March 28, 2024

The Tesla P100 that was showcased in GDC didn’t have a consumer grade core, so people turned their attention to the GPU 104 which would be powering the 1070/1080 – assuming that Nvidia goes ahead with these names. Measuring roughly 300mm² according to a leaked photo, the GP104 is set to replace Nvidia’s current mid range to high range Maxwell GTX 900 series.

Huang with the Drive PX2 that is said to house dual GP105 chips
Huang with the Drive PX2 that is said to house dual GP106 chips

Nothing more was revealed regarding the GP106 which is set to power the more budget friendly Nvidia cards.

The GTX 1060 – which is actually merely placeholder name until we figure out what Nvidia plans to call its new GTX series is being based on the GP106, which supposedly has a die area of 200 mm sq, which is 1/3rd of the p100(600 mm sq). Apparently it was spotted in the Drive PX2, which was shown for a moment in the GDC.

GP106
The alleged GP106

Nvidia is bringing a major architectural overhaul and advancements to deliver more gaming and compute performance at lower power and cost. All this is possible because of TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process technology, which enables tremendous power efficiency and frequency gains over current 28nm planar technology that’s being used across Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 900 series and AMD’s Radeon 300 series.

Nvidia’s highly anticipated Pascal GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards are expected to be launching this summer. While the more budget friendly GTX 1060 that’s positioned to give gamers a lot of bang for their buck is scheduled to debut this fall.