NVIDIA G80 will not use a unified shader design

G80 is expected to be the first DirectX 10 graphic circuit by NVIDIA and it will also bring support for Shader Model 4. One of the big news with DirectX 10 is that the API (Application Programming Interface) will support unified shader processors. Unified shader comes from the fact that the shader processors used by the graphic circuit can handle both pixels and triangles. Today’s graphic circuits use dedicated pixel and vertex shader processorsm which can often be a relatively inefficient solution. ATI has already created the graphic circuit that use a unified shader architecture; Xenos and it can be found inside Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console.

“Microsoft Corp. pushes unified shader language for pixel and vertex shaders in its Xbox 360 game console ad well as graphics API of Windows Longhorn – Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, which is sometimes referred as the DirectX 10. As a result of that graphics hardware designers should deliver their chips with unified shader engines at some point in future in order to more efficiently support the new API. However, previously Nvidia Corp. expressed opinions that it would make sense to release architecture with unified shader processors “when it makes sense”.”

Whether this is a mistake or a wise decision by NVIDIA is hard to say, but anyway NVIDIA shouldn’t be all that upset if this turns out to delay Windows Vista even further. The information about G80 it highly unofficial, and since there is still a lot of time to go before the circuit will arrive things may very well have changed until then.

Source: X-bit Labs