AMD to take it easy with RV870?

[Andreas G]

We reported a while back that AMD is hoping to get its first 40/45nm GPU out in the first quarter of 2009. Closely after that we should see RV870. The only real specifications that have been going around is the very loose rumor of 2000 shaders, and it doesn't look very likely. AMD is looking to master 45nm with its GPUs first of all and further improve its multi-GPU design, before doing anything radical. The RV870 will be faster than RV770, but don't expect the same jump we saw when moving from RV670 to RV770. We're waiting for confirmation on some numbers before we share more.

[psolord]

Let's do some wishful speculation.

The reduction of the manufacturing process of the rv770 from 55nm to 40nm would reduce the size by 27.28% for each side. Differently phrased the 55nm process produces 37.50 larger sides than the 40nm one.

So the 55nm, 260mm2 rv770 currently has a side size of 16.12mm

This will be reduced to 11.72mm for the 40nm process (11.72+37.5%=16.12).

So the die size of a suggested 40nm process would actually be 137.36mm2. If you add up 4 of these you would get a die size 549.44mm2! Well that's actually smaller than the GT200(576mm2)!

So imagine what would happen if they managed to put four cores, even just glued together, on the same MCM.

To make things even better, the rv870 could be more optimized, adding 160sps thus reaching a total of 960sps per module.

All in all we could find ourselves with a MCM chip, as large as the GT200, but with
4*16=64rops
4*960=3840sps
4*32=128tmus

They could call it the 5870X4 card.

Here you are AMD. A nice project for you, free of charge!

PS You could always crossfire it!LOL!

[Delph1]

I'll forward that to the engineers at AMD to see what they have to say

//Andreas
_________________
"I'm sort of a postmodern vegetarian, I eat meat ironically"
"You are our Swedish superhero "

Forget everything, knowledge is your enemy, it's only going to make you second-guess yourself."

[reaperrr]

[Delph1]

RV870 with 20% more specs at 45nm should come very cheap.

//Andreas
_________________
"I'm sort of a postmodern vegetarian, I eat meat ironically"
"You are our Swedish superhero "

Forget everything, knowledge is your enemy, it's only going to make you second-guess yourself."