Kepler was launched in March 2012. You're telling me VA is meant to compete against an architecture that's already a year and a half old? If that's the case, AMD will be in serious trouble.
At this point, after skipping over their planned GCN refresh, they need to prepare for what's coming rather than what's already been available for a long time.
Think of it this way. If AMD launches a 28nm VA in October, they will likely have a 6-9 month buffer zone before NVIDIA starts talking Maxwell in earnest. In order to compete with Maxwell, they'd need a chip that's (on paper at least) TWICE as powerful as TITAN if NVIDIA's latest slides are any indication of potential performance. Since refreshes typically garner at most 20% better performance than their predecessors (see previous reviews), AMD would have to come out of the gate extremely strong or at least keep something waiting in the wings to respond to Maxwell once VA gets its refresh.
I really have to wonder which is better for AMD though; wait a little while for 20nm (6 months) and compete against Maxwell on slightly more level footing or launch something now that still uses the 28nm node and hope NVIDIA doesn't pull in their launch timeframe due to strong TSMC yields.
The real question is whether VA is a GCN refresh or a brand new architecture. I'm hoping for "refresh" so they can quickly transition to a new 20nm architecture in time to compete against Kepler.
Originally Posted by SKYMTL
Kepler was launched in March 2012. You're telling me VA is meant to compete against an architecture that's already a year and a half old? If that's the case, AMD will be in serious trouble.
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