Nvidia have had to admit that it will not sell any 28nm GPUs in 2011, but according to the roadmap that has leaked we should not have to wait that long. The company has ten or so new mobile GPUs coming in the N13 series where the first will be ready for mass production in December.
Nvidia have rolled its new top models of the N12 series that is better known as the GeForce 500M series. SemiAccurate have come across what is claims to be a roadmap for the next generation mobile graphics circuits, all made with 28nm technology and members of the coming N13 series. The base architecture is still Fermi based, but with a whole lot of optimizations and considerably more efficient transistor size.
According to the document Nvidia has ten different mobile GPUs planned with TDPs from 15 watt up to 75 watt depending on model. Nvidia looks to use a similar roadmap that splits the circuits into three main categories;
- N13M – Mainstream
- N13P – Performance
- N13E – Enthusiast
The majority of the circuits are in the P class, but we can probably expect more models later, not the least in the M series. The document implies that Nvidia will start test manufacturing in October of the M and P models, to put these in mass production by the end of December. The first two more powerful E models looks to go into mass production a few weeks later to be backed up by big brother N13E-GTX in April/May.
Besides information on TDP, memory buffer and memory buses the document provides performance indications. Here we can see the top models of the E series scoring 14000,15000 and 20000 points in 3DMark. If we assume this is 3Dmark Vantage Performance we can compare this to GeForce GTX 580M with 100 watt TDP that scores 14500 points. Or for that matter Radeon HD 6990M that scores 15500 points with similar TDP as 580M.
This confirms the fact that the new N13 series is mainly a more efficient Fermi family with lower TDP.
If this is correct the first mobile GPUs from Nvidia should be in products in January, which is later than many had hoped and means that the new Kepler architecture should be another couple of months, most likely Q2 2012.
Source: SemiAccurate
