| Release date | Unknown |
|---|---|
| Codename | Volta |
| Fabrication process | 12 nm |
| History | |
| Predecessor | Pascal |
Volta is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia as the successor to the Pascal microarchitecture and announced as a future roadmap ambition in March 2013. As of May 2017[update], the first products featuring this architecture are anticipated in Q4 2017.[1] The architecture is named after Alessandro Volta, the physicist, chemist, and inventor of the electrical battery.
Details edit
In March 2013, Nvidia announced that the successor of the Pascal microarchitecture would be named Volta and include on-chip, stacked DRAM with 1 TB/s of bandwidth.[2][3]
It was reported in March 2017 that TSMC would be fabricating Volta using a 12 nm process and that the new microarchitecture is expected in 2018.[4]
Architectural improvements of the Volta architecture include the following:
- CUDA Compute Capability 7.0 (GV100 only)
- High Bandwidth Memory 2[4][5]
- NVLink 2.0: a high-bandwidth bus between the CPU and GPU, and between multiple GPUs. Allows much higher transfer speeds than those achievable by using PCI Express; estimated to provide 25 Gbit/s per lane.[6]
- Tensor cores: A tensor core is a unit that multiplies two 4×4 FP16 matrices, and then adds a third FP16 or FP32 matrix to the result by using fused multiply–add operations, and obtains an FP32 result that could be optionally demoted to an FP16 result.[7] Tensor cores are intended to speed up the training of neural networks.[7]
Products edit
Volta has been announced as the GPU microarchitecture within the Xavier generation of Tegra SoC focusing on self-driving cars.[8]
Nvidia officially announced the Volta microarchitecture as part of the Tesla V100 product announcement on May 10, 2017. The Volta GV100 GPU is built on a 12 nm process size using HBM2 memory with 900 GB/s of bandwidth.[9][10][11][12][13]
Application edit
Volta is also reported to be included in the Summit and Sierra supercomputers, used for GPGPU compute.[14][15] The Volta GPUs will connect to the POWER9 CPUs via NVLink 2.0, which is expected to support cache coherency and therefore improve GPGPU performance.[16][6][17]
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Walton, Mark (11 May 2017). "Nvidia Tesla V100: First Volta GPU is one of the largest silicon chips ever". Ars Technica. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
- ^ Gasior, Geoff (19 March 2013). "Nvidia's Volta GPU to feature on-chip DRAM". The Tech Report. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
- ^ Smith, Ryan (19 March 2013). "Nvidia Updates GPU Roadmap; Announces Volta Family for Beyond 2014". AnandTech. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
- ^ a b Killian, Zak (14 March 2017). "Report: TSMC set to fabricate Volta and Centriq on 12-nm process". The Tech Report. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
- ^ Gasior, Geoff (March 19, 2013). "Nvidia's Volta GPU to feature on-chip DRAM". The Tech Report.
- ^ a b Shah, Agam (22 August 2016). "Nvidia's NVLink 2.0 will first appear in Power9 servers next year". PC World. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
- ^ a b Harris, Mark (May 11, 2017). "CUDA 9 Features Revealed: Volta, Cooperative Groups and More". Retrieved August 12, 2017.
- ^ Cutress, Ian; Tallis, Billy (4 January 2016). "CES 2017: Nvidia Keynote Liveblog". AnandTech. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
- ^ http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-revolutionary-volta-gpu-platform-fueling-next-era-of-ai-and-high-performance-computing
- ^ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/volta-gpu-architecture/
- ^ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/tesla-v100/
- ^ https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/inside-volta/
- ^ Smith, Ryan (10 May 2017). "Nvidia Volta Unveiled". AnandTech. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
- ^ Shankland, Steven (14 September 2015). "IBM, Nvidia land $325M supercomputer deal". CNET. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
- ^ Noyes, Katherine (16 March 2015). "IBM, Nvidia rev HPC engines in next-gen supercomputer push". PC World. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
- ^ Smith, Ryan (17 November 2014). "Nvidia Volta, IBM Power9 Land Contracts for New US Government Supercomputers". Anandtech. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
- ^ Lilly, Paul (January 25, 2017). "NVIDIA 12nm FinFET Volta GPU Architecture Reportedly Replacing Pascal In 2017". HotHardware.
[[Category:Graphics microarchitectures|Nvidia Volta]] [[Category:Nvidia microarchitectures]]
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