The NVIDIA Turing GPU Architecture Deep Dive: Prelude to GeForce RTX
by Nate Oh on September 14, 2018 12:30 PM ESTClosing Thoughts
With a tagline like ‘Graphics Reinvented’, NVIDIA is certainly not straying from putting Turing in the most revolutionary limelight as possible. In that sense, NVIDIA is choosing to compare Turing to Pascal rather than Volta for every possible circumstance, especially for gaming. This decision is certainly not unfounded because for consumers, the Turing-based GeForce 20-series succeeds the Pascal-based GeForce 10-series. However, this can give the impression that because Turing is so different from Pascal, it warrants dissimilar comparisons like RTX-OPS metrics or gaming performance uplifts with DLSS or raytracing enabled.
The situation becomes a little more muddled because of several reasons:
- The pricing and availability of the RTX 20-series means that on a purely market segmentation level, it does not directly replace Pascal gaming products
- As gaming-focused cards, the major new features (RT cores, tensor cores, advanced shading) of the RTX 20-series do not operate out-of-the-box in games, are specific to select games, and
- The burden of communication is on the developers to educate consumers on the details of specific raytracing effects or use of AI-accelerated denoisers
These aren’t points that necessarily need to define Turing, except that NVIDIA has pushed the envelope by going all-in with marketing and branding. For their part, NVIDIA will have an continously updated list of games with RTX platform support.
On one hand, Turing seems like a possible solution to the gaming/compute architecture divergence. It seems less likely now that NVIDIA would backtrack into a more standard design for maximum rasterization performance, though obviously that remains to be seen with how the product fares. In any case, as most silicon design firms hvae leapfrogging design teams, the major decisions are likely not to move too far to the fixed function side, if only because the greatest strength of GPUs in compute is its programmability and versatility.
Looking back at ray tracing, it seems that even if it isn't immediately practical, there would still be a seeding effect to be gained via enthusiasts and certain gamers, which would work well with higher-profile AAA games. As we move into next week, it appears that the GeForce RTX 20-series is definitely one of the more nuanced graphics products, with both caveats and potential.
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willis936 - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
Also in case there's anyone else in the signal integrity business reading this: does it bug anyone else that eye diagrams are always heatmaps without a colorbar legend? When I make eye diagrams I put a colorbar legend in to signify hits per mV*ps area. The only thing I see T&M companies do is specify how many samples are in the eye diagram but I don't think that's enough for easy apples to apples comparisons.Manch - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
No, bc heatmaps are std.willis936 - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
A heatmap would still be used. The color alone has no meaning unless you know how many hits there are total. Even that is useless if you want to build a bathtub. The colorbar would actually tell you how many hits are in a region. This applies to all heatmaps.casperes1996 - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
Wow... I just started a computer science education recently, and I was recently tasked with implementing an effecient search algorithm that works on infinitely long data streams. I made it so it first checks for an upper boundary in the array, (and updates the lower boundary based on the upper one) and then does a binary search on that subarray. I feel like there's no better time to read this article since it talks about the BVH. I felt so clever when I read it and thought "That sounds a lot like a binary search" before the article then mentioned it itself!ballsystemlord - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link
You made only 1 typo! Great job!"In any case, as most silicon design firms hvae leapfrogging design teams,"
Should be "have":
"In any case, as most silicon design firms have leapfrogging design teams,"
There is one more problem (stray 2 letter word), in your article, but I forgot were it was. Sorry.
Sherlock - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
The fact that Microsoft has released a Ray Tracing specific API seems to suggest that the next XBox will support it. And considering AMD is the CPU/GPU partner for the next gen XBox - it seems highly likely that the next gen AMD GPU's will have dedicated Ray Tracing hardware as well. I expect meaningful use of these hardware feature only once the next gen console hardware is released - which is due in the next 2-3 years. RTX seems a wasteful expenditure for the end-consumer now. The only motivation for NVidia to release this now is so that consumers don't feel as they are behind the curve against AMD. This gives some semblance to the rumros that Nvidia will release a "GTX" line and expect it to be their volume selling product - with the RTX as proof-of-concept for early adoptersbebby - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Very good point from Sherlock. I also believe that Sony and Microsoft will be the ones defining what kind of hardware features will be used and which not.In general, with Moore's Law slowing down, progress gets slower and the incremental improvements are minimal. With the result that there is less competition, prices go up and there is not any more any "wow" effect coming with a new GPU. (last time I had this was with the 470gtx)
My disappointment lies with the power consumption. Nvidia should focus more on power consumption rather than performance if they ever want to have a decent market share in tablets/phablets.
levizx - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Actually the efficiency increased only 18% not 23%. 150% / 127% - 1 = 18.11%, you can't just 50% - 27% = 23%, the efficiency increase is compared to "without optimization" i.e. 127%rrinker - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
91 comments (as I type this) and most of them are arguing over "boo hoo, it's too expensive" Well, if it's too expensive - don't buy it. Why complain? Oh yeah, because Internet. This is NOT just the same old GPU, just a little faster - this is something completely different, or at least, something with significant differences to the current cop of traditional GPUs. There's no surprise that it's going to be more expensive - if you are shocked at the price then you really MUST be living under a rock. The first new ANYTHING is always premium priced - there is no competition, it's a unique product, and there is a lot of development costs involved. CAN they sell it for less? Most likely, but their job is not to sell it for the lowest possible profit, it's to sell it for what the market will bear. Simple as that. Don't like it, don;t buy it. Absolutely NO ONE needs the latest and greatest on launch day. I won't be buying one of these, I do nothing that would benefit from the new features. Maybe in a few years, when everyone has raytracing, and the games I want to play require it - then I'll buy a card like this. Griping about pricing on something you don't need - priceless.eddman - Tuesday, September 18, 2018 - link
... except this is the first time we've had such a massive price jump in the past 18 years. Even 8800 series, which according to jensen was the biggest technology jump before 20 series, launched at about the same MSRP as the last gen.It does HYBRID, partial, limited ray-tracing, and? How does that justify such a massive price jump? If these cards are supposed to be the replacements for pascals, then they are damn overpriced COMPARED to them. This is not how generational pricing is supposed to be.
If these are supposed to be a new category, then why name them like that? Why not go with 2090 Ti, 2090, or something along those lines.
Since they haven't done that and considering they left and right compare these cards to pascal cards even in regular rasterized games, then I have to conclude they consider them generational replacements.