Rumors of AMD’s and Nvidia’s coming graphics circuit architectures keep coming in. Recently there was talk of twice the performance in AMD’s new circuits, something that can be traced back to GPU frequencies well over 1 GHz.
We took a closer look at the new 28nm processes that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will introduce in the coming six months a while back, and customers seem pleased with the lineup. TSMC have more customers for the 28nm node than the company could gather for several years for its current 40nm technology.
According to DailyTech the new 28 nanometer technology and the fact TSMC has implemented High-K, Metal-gate (HKMG) in the two most powerful 28nm processes we can expect substantially improved clock frequencies.
With TSMC’s 28HP technology AMD and Nvidia are expected to move clock frequencies up with 45% without increasing the energy consumption per transistor will go above current 40nm technology. If the compannies decide to use this headroom to turn up the frequencies we will see graphics cards with frequencies far above 1 GHz GPU frequencies.
Most likely both AMD and Nvidia will use several graphics card series to showcase the lower energy efficiency of the new process with new solutions. Among others we should see relatively powerful graphics card being cooled just by a heatsink, not fans involved.
Besides higher clock frequencies AMD and Nvidia will roll out optimized graphics circuit architectures where AMD is taking the bigger step with the GCN architecture (Graphics Core Next).
Alas, there will be short stock of 28nm graphics cards in 2011. Best case scenario AMD will make it for a launch this year, but most likely the major launches will have to wait until next year, something NVIDIA has been set for from the very beginning.
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