Kepler Nvidia GeForce GTX 780

[Manicdan]

i still dont get these comments. right now that super gpu would sell for thousands in the server world. per mm2 it would be more profitable than anything else out there. but not only would it earn them lots of cash, it will let them set world records or gain crazy market share.

if they wait just 1 year the value of those super gpus drops like a rock to about where things are now. sure yeilds will be higher, but R&D wont change, and their per chip margin will be severely hurt. if they wait 2 years its almost worthless. getting something out AHEAD of schedule in the world of semiconductors is the best thing ever. delaying that costs millions.

[nr4]

Manicdan I still dont get how NVIDIA didnt hire you to show them "The Way It's Meant to be Played".
Such a big loss for them

[Manicdan]

Manicdan I still dont get how NVIDIA didnt hire you to show them "The Way It's Meant to be Played".
Such a big loss for them

i have no idea what your saying here.
TWIMTBP was very controversial, and has nothing to do with releasing a product when its ready vs waiting until its cheaper and also less valued.

[Karolis]

i have no idea what your saying here.
TWIMTBP was very controversial, and has nothing to do with releasing a product when its ready vs waiting until its cheaper and also less valued.

What I think nr4 was trying to say is that if nvidia saw that it's financially viable to release it now, they would do it.

[DilTech]

i still dont get these comments. right now that super gpu would sell for thousands in the server world. per mm2 it would be more profitable than anything else out there. but not only would it earn them lots of cash, it will let them set world records or gain crazy market share.

if they wait just 1 year the value of those super gpus drops like a rock to about where things are now. sure yeilds will be higher, but R&D wont change, and their per chip margin will be severely hurt. if they wait 2 years its almost worthless. getting something out AHEAD of schedule in the world of semiconductors is the best thing ever. delaying that costs millions.

Except GK110 DOES hit the server world in November at the absolute latest, at a time-frame where it still will have NO competition. Gave them plenty of time to get yields perfect before going any further with said chip, as well as time to work on power draw/heat.

Not only that, when you can sell a card that costs you LESS money to produce than your $200 part last year for $400-$500 this year AND move those in quantities, why would you do anything that ends that hustle?

[Lanek]

Except GK110 DOES hit the server world in November at the absolute latest, at a time-frame where it still will have NO competition. Gave them plenty of time to get yields perfect before going any further with said chip, as well as time to work on power draw/heat.

Not only that, when you can sell a card that costs you LESS money to produce than your $200 part last year for $400-$500 this year AND move those in quantities, why would you do anything that ends that hustle?

At the same time they have delay all their future chips on professional market, ( including Kepler intially )... Maxwell ( 2014 ).. November is not an hasard. I dont think Nvidia push back their prevision, just cause they can compet with lower chips in the gamer segment.... They could release thoses cards for professional, and just release GK104 for gamers...

What do you think? they was affraid gamers will buy a GK100-110 Tesla at 4000$ ?

I will not be so sure, they will not have any competition when releasing the K20 Tesla. The Tesla K20 is annunced to get a 1.5Tflops DP theorical peak at 1/3 rate. The AMD 7970 have 1 Tflops DP allready at 1/4 rate .... 1.5Tflops DP at 1/3 = 4.5Tflops SP.... And we are speaking about the GK110 .. we have no idea what was the initial GK100 who have been it seems completely lost somewhere between august to december 2011... ( If the AMD 7970 was set at 1/3 rate, they will allready hit 1.33Tflops DP ( pure theory as i absolutely dont know if AMD can do 1/3 ).

Vs Intel, the problem is even more different, the Xeon-Phi x86 is not totally comparable of GPU's...

Computing is totally something aside anyway, we can base ourself on a simple series, betwen AMD HSA who try to build something who will not take place before 2014 maybe, Intel and his Xeon-Phy who will be an entry but not the last evolution of it.. this take time and the work to do is not based on a series, but in a long process of evolution.

[STEvil]

Except GK110 DOES hit the server world in November at the absolute latest, at a time-frame where it still will have NO competition. Gave them plenty of time to get yields perfect before going any further with said chip, as well as time to work on power draw/heat.

Not only that, when you can sell a card that costs you LESS money to produce than your $200 part last year for $400-$500 this year AND move those in quantities, why would you do anything that ends that hustle?

The more time you give your competition to catch up the more money you lose due to not selling product. If you're improving the architecture then do that, and release the improved version down the road. Sitting on product does nothing but cost money.

[Olivon]

GK106-400 -> GTX 660
GK106-250 -> "GTX 660 SE": 768SPs + 192-Bit (5Gbps?)
GK106-200 -> "GTX 650 Ti": 576-768SPs + 128-Bit 5Gbps
GK106-875 -> Quadro

http://we.pcinlife.com/thread-1978270-1-1.html

Via 3DCenter, special thanks to them, really a great team

[Andrew LB]

The more time you give your competition to catch up the more money you lose due to not selling product. If you're improving the architecture then do that, and release the improved version down the road. Sitting on product does nothing but cost money.

Not true. Especially when your FAB is having problems manufacturing such a complex chip at a reliable rate, causing the cost/chip to be very high. Additionally, if you already have the top performing product in the market segment with zero competition in sight, it would smart to maximize profits on that GPU before releasing a product that will cause a huge price cut to the current line as well as a reduction in sales figures.

[STEvil]

Not true. Especially when your FAB is having problems manufacturing such a complex chip at a reliable rate, causing the cost/chip to be very high. Additionally, if you already have the top performing product in the market segment with zero competition in sight, it would smart to maximize profits on that GPU before releasing a product that will cause a huge price cut to the current line as well as a reduction in sales figures.

Bad FAB/R&D means burning $$ while you wait for your new part to become viable. IF it becomes viable before passing the point of return on input on R&D and you are not selling it then you are losing more money on it, let alone if you're sitting on your butt thinking your competition is having a picnic. This is why AMD had the 4870 then later the 4890. The released the 4870 because it was viable then released the updated version later as the process matured. IF the 780 is viable then nVidia should be producing and selling it asap, while applying updates to the technology to market as the 781, if it is going to be viable to do so before the next refreshes. At this time it seems the 780 has been in the shop for a really, really long time..

If the chip performs as expected and is viable then its release shouldnt hurt the current technology as its market price would likely be significantly above that of the current hardware. Unless its nV's bulldozer that is..

Tajoh has it mostly correct, its the pro line that would suffer (if anything), but really thats nV's own fault for having too much product, and honestly at the retarded prices of pro hardware, they can eat the cost.


As to bitcoining, its just a black market currency.

[Andrew LB]

Bad FAB/R&D means burning $$ while you wait for your new part to become viable.

Since when does it cost money to NOT place an order? Rushing to be the first to release big complex chips based on a very young and costly cutting edge manufacturing process is simply foolish. Both nVidia and ATi did this back when Fermi and HD5xxx were released, resulting in very limited product availibility and dismal earnings for close to half a year. Bragging rights are all fine and dandy until you have to explain to the board of directors and all your share holders why earnings are flat and why you chose to show the world your e-peen instead of doing what they hired you for.... to make money.

As I said earlier, if you already dominate the market ... it would be foolish to release a brand new costly chip ,manufactured on an immature process, where you'd essentially be competing against your own product. A smart manager would stick with the chips currently made on the very reliable and mature, yet slightly larger process where there are little to no wafer-loss... thus allowing you to maximize profits. Additionally, it gives your third party manufacturers time to sell off the any cards on store shelves or in their warehouses.

[LordEC911]

Since when does it cost money to NOT place an order?

Because there are still costs associated to that product you aren't ordering, you are wasting valuable resources that would be of better use working on the next project and, most importantly, by the time you do decide to manufacture and launch your "held" product your competitor may have something even better out or about to come out.

This is all about design cycles and deadlines. In the technology world you never, let me repeat myself, NEVER hold back a sure thing.
Sure, there are time things go bad or wrong. Yes, there might be some rare extremely short-term strategy.

You never hold back something for 6+ months because "it is too good." Look at Intel for the past 6 or so years if you want some proof.

[tajoh111]

The more time you give your competition to catch up the more money you lose due to not selling product. If you're improving the architecture then do that, and release the improved version down the road. Sitting on product does nothing but cost money.

Remember Nvidia doesn't update their professional line if you look at the past with the GX11X chip. They usually make one professional product and let it hold out that generation. Releasing GK100 in a state that is highly downclocked and disabled might do more harm than good at this point.

Releasing the GK100 would definitely devalue the rest of Nvidia's pro line. Nvidia probably has loads of quadro 6000 and 5000 products stored up considering how many Fermi products they have on shelves still. And in addition, quadro 6000 products are still highly competitive with AMD best and newest stuff(w9000). In hothardware review, the quadro takes it and in the toms hardware review, it is basically a tie. Considering that Nvidia still has the driver advantage in the pro market(this isn't questionable at all) which is huge, quadro 6000 and 5000 are still highly desirable products. A product they can sell for the top of the line price, but only have a handful of supply does more damage when they need to cut the price of their previous card in half and they half lots of supply of. If quadros based on fermi were simply uncompetitive with AMD's newest stuff, Nvidia hand would be forced much more.

One more thing that has to affect profitability is Nvidia is paying per wafer this generation and not per working chip like last generation. Releasing a low yield chip would create marginal revenue because of supply and decrease the price of everything they have. GK104 lines would likely be effected when basically every review website mentions GK100 as the top line but not being used in all but the pro line because it is too expensive to put into their consumer cards. And all of sudden the 499 dollar price tag doesn't make as much sense anymore as you get people wanting top of the line waiting instead of settling for gk104 this generation. A chip like gf100 that was low yielding last gen but still profitable because of the pay per working chip policy suddenly becomes unmanufacturable because the yield matter more than anything under this new contract at 28nm.

Considering how gk104 clocked and supply came(supply is actually decent considering the demand of 28nm wafers), I suspect a gk100 with similar flaws to gf100 could have been released maybe even better(this gen seems more energy efficient). But with the contract change with TSMC, it would have been unprofitable and did more harm than good. Releasing a polished gk110 is probably the smart move this generation as it will allow them to release a product that demolishes w9000 and compete against what Intel has lined up. When I say this, remember Nvidia has only been releasing 1 pro card based on either gx10x or gx11x and not both. They only take one shot to probably prevent pissed off customers and to justify the price tag of these cards.

[Andrew LB]

if they wait just 1 year the value of those super gpus drops like a rock to about where things are now. sure yeilds will be higher, but R&D wont change, and their per chip margin will be severely hurt. if they wait 2 years its almost worthless. getting something out AHEAD of schedule in the world of semiconductors is the best thing ever. delaying that costs millions.

That makes absolutely no sense. Holding back the release of a super fast GPU (due to yields, no competition, etc) would have absolutely no effect on it's retail pricing. All that matters is the chips performance when compared to it's competition on release day. If a company held back release of some super-GPU a year or even two, and upon release it still destroyed the competition... pricing would still be whatever the market dictates regardless of the delay. It's not like they would be required to sell it at a price point as if it were a one or two year old product. In reality, such a delay would allow for the manufacturing process to become very good, driving the price/wafer/chip much lower, which in turn would result in the profit margin for the super-GPU to be far higher than if it were released back when it was not necessary.