Future Pascal cards and NVlink.

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sblantipodi

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Hi,
do you know if NVlink will require new motherboards and new chipset?

Is NVlink something related to motherboard or CPU?
 
I don't think its related to motherboard, nor the CPU.

most likely just with the design of the video card and drivers.
 
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Dayaks said:
Looks like it's mobo level. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-nvlink-boosts-performance,28989.html

I am almost positive when the Titan X was unveiled (and nVlink) it's not a consumer level feature. It's made for distributed compute. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually ended up in consumer level board though.
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If it doesn't use PCI lanes from CPU it must be at mobo level.
I don't like this "custom mobo" base on nvidia products.
It's like a dozen of years ago with nForce.
 
NVLink is a supercomputer and HPC targeted feature and not a consumer targeted one.
 
As far as I know outside of extremely speculative comments (eg. forum posts and rumor mill sites like Wccftech) the material has always presented it as such. Do you have any source to the other wise?

Example -
http://www.nvidia.ca/object/nvlink.html

Designed to solve the challenges of exascale computing, NVLink is a fundamental ingredient of the U.S. Department of Energy's next-generation supercomputers.
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What I am thinking is people are associating it as possibly Nvidia's "next gen" implementation of SLI to match or exceed AMDs relatively recent new XDMA crossfire implementation. Except that is a different matter if it were to come about with Pascal (although it could share some of the underlying software).

This isn't to say future generations of NVlink could eventually transition to consumer applications (and have practical benefits) but has anything indicated that is any type of target for initial generation with Pascal?

To answer your question it requires changes on the software and hardware level. As well as compatibility with the motherboard and CPU. It would not be implementable in a true fashion as a drop in change for existing motherboards or CPUs.
 
I don't have any source, I'm just saying what I understood but glad to say that I don't need to change motherboard for Pascal since I have bought it from a few months :)
 
That would be impossible. The existing PCIe infrastructure base in the consumer market is way too large compared to any possible uptake of a new standard.

AGP to PCIe transition as an example had variants catering to both as abandoning the existing AGP base would have been catastrophic from a business stand point.

Any type of actual future standards transition without backwards compatibility would be measured in the multiple years and product generations at a minimum.
 
limitedaccess said:
That would be impossible. The existing PCIe infrastructure base in the consumer market is way too large compared to any possible uptake of a new standard.

AGP to PCIe transition as an example had variants catering to both as abandoning the existing AGP base would have been catastrophic from a business stand point.

Any type of actual future standards transition without backwards compatibility would be measured in the multiple years and product generations at a minimum.
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story tells that nforce was a fine transition without any catastrophe
 
I'm not understanding how you are connecting nforce to this?

Nforce was a x86 chipset from Nvidia. It wasn't changing any standard?
 
limitedaccess said:
I'm not understanding how you are connecting nforce to this?

Nforce was an x86 chipset from Nvidia. Competing against offerings from AMD, Intel and Via (and to some extent S3) at the time. It wasn't changing any standard?
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if nvidia was able to create a x86 chipset, I don't see the difficulties in porting NVlink to mainstream as well.
 
It may have been the pcper interview for the 980 launch with nVidia but I swear I remember them saying Pascal will go over PCIe like AMDs tech. It just wasn't ready for Maxwell but they were working on it. It would of been the perfect time to mention nVlink but they didn't. I'd be very surprised if that was implemented mainstream. I'd expect PCIe 4.0 to be around first...
 
I agree it's been marketed as a supercomputer feature only, and does require support from at least the CPU level. And at this time it will be POWER and ARM only. I don't think Intel has any plans to help a competitor in the HPC market.
 
Yes, NVLink would require new hardware if it made it into the consumer space. Since it is going to be a competing interconnect with Intel's QPI I highly doubt we will see it in the mainstream. With PCI-E 4.0 coming soon I suspect it will be more likely that NVIDIA will have their own version of AMD's bridgeless XDMA protocol for multi GPU solutions in the future.
 
sblantipodi said:
if nvidia was able to create a x86 chipset, I don't see the difficulties in porting NVlink to mainstream as well.
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You're comparing two different concepts.

Nforce was still an x86 chipset built according to the existing standards at the time in which it needed to conform to for broad compatibility and therefore potential market exposure.

If Nvidia were to make NVLink only consumer graphics card's that would extremely limit the available market for those products as it does not conform to the existing standard (in this case PCIe) and greatly limit the size of the market for such a product (minuscule).
 
sblantipodi said:
is it something that we will see with Broadwell-E ?
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I don't think you get it. It's not a consumer oriented technology (at least as of its first implementation) at all. There is absolutely no chance I'd say you'll see it with Broadwell-E, Skylake-E, Kabylake-E, or Cannonlake-E.

PCIe isn't even saturated as it is by GPU's with regards to consumer grade uses (gaming). It really just holds no immediate value whatsoever.
 
Dayaks said:
It may have been the pcper interview for the 980 launch with nVidia but I swear I remember them saying Pascal will go over PCIe like AMDs tech. It just wasn't ready for Maxwell but they were working on it.
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I remember watching that video. Tom Petersen didn't say that SLI bridgeless cards were coming with Pascal, but only when nVIDIA could make the experience just as good over PCIe as they can with the bridge now.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I remember watching that video. Tom Petersen didn't say that SLI bridgeless cards were coming with Pascal, but only when nVIDIA could make the experience just as good over PCIe as they can with the bridge now.
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Must have been my own internal wishful thinking. Hard to tell the difference when so much time has gone by. :)
 
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