Nvidia VOLTA 2017 Leaked Specs & much more information
Channel: BE KYPO
Date: 08/05/2017

Nvidia Volta specs
There have been many figures thrown around as to just what transistor lithography Nvidia will be jamming into their next-gen Volta graphics cards, with the latest being a return to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the manufacturing of 12nm Volta GPUs, having previously dallied with Samsung for their 14nm GP107 silicon.

Originally Volta was supposed to be built using TSMC's new 10nm process, but the pace of transistor shrinkage has become rather laggardly in recent years. Other rumours had Nvidia sticking with TSMC’s existing 16nm tech in order to be able to stick to their roadmap and get actual Volta cards on the shelves in 2018. It's now looking like somewhere between the two.

TSMC’s 10nm process, unlike Intel’s Cannonlake design, is expected to be more of a stop-gap measure between their current process and the almost mythical 7nm lithography. To put that into perspective 7nm is about the height of three Tom Cruises standing on each other’s shoulders. But getting down to 10nm seems to be more of a challenge than maybe even they expected. I’m guessing either the price is prohibitive or the yields too low to offset the performance benefits of a newer design. Or a combination of both.

TSMC have though announced another stop-gap measure which they’re calling 12nm. It’s apparently based on their existing 16nm design, but with density, performance and energy efficiency improvements. Whether this 12nm node will genuinely be packed with 12nm transistors, or whether it’s just going to be clever marketing, is about as clear as thermal paste.

The current thinking then is Nvidia have now taken this updated 12nm design to use in their Volta GPUs to augment the new architecture’s own performance and power improvements with the slight extra performance bump of a shrunken lithography. With it largely being based on the existing 16nm node there shouldn’t be any concerns about launching a brand new GPU architecture with a brand new lithography. Nvidia have been burnt by those technological flames before… anyone remember the super-heated GTX 480?
We also know the top Volta GPUs will be running HBM2 memory, as detailed by Oak Ridge’s Summit specs. The GV100 is the super-star GPU, sporting both the NVLink interface - instead of PCIe 3.0 - along with the second-gen stacked high-bandwidth memory design. 

It’s possible the HBM2 memory will feature in the cut-down, PCIe-based GV102 version built for the Quadro crowd and later the Volta Titan cards. The strategy for the current Pascal generation though has been to run both HBM2 and the NVLink interconnect on the Tesla accelerators with a switch to GDDR5X and PCIe 3.0 for the less-expensive Quadro and consumer variants. I doubt that will change for Volta, with the GV102 parts probably sporting the new GDDR6 technology.

The first consumer-focused Volta GPUs, however, will be the GV104 chips, potentially set to go into the GTX 2080 and GTX 2070 cards. These would be built using GDDR6, allowing Nvidia to pump large capacity, high-performance frame buffers into their cards without the extra expense of HBM2. GDDR6 isn’t as pacey as HBM2 but is definitely speedier than GDDR5X, offering a data rate of 16Gbps as opposed to the former’s 14Gbps top speed. That also means it comes with a chunk of extra bandwidth too.

Hynix have stated that with a 384-bit memory bus, the sort of design usually favoured by Nvidia’s high-end graphics cards, they are able to offer memory bandwidth of up to 768GB/s. The new Titan Xp is using GDDR5X and can only manage 548GB/s with its mighty 12GB design.

In terms of the actual Volta GPU architecture itself there is not a lot to say until we get a little more detail from Nvidia, hopefully at GTC 2017 in May. What their engineers do need to do, however, is to target improved performance from the newer low-level APIs. Compared with AMD’s fourth-gen GCN architecture, used in the Polaris cards, Nvidia’s Pascal GPUs are generally off-the-pace when it comes to Vulkan and DirectX 12 gaming performance.
Oh hai, welcome to price speculation corner. Obviously we don’t know how Nvidia are going to price their new cards, much of that will probably come down to their relative performance compared with AMD’s high-end Vega parts, but we can still make some educated guesses based on Nvidia passim.

There was though a worrisome section in the MyDrivers.com piece about a rumoured accelerated release for Volta. In it they suggest the GeForce 20-series of products will see re-planning of the prices and market positions which “will increase the price of single card to enhance profits.” My understanding of Chinese is pretty woeful (read: nonexistent) so I’m relying on Mr. Google Robot’s comprehension skills, so it’s possible there’s a misunderstanding born of the translation into English.