we going to have to start buying NVidia-specific mobos?? That would be very bad news for AMD (and consumers) as you'd be locked into the Green Team until your next mobo (and probably CPU, RAM...) upgrade.

Also, integrating the DRAM onto the die presumably removes the abilityfor AIB partners to offer variants with differing amounts of RAM?

Sounds like some big changes on the horizon... very interested to see how this plays out!

[shaithis]

Although there are no specifics, I would have thought that the embedded RAM would be a small(er) amount for performing fast operations and there would be normal GDDR of some description for mass storage.....much like XBO and it's eSRAM (although I would hope they use a lot more!)

[kalniel]

It seems to me that Pascal is just Volta renamed, no?

Why wouldn't they say as such then?

[watercooled]

Hmm, am I the only one thinking, that image with the pen shows on-package RAM, not on-die/3D/on-wafer/stacked RAM?

NVlink sounds like it could be more aimed at HPC than the consumer graphics market, the existing PCIe bus is far from being saturated in games. Or maybe for consumer use it could be an improved form of link-less SLI, like AMD's XDMA?

Don't forget for consumer use, how is GPU-CPU communication going to work over a non PCI-e bus? Intel and AMD have PCIe controllers, and it's not exactly in either of their interests to kindly change everything to benefit solely a direct competitor.

I'm with shaithis on the memory though, about it being smaller/faster amount on-package. I wonder how that will play out in terms of IMC die size though? SA claim AMD have had on-die/package memory 'ready' for years now, just waiting for the right market conditions rather than technical issues (as proved by XB-One processor), so I wonder if we'll see a similar announcement from AMD shortly? If it's become necessary/cost-efficient for one company...

[kalniel]

If it's become necessary/cost-efficient for one company...

Yes I think you're right - nVidia won't be producing these, their memory partners will be - the same ones that supply AMD and Intel etc.