Thursday, October 1, 2009
Nvidia Corp. previewed its next-generation graphics processor, a three-billion transistor chip code named Fermi, packing 512 cores and claiming advances in floating point and memory architecture.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced plans for a new supercomputer that will use the Fermi chips, accelerating Nvidia's initiative to use graphics processors as multicore general-purpose CPUs. Bloomberg, Cray, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft also expressed support for the chip.
Fermi will be the basis for all Nvidia's future graphics processors. Nvidia is slightly behind archrival Advanced Micro Devices which just started shipping products based on a new graphics core designed by the former ATI group it acquired, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Fermi will be able to support real-time ray tracing, Nvidia said. Intel showed early demonstrations at its event last week of ray tracing running on an early version of its Larrabee chip.
"Fermi is a true game-changer for GPU computing, allowing NVIDIA to compete directly against Intel and AMD processors in markets such as high performance computing and financial analysis," said Peter Glaskowsky, a microprocessor analyst.
By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved
|
