Rumors surrounding NVIDIA’s next line of Ampere graphics cards are gaining momentum with the latest slating the next-generation GPUs for release next year. According to Igor’s Lab, a relatively trustworthy source for industry nuggets, Ampere is set to see the light of day in the first half of 2020.
NVIDIA Ampere GPU
Ampere GPUs are widely expected to make use of 7nm node tech made by Samsung, providing markedly better performance than NVIDIA’s existing Turing-based GPUs.
The latest news corroborates previous rumors from Digitimes, which also placed a release window as sometime next year alongside NVIDIA opting for Samsung’s 7nm EUV process.
Additionally, a look at NVIDIA’s release habits makes 2020 a likely contender. The GPU giant is known to stick to a two-year gap between generational releases. The GTX 10 series released in 2016, followed by the RTX series in 2018.
The release of Ampere GPUs would also work as contenders to AMD’s RX 5900 card expected to land next year. By releasing the Ampere, NVIDIA would have a generational lead over AMD who would only just be catching up to the RTX family with the Navi-based RX 5900.
A jump to using Samsung’s node tech also makes sense following reports that manufacturing forge TSMC was struggling to pump out sufficient 7nm nodes to match demand with this set to intensify as other clients such as Apple up their need for the tech. Samsung 7nm EUV chips are also cheaper to manufacture than the TSMC equivalent, which from a production cost perspective would make sense on NVIDIA’s part.
Final Word
As always, take these rumors with a degree of skepticism, but successive leaks that match up in terms of specifics suggest we may be on the right track. Nevertheless, don’t take any of this as given until we hear it directly from NVIDIA.