Chinese Vendor Developing PCIe 4.0 GPU With 16GB HBM and GTX 1080-Like Performance

Jingjia Micro, short for Changsha Jingjia Microelectronics Co., Ltd, has allegedly commenced pre-researching the company's next-generation JM9271 GPU that it claims will be as fast as an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Formally constituted in 2006, Jingjia Micro is a Chinese military-civilian integrated company that specializes in electronic component design and production. The firm has started racking up accolades, such as producing the JM5400, China's first domestic GPU. The JM5400 is built on a rather primitive 65nm manufacturing process. However, it later replaced many archaic ATI M9, M54, M72 and M96 GPUs often used in Chinese military aircraft. After the JM5400's success, Jingjia Micro transitioned from the 65nm node to the 28nm node and added the JM7000 and JM7200 GPUs to its arsenal.

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Row 0 - Cell 0 JM9231GTX 1050JM9271GTX 1080
API SupportOpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 1.2OpenGL 4.6, DX12OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 2.0OpenGL 4.6, DX12
Boost Clock Rate> 1,500 MHz1,455 MHz> 1,800 MHz1,733 MHz
Bus InterfacePCIe 3.0PCIe 3.0PCIe 4.0PCIe 3.0
Memory Bandwidth256 GB/s112 GB/s512 GB/s320 GB/s
Memory Capacity8GB GDDR52GB GDDR516GB HBM8GB GDDR5X
Pixel Rate> 32 GPixel/s46.56 GPixel/s> 128 GPixel/s110.9 GPixel/s
FP32 (Float) Performance2 TFLOPs1.862 TFLOPs8 TFLOPs8.873 TFLOPs
OutputsHDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.3HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.3HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4
EncodingH.265/4K 60FPSH.265/4K 60FPSH.265/4K 60FPSH.265/4K 60FPS
TDP150W75W200W180W

Business has been booming for Jingjia Micro. The China-based organization turned in its first half 2019 results yesterday where it registered a revenue of 257 million yuan ($36 milllion), which represents a considerable year-on-year increase of 34.54%. Jingjia Micro's strong suits are graphics display and control products and small specialized radars.

However, Jingjia Micro's hunger cannot be satisfied and has already started to promote its GPUs outside the military market. The JM7200 is the firm's most recent GPU. It's clocked at 1,200 MHz and comes with 4GB of DDR3 memory. For reference sake, the JM7200's performance is equivalent to a GeForce GT 640. However, the JM7200 has a TDP (thermal design power) that's less than 10W as opposed to the GeForce GT 640's 50W. The Chinese company is currently receiving orders for its JM7200 GPU and has gone back to the drawing board to plan its next-gen GPUs.

As per cnBeta's report, the JM9231 and JM9271 will be Jingjia Micro's upcoming high-performance GPUs. The first performs close to a GeForce GTX 1050 while the latter boasts performance figures in the same ballpark as a GeForce GTX 1080. In terms of TDP, Nvidia evidently has the upper hand. Pascal-powered graphics cards make use of the 16nm process node while Jingjia Micro's offerings still rely on the 28nm manufacturing process.

The JM9231 is expected to arrive with a boost clock above 1,500 MHz, 8GB of GDDR5 memory and a 150W TDP. The JM9231, which most likely is the flagship model, will come with all the bells and whistles, like support for the PCIe 4.0 interface and up to 16GB of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) memory. It's rated with a 200W TDP and purportedly boasts a boost clock that scales above the 1,800 MHz mark.

At the moment, the planned JM9231 and JM9271 GPUs might be exclusively for military use. This is evident since both GPUs apparently lack support for the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs. If Jingjia Micro wants to steal a piece of Nvidia and AMD's cake, the Chinese GPU maker will have to incorporate both features to have a real gaming graphics card. The GPUs are probably in the early stages of development, and there is still time to make changes to the product, or Jingjia Micro could make a completely different consumer product. If priced aggressively, we could definitely picture Jingjia Micro's GPUs selling like hot cakes in the China market.

Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • jimmysmitty
    Lower OpenGL support and no DX support? Sure it will sell but it will not sell enough as it will not support the vast majority of mainstream games. 16GB of HBM is fine and dandy but if it can't play a popular game due to not supporting DX whats the purpose?
    Reply
  • hannibal
    It is a start! These can do the same to GPUs as Oneplus and Xiaomi has done to cell phones! Bad quality, very bad drivers, but very cheap price compared to their competitors.
    The biggest question/problem are the drivers. But if you would like to get raw power at cheap price, you can take this route! If Linux society can make open source driver to these, then these can be winners! (In Linux systems of course)
    Reply
  • setx
    Who needs DX12 support? Definitely not China. I believe they are on Win7 and not going to Win10 anytime soon.

    With Vulkan they likely will be able to get DX support almost for free from community with wrappers.
    Reply
  • Growle
    Looks like they're meant to be an affordable consumer workstation GPU, that can also game. The whole tariff business might even be enough to make these cards more attractive than the alternatives.

    Also, I haven't kept up in the news regarding crypto mining in China, but it was pretty huge there for awhile. They did compare their GPU's to one of Nvidia's most popular cards, which happens to be the most popular mining card...

    If you want to get the tinfoil hats going, consider that China is releasing a new "cryptocurrency," and a GPU supplier for their military is now offering cheap new cards. They've stated that people won't be able to mine this new currency, but what if your GPU came preinstalled with a low resource crypto miner? Sell enough of them and...no, their government would never do that right?
    Reply
  • GetSmart
    With only OpenGL supported, very likely will be used with Linux and BSD derived operating systems (in other words, not for Windows).
    Reply