New NVIDIA GTX 1180 & AMD Next Vega GPU & New TSMC GPU Memory Technology

The TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is going to be boosting the power of next graphics cards by Nvidia and AMD.  The technology is called wafer-on-wafer that mimics 3D NAND memory technology used in modern high end solid-state drives by stacking and putting layers vertically rather than spreading the hardware horizontally across the printed circuit board, which would require additional physical space. So more memory in less space.  Nvidia and AMD are going to be the main costumers of this technology. While we are also hearing about new GPUs coming from Intel as soon as next CES  in 2019.

semiconductor_wafer

Semiconductor_Wafer

So what’s a wafer? It’s a thin slice of polished semiconductor material that serves as the foundation for a crisscross of layered copper wires that convey electricity, and the transistors that are the heart of the processor. TSMC introduced its wafer-on-wafer technique during its symposium in Santa Clara, California.

The wafer and mounted components are cut by a diamond saw into single chips and placed into the physical processor package you see when you break open the desktop. The problem with stacking processor wafers may be in the overall manufacturing yields. The company also revealed a partnership with Cadence for 5nm and 7nm+ process technology for high-performance and advanced mobile computing.

Right now, graphics chips produced by Nvidia and AMD rely on a single wafer. But TSMC, the largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry on the planet, discovered a way to stack two wafers in a single package. The upper wafer is flipped over onto the lower wafer, and then both are bonded together. Moreover, the upper wafer contains the in/out connection piercings (aka thru-silicon vias), thus the duo is packaged using flip-chip technology.

Expected GTX 1180 specs

It was the long expected GTX 1180 specs that were leaked online a while ago, some of the specifications are confirmation of what appeared in previous leaks, including the use of TSMC’s 12nm FinFET process. 

NVIDIA-GTX-1180-12-nm-FinFET

NVIDIA GTX 1180 12-nm  (not actual image)

The GTX 1180 will apparently run with 3,584 CUDA cores, compared to the GTX 1080’s complement of 2,560. It boasts 224 TMUs (versus 160 Texture Mapping Units on the 1080) and is built on a 12nm process (as opposed to 16nm). you know the “Volta” generation with the Titan V enterprise card or tesla sub brand, but consumers will be looking for something more affordable and down to earth. Although it may debut under the “Turing” banner

GTX 1180 could launch as soon as July or August, and unveiling at Computex might not be out of the question. The price, we’re expecting somewhere between $699 and $799.

AMD’s Mysterious Vega 12 GPU

AMD’s Mysterious Vega 12 GPU info leaks &  Vega 20 for AI : The latest leaked GPUs from Vega as well as the nvidia 1180 could be using the new TSMC technology. The codenames for the upcoming Vega 20 and Vega 12 GPUs were mentioned in the latest LLVM and Clang compiler patches. Codenamed GFX906, the Vega 20 will support native AI instructions and the patch information reveals that it will benefit from the 7 nm tech, while the Vega 12 codenamed GFX904 is rumored to be replacing the Polaris series (Radeon RX 580 and co.) later this year.

Tags: nvidia, nvda, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1180,NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1180 Specs,NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1180 ,NVIDIA GeForce  , NVIDIA  GTX 1180 Specs, amd, amd vega, amd vega 2018

Mohsen Daemi
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