Nvidia CEO Talks Fermi Shortages, But Feels Good
Jen-Hsun Huang's goal is finally realized with the release of Fermi this week.
Last week Nvidia held an investor meeting where company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took over the microphone to speak on several interesting points.
One obvious point was the launch and critical reception of the Fermi-based chips, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470. Even casual onlookers will see that the first wave of GF100 GPUs is in short supply. While the first batch of retail cards will be hitting this week, they're still two weeks behind the media launch from March 26. The Nvidia CEO admitted that his company can't take manufacturing advances for granted.
"From a supply perspective, we wish we had more 40-nm capacity," Huang said, according to Venture Beat. "We are working with TSMC really closely. They are doing a fab job. Yields are improving. Capacities are improving. But we are finding it hard to keep up. Everyone is clamoring to have Fermis out the door. We are working really hard to get Fermis out the door."
Nvidia is now taking additional steps to ensure that such a lag will be avoided in the future by dedicating several engineers to manufacturing issues. The company hopes that this will help it ease through the next manufacturing transition that it expects to occur in 18 months.
Even with the problems at the 40nm process, the Nvidia wants to transition its full product line for the sake of higher margins – a positive aspect that comes with process shrinks. The company has a gross profit margin of around 30 percent for 55nm chips, while the 40nm products will result in a 40 percent profit margin.
Despite Nvidia's technical achievements, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards have been met with some less-than-stellar reviews, at least in light of AMD's success with its current ATI GPU offerings. According to Venture Beat, Huang blames some of the criticism on the fact that Nvidia didn't give reviewers enough time to evaluate the product.
Nevertheless, the CEO feels a lot better now that Fermi is out the door. "What’s different now is Fermi is in production," he said. "Two years ago, I was just fantasizing about it."
- Asus Starts Shipping the Eee PC Tablet for $499
- Epic Games, PCF Announce Bulletstorm
- Deals for April 12: Logitech MX1100 at Half Price
- The Winners of our SBM March 2010 Contest
- Monster 6-PC MMORPG Rig Quickens Farming
- Asus Eee Keyboard Shipping at End of April
- Watch the ASUS ROG OC Competition Live!
- Asus Releases Eee Keyboard Promo Video
- Full Multi-core Power May Require Windows Rework
- Deals for April 13: Hot Offers on Core i7 Laptops
- Plextor Reveals Consumer-Based NAS
- Eurocom Shipping First Hexacore i7-980X Laptop
- ''WarGames'' IMSAI 8080 Computer Up for Sale
- Apple's MacBook Pros Catch Up with Core i7 CPUs
- Gigabyte Boasts its USB Ports are Great for iPad
- Nvidia Releases 197.45 WHQL Drivers
- VOTW: Multi-toe Action with a Touchfloor Keyboard
- ASUS Radeon HD 5870 Overclocks to 1525 MHz
I really hope they are dedicating resources (ie some good engineers) to the manufacturing process. Nvidia can't be a big player in the desktop graphics sector if they can't efficiently produce their own hardware.
For the consumer's sake, I hope Nvidia pulls through strong. Competition is key for us (the consumers). ATI has done a great job with their latest cards, but we need someone to challenge them and challenge them good.
You'd think after the 20000th Launch-shortage that they'd have learned by now.....
only time will tell
Cannot wait for 250 dollar 5850.
This could be any Nvidia headline over the past how many years:
"Nvidia CEO Talks Shortages, But Feels Good"
Sorry Nvidia, ATI beat you to this one and still is winning.
Just wondering how their low-ends will look when they come out, seeing as they have problems with those I'm thinking >$100.
nVidia can have the performance crown for all I care, all I want is bang for the buck and ATI provides it.
He's still a crappy CEO.
As for fanboy rigs go I got all 3 of them that is right one ATI rig that a I use daily as a workstation while a Nvidia setup with dual 9800gt in sli on a xfx 780i. The third isn't what most expect its a 3DFX glide box with a voodoo5 5500 which is required if one wants to enjoy the classics of the 90s with out being in software mode.
The song to be playing now about Fermi is Nearer My God To Thee. If Nvidia doesn't pull it around later this generation and next generation it will not be around for much longer before being bought up and operated by someone else.
Eventually these shortages will drive to the AMD camp (for video cards only though, I'm still an Intel fan in the CPU arena).
You'd think after the 20000th Launch-shortage that they'd have learned by now.....
Naw i think ati and nvidia go for the shortage just to make demand for their cards last longer at higher levels.
Conspiracy!
"We are working with TSMC really closely. They are doing a fab job."
Hahaha nvidia CEO cracks a pun there...
"Two years ago, I was just fantasizing about it." - it still is since you cant buy any!
"Huang blames some of the criticism on the fact that Nvidia didn't give reviewers enough time to evaluate the product" - I did not realize the cards ran cooler and used less power over time?!
"Two years ago, I was just fantasizing about it."
get a room .... and a reality check
"the next manufacturing transition that it expects to occur in 18 months."
So thats gtx 580 in 18 months? surely ati will be close to releasing HD7000 series cards by then?
Man this dude is hilarious, he reminds me of the Information minister of Iraq "we will roast their stomatchs".
"Huang blames some of the criticism on the fact that Nvidia didn't give reviewers enough time to evaluate the product"
They would have had their reviews done last year but they couldn't get their hands on the green cards. All they could get was red.
And in 18 months the next die shrink will take place for nvidia. The gt5 or gt6 series (never know with nvidia) will be 40nm. No shrink there, so it should be released within 18 months, I hope for them.
I need to start saving some of this spin to a file somewhere.
I don't know if it'll be as funny ten years down the road as it is now, but it's really good right now!
Next manufacturing process they will be die shrinking the 480 and selling it as a new product. 8800/9800/GTS 250 anyone?
He is proably high on meth lol
Are the 68xx cards coming out later this year?
@dreamphantom - Your case and water cooling setup would still be good for an ATI card.
"the next manufacturing transition that it expects to occur in 18 months."So thats gtx 580 in 18 months? surely ati will be close to releasing HD7000 series cards by then?
If Nvidia is seriously looking at 18 months for their next product to hit the market, ATI is going to run away with the ball since there is already talks of their next line-up within the next 12 months or less along with the strong lead they already have over Nvidia having had their HD5000's out for so long. Seriously Nvidia better be hoping to take the CUDA world by storm because at present rate, they have failed the graphics/rendering race by far.
who cares if he feels good?
get them cheaper..everyone knows we need the competition for ATi, or they'll end up just like nVidia when they had the monopoly
Worst CEO I've seen. Second only to AMD's previous blunder, Ruiz. He's going to drive this company into the ground. All ego, no results. If the board had any clue they would drop him, just like I did with my Nvidia shares.
G92c anyone? snicker snicker snicker
Come-on people, do you realise that there are clearly driver issues as seen on most gaming benchmarks where the GTX 295 match or beat the performance of the GTX 480 in Far Cry 2? Do not forget ATI's strugle with it's die shrink problems with the ATI 2900XT, Nvidia is hitting the same problems ATI did.
just hurry up and step up production nvidia. i hate the fact that i just paid marked up value for a 5850 when it should be 260 again.
Huang's "Yields are improving," comment just cracks me up. If the rumor mill is even close, claiming 5-10% yield, and they go from 5-10% to 10-15%, technically it may have doubled. Unfortunately, it's still a rather piss-poor yield percentage. Really, the only way to go is up as it really couldn't get much worse.
Of course, no actual yield numbers will be released. Can't scare off the stockholders!
Dedicating "several" engineers for manufacturing issues is a nice PR, but utterly useless, activity. Nvidia engineers are not going to address TSMC yield issues and if it is a design issue/marginality they need design engineers on the problem to provide more margin for the process but this means new tapeouts/silicon spins and months (if not quarters) worth of time.
Putting 'several' engineers to look at TSMC manufacturing issues is the ultimate "lipstick on a pig" effort meant to appease analysts and trick non-technical, non-industry folks.
ATI/AMD actually designed in some redundancy and didn't push the design as agressively knowing some of the potential issues with 40nm, Nvidia appears to have pushed the envelop. It also helps that they have a smaller chip and were not really doing a new architecture but I think Nvidia was too aggressive with the design and when that happens you can either simplify the design or get ready to grind out multiple Silicon Revs (A1, A2, A3...) and deal with shortages