Nvidia Admits Showing Dummy Fermi Card at GTC, Claims First Graphics Cards on Track for Q4 2009

From X-bit Labs: Nvidia Corp. earlier this week unveiled impressive details about its next-generation Fermi architecture for graphics processing units (GPUs) and even demonstrated an add-in card powered by the new chip. But while the new GPU architecture impresses, the board that was shown-off does not seem to be a working sample. Nvidia itself claims that the card was an “engineering sample” and that the first commercial Fermi products will be released in Q4 2009.

“[The Fermi chip was] not on the prototype that was held up [at the keynote and press conference]. Modifications may be made in this before the product is released. There was a working Fermi chip used in the Fermi demo,” explained Luciano Alibrandi, a spokesman for Nvidia.

The card that was shown by Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia, at the GPU Technology Conference did not seem to be the final product from the start, as we mentioned in the news-story on the matter. Besides, many press outlets as well as technology forums (1, 2) over the Internet expressed doubts that the demonstrated Fermi-G300 card was real.

While Nvidia admits that the board on the public display was an “engineering sample” and did not feature its new Fermi-G300 graphics chip (also known as GT300, NV60), the company stresses that it did show actual performance numbers that the new GPU can achieve without using simulation as well as showcased a demo that was run by its new graphics processor.

View: Article @ Source Site