Cool idea.

[edward78]

You can add more ram. Not sure why no one did this before, if these guys make it, Intel should buy them, but not control them.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZM9wOvbh0

 

[Darunion]

They come out with marketing stuff every so often over the years, as far as i know have never produced anything.

 

[Nobu]

They come out with marketing stuff every so often over the years, as far as i know have never produced anything.

According to the video, they have a prototype chip taped out (or will have by end of year) on 14nm iirc, production (of the prototype) will be a yr after. They're working on a final design for 5nm.

Supposedly they have some lpddr5e or whatever stockpiled for later too.

 

[Darunion]

According to the video, they have a prototype chip taped out (or will have by end of year) on 14nm iirc, production (of the prototype) will be a yr after. They're working on a final design for 5nm.

Supposedly they have some lpddr5e or whatever stockpiled for later too.

Yea they are full of crap and just soaking up investment money. They have been promising this for a while now.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...nology-exclusively-at-ces-2024-302028053.html

The Key Features and Advancements of Thunder:

• Twice the speed of the most powerful GPU while consuming only half the power—making it an environmentally conscious choice in an era of increasing power-hungry competitor GPUs.
• Enhanced rendering performance allows creators to create higher-quality content with reduced time and effort.
• Eliminates the need for multiple content tweaks and optimizations traditionally required to achieve performance.
• Seamless integration into 4nm silicon chips and will be available through key channels including pre-built servers, cloud services, and off-the-shelf consumer products by early 2025.

 

[Nobu]

Yea they are full of crap and just soaking up investment money. They have been promising this for a while now.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...nology-exclusively-at-ces-2024-302028053.html

The Key Features and Advancements of Thunder:

• Twice the speed of the most powerful GPU while consuming only half the power—making it an environmentally conscious choice in an era of increasing power-hungry competitor GPUs.
• Enhanced rendering performance allows creators to create higher-quality content with reduced time and effort.
• Eliminates the need for multiple content tweaks and optimizations traditionally required to achieve performance.
• Seamless integration into 4nm silicon chips and will be available through key channels including pre-built servers, cloud services, and off-the-shelf consumer products by early 2025.

If they are going all in on path tracing, leaving raster to a smaller dedicated core, then I could see them being faster than current GPUs at path tracing specifically. I highly doubt they are faster than any GPU at rasterization, or much else. This appears to be their target, and what their "partners" are looking forward to.

I'm not surprised it's taken them a long time -- rendering acceleration (and compute in general) is a patent minefield, and while the math is relatively simple the chip design process is not.

I will be surprised if they actually come out with a product on the market that is actually competitive. I'm afraid it'll be barely competitive in a few games designed with it in mind, and then by the time more games are made for it competitors will have overtaken them easily.

 

[sharknice]

View attachment 811983
You can add more ram. Not sure why no one did this before, if these guys make it, Intel should buy them, but not control them.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZM9wOvbh0

Because it's slower. They talk about the pros and cons in the video.


I thought this product was some sort of scam, but it does actually seem like a legit endeavour.


The TLDW is they're basically building a hardware ray tracing card, fully designed and optimized for ray tracing. So they can potentially get 10X the ray tracing performance of a 5090, but everything else would be way slower.

So first they'll target people doing 3D renders and eventually try to move to gaming. But the games would have to basiccally be doing full ray tracing and no rasterization.

 

[Darunion]

If they are going all in on path tracing, leaving raster to a smaller dedicated core, then I could see them being faster than current GPUs at path tracing specifically. I highly doubt they are faster than any GPU at rasterization, or much else. This appears to be their target, and what their "partners" are looking forward to.

I'm not surprised it's taken them a long time -- rendering acceleration (and compute in general) is a patent minefield, and while the math is relatively simple the chip design process is not.

I will be surprised if they actually come out with a product on the market that is actually competitive. I'm afraid it'll be barely competitive in a few games designed with it in mind, and then by the time more games are made for it competitors will have overtaken them easily.

I feel like their sweet spot and goal would be a form of 'accelerator' card. Which has always been a failure in the consumer market unfortunately.

Cloud rendering cards, possibly a market there.

They are so small they won't even get any fab time in a reasonable window for launch. Which is the part that sucks for any startups in this sector.

They really just have vaporware vibes to me.

 

[Starfalcon]

View attachment 811983
You can add more ram. Not sure why no one did this before, if these guys make it, Intel should buy them, but not control them.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZM9wOvbh0

Back in the 90's there were a ton of video cards you were able to add memory to. Some came with sockets for individual chips, and others used proprietary ram modules you installed.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Back in the 90's there were a ton of video cards you were able to add memory to. Some came with sockets for individual chips, and others used proprietary ram modules you installed.

What's old is "new" again...