Information on R700, Next Generation GPU from AMD
11.27.07 - 12:36am
ATI is starting to finally make some headway in proper GPU design from what I can tell in the little data that is available about this next gen GPU. Typically GPU cores tend to get progressively larger from budget to midrange and enthusiast platforms. Each separate GPU is a large monolithic core meaning that an unstable production line and positively butcher the enormous enthusiast chips as a few mistakes in each core will cause them to error out. This is one of the issues that is currently plaguing AMD’s Phenom as the enormous ~300mm^2 die is huge for a single piece of silicon. R700 on the otherhand will closely resemble the route that Intel has pursued with their quad-core chips with R700 featuring multiple cores that will be connected with highspeed interconnects. Rumor has it that the budget segment will be covered by a single 72m^2 die while the midrange will feature two dice linked together and the performance segment will feature four dice linked together for a combined 288mm^2 of silicon and a whopping 1.2 billion transistors. We won’t hear anything about R700 for a few more months considering how RV670 just launched but Q1 08 will be here faster than you believe and the next revision of DX10 cards may offer the performance that we need to truly play games in DX10. Maybe these 45nm multi-core GPUs will finally be able to give AMD the edge to take the performance crown from Nvidia’s G80 architecture.
Source: Wikipedia and general logical rumors
Fingers crossed that it kicks ass. Since the merger I’ve yet to see them pull ahead on either the CPU or GPU front.