NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture continues to make headlines. This time, it’s a question of display and engraving finesse. Clearly, on the first subject, the greens are coming to rival AMD, which has taken a small lead!
Blackwell: time for 3 nm and DisplayPort 2.1!
Display Port 2.1?
— John Grant (@Shogunin) November 15, 2023
Once again, the famous leaker @kopite7kimi tells us all about the next generation of NVIDIA cards. The first thing to note is that this generation will benefit from DisplayPort 2.1 support. As a reminder, AMD has supported this standard since the arrival of the RX 7000, putting it ahead of NVIDIA in this field. This enables support for 480 Hz 4K, for example. With its support, NVIDIA will be able to catch up.
However, the main news here lies in the use of 3 nm etching. By way of comparison, with the N5, a 5 nm process optimized for NVIDIA, 3 nm looks particularly interesting. Our peers point to a 25% to 30% reduction in power consumption, while enabling a 42% reduction in chip surface area. At the same time, performance per transistor increases by 15%, while density rises by 70%.
The big question now is which 3nm variant NVIDIA will choose. There’s a bit of a choice between N3E, N3P and N3A.
Last but not least, the Blackwell series will be segmented into professional and consumer ranges. The former, notably the B100, will exploit an MCM design with multiple dies. On the other hand, with the GeForce series of gaming cards, the company will continue to offer monolithic chips – all in one piece!
