Forget About Fermi! NVIDIA Starts Sampling Kepler – GK107
We heard rumors that NVIDIA had taped out their upcoming Kepler GPU last week and it looks like those rumors were true from what we can tell. Word has leaked out that NVIDIA has engineering samples out for its first chip based on the next-generation Kepler architecture. The chip is marked GK107, which isn’t the flagship GK100 that gamers want, but a mobile oriented processor for notebooks and mobile platforms. You have to start some place and with rumors that the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series has been delayed until 2012 appearing to be true this is some good news for NVIDIA. If the GK107 GPUs with A0 silicon work perfectly it could take many more months to enter mass production and to see them in the retail market.
GK107 is set to feature in four mobile GeForce SKUs – N13P-LP, N13P-GS, N13P-GT and N13E-GE. If these codenames sound familiar, it is because they have previously appeared in a leaked 28nm mobile GPU line-up. GK107 features a 128-bit memory interface, and supports DDR3 and GDDR5 memory. The first three GK107 based SKUs (with a “P” suffix) will likely succeed the GeForce GT 500M series, and will presumably be branded GeForce GT 600M series. The top GK107 part, N13E-GE, may succeed GTX 560M and be part of the GTX 600M series, as denoted by the “E” suffix (Enthusiast). In addition, GK107 will also be part of mobile Quadro SKUs – N14P-Q1 and N14P-Q3. GK107 marks the first time NVIDIA has moved to a new process and a new architecture simultaneously in a long time – mostly due to the cancellation of TSMC’s 32nm process. NVIDIA’s transition to TSMC’s 40nm process featured a bottom-to-top strategy as well, with smaller GT21x shrinks leading up to the big Fermi dies. However, this is the first time that NVIDIA is releasing a new generation of GPUs with a mainstream part. Between reports of AMD’s next-gen GPUs being pushed back to 2012 to now NVIDIA starting off with a small die, all evidence points towards the same conclusion – TSMC’s 28nm process is promising to be just as troublesome as the infamous 40nm (if not more so). GK107 engineering samples are out now, with production samples due in January 2012 if all goes well. Unfortunately, there is no news about the more exciting Kepler chips, and there are no signs of them appearing in GeForce GPUs any time soon.
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