The head of graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, the former ATI Technologies, said in an interview that the recently introduced Nvidia Corp.’s GeForce GTX 200 graphics processing unit (GPU) was the last high-end monolithic “megachip”. The comment follows vows by high-ranking Nvidia execs to continue making high-end graphics chips that are massive in size and costly in price.
“I predict our competitor will go down the same path for its next GPU once they see this. They have made their last monolithic GPU,” said Rick Bergman, the vice president of AMD who heads graphics product group, reports EETimes web-site.
ATI has been utilizing multi-chip graphics setups to address the high-end market of graphics cards that are used by gamers and enthusiasts for about a year now, whereas Nvidia Corp. has been using the approach for over two years, but has been claiming for about a quarter now that single-chip high-end graphics cards are better than dual-chip approach.
According to some estimates, the die size of Nvidia code-named G200 GPU that powers GeForce GTX 200-series products is about 600mm², which means that only about 97 of such chips may fit onto a single 300mm wafer. Provided that the yield of such chips is hardly high, whereas a single wafer costs several thousands of dollars, such large GPUs do cost a lot to manufacture, not talking about the amount of money and time to develop and test such large products.
Usually developers of graphics chips have to disable certain defective parts of their large graphics processing units and install them on less expensive graphics cards to be able to sell even imperfect chips.
Earlier this year Nvidia’s chief scientist said that AMD is unable to develop a large monolithic graphics processor due to lack of resources. However, Mr. Bergman said that smaller chips allow easier adoption of them for mobile computers. Even though Nvidia’s currently provides faster graphics processors for mobile market at the moment, it would hardly be able to offer G200-class mobile hardware in the near future.
“There’s no way this new Nvidia core will be in notebooks this fall,” Mr. Bergman claimed.
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