Volta Rumor Thread - Volta spotted in the Wild

[bildad]

This has nothing to do with Volta. Out with you, shoo!

 

[Communism]

Also it sounds like it really isn't intended for being a long term solution to higher rez displays, more it is intended for lower power applications, letting you save power on mobile devices by lowering the signaling rate, thus lowering the power consumption.



Well hang on there, if you think that high speed cables are cheap, you should take a look at the prices some time. It is getting hard to keep making cables faster and faster. The problem is physics. To get more data down a given set of wires, you have to increase either the frequency bandwidth or the SNR. SNR increases are pretty much a non-starter so you are left with more frequency increases. Thing is, as frequency goes up, it gets harder and harder to get that down the wire. You get more cable losses, more noise leaking in, and more reflections/crosstalk. For a good example, look at 1gig vs 10gig copper ethernet. 1 gig officially works over Cat-5e but really will work over Cat-5 out to 100 meters. 10gig requires Cat-6a for 100 meters. Then look at the differences in cables, both prices and construction, to see what it takes to make 6a instead of 5. They are thicker, have tighter tolerances, separators, and so on.

This gets even harder if you want the cable to maintain low latency. See there are some tricks to pack in more data at a lower frequency, basically to make more efficient use of the spectrum. However more complex signaling adds cost to the transmitter and receiver but also adds latency. Straight binary, serial, signaling is extremely fast. Doing something like QAM (as cable modems do) is more complex and adds latency.

Interconnect speed is a big issue in computing in general, not just displays. It is a PITA to make cables that can reliably pass higher and higher signaling speeds. It's not an unsolvable problem, but it is more than just adding a fraction of a cent to manufacturing costs.

I'm simply talking about them thinking it is absolute heresy to add more copper wires to the cable, a design change that costs almost nothing in general, where the increase in cost is basically just the increase in the per ton cost of copper you are adding to the cable.

 

[Sycraft]

I'm simply talking about them thinking it is absolute heresy to add more copper wires to the cable, a design change that costs almost nothing in general, where the increase in cost is basically just the increase in the per ton cost of copper you are adding to the cable.

No, that costs quite a bit actually. In terms of the cable itself it doesn't cost a ton more, but more than you think. Each pair has to be carefully constructed for impedance matching and shielded for noise and crosstalk. Also the more pairs you have, the better the shielding needs to be to prevent crosstalk. That aside, it makes the cables more bulky, stiff, and harder to route. The cost of a cable isn't the raw materials, it is the construction.

However the real cost comes in the transmitters and receivers. The more pairs you want to do in parallel, the more it is going to cost. You not only need more units to do the transmission, but you need more complex logic to disassemble and reassemble the signal parts. You can see that in networking. SPF+ ports are single serial liens that'll do 10gigs (new ones now can do 25gigs). QSFP+ ports are 4 of those together to do 40gig (or now 100). Compare the cost of the modules, cables, and switching hardware. It costs more than 4 times as much to get the 4 signals together.

So it isn't just that the cables would go up, but the cost of the videocard and monitors would go up, as well as having bigger, thicker, cables to deal with. Oh, and of course these new cables, would need larger connectors, meaning they'd be incompatible with existing devices.

 

[Communism]

No, that costs quite a bit actually. In terms of the cable itselfhttps://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=cat+7+cable it

doesn't cost a ton more, but more than you think. Each pair has to be carefully constructed for impedance matching and shielded for noise and crosstalk. Also the more pairs you have, the better the shielding needs to be to prevent crosstalk. That aside, it makes the cables more bulky, stiff, and harder to route. The cost of a cable isn't the raw materials, it is the construction.

However the real cost comes in the transmitters and receivers. The more pairs you want to do in parallel, the more it is going to cost. You not only need more units to do the transmission, but you need more complex logic to disassemble and reassemble the signal parts. You can see that in networking. SPF+ ports are single serial liens that'll do 10gigs (new ones now can do 25gigs). QSFP+ ports are 4 of those together to do 40gig (or now 100). Compare the cost of the modules, cables, and switching hardware. It costs more than 4 times as much to get the 4 signals together.

So it isn't just that the cables would go up, but the cost of the videocard and monitors would go up, as well as having bigger, thicker, cables to deal with. Oh, and of course these new cables, would need larger connectors, meaning they'd be incompatible with existing devices.

None of those increases would increase costs by very much at all.

And to your previous example, you can get cat 7 cables for not much more than the cost of cat 5 cables.

The cost is almost all in the change in tooling, everything else is simple.

The high cost of things like SFP+ is due to cartel pricing along with low volume production, with almost the entire "standard" being proprietary anyways as you cannot guarantee interoperability with cables/equipment/etc. produced by different vendors.

Connectors don't have to be bigger, unless you want to say that smaller displayport and HDMI connectors are non-compliant.

Your arguments have basically no merit, the marginal cost of any of these changes would be almost entirely in tooling and R&D, which are borne regardless in any change in standard including the different versions of the same connector.

You can literally buy Cat. 8 cable this very moment for not very much, despite super low volume production due entirely to the fact that the way the manufacturers are tooling up give them the ability to create them as well.






TL.DR.: They don't want to spend the 1/100th of a cent it would increase the production costs for each cable/connector/asic/etc.

Your arguments clearly don't hold water. Unless you want to say that every version of Displayport after 1.0 and HDMI after 1.0 were gargantuan costs that are completely un-doable.

You clearly have no clue what you are talking about.





https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=hdmi+connector

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/searc...Text=displayport+connector&refine_attr_value=

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=hdmi+cable

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=displayport+cable

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=cat+7+cable

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=cat+7a+cable

 

[noko]

Acer/AOC/Asus all announced 4K 144Hz HDR G-Sync AH-VA panels at Computex this year. Though they look to all be delayed to Q1 2018.
https://www.asus.com/us/Monitors/ROG-SWIFT-PG27UQ/
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/press/2017/255816
https://www.144hzmonitors.com/monitors/aoc-ag273ug-aoc-ag353ucg/

I just noticed AOC got a 35" 1440p Ultra-Wide 200Hz HDR G-Sync monitor planned. 27" 4K or 35" Ultra Wide 1440p hmm...

If you're asking about the VR headset, here:

Seems like perfect timing, Volta 1180 Ti (or whatever the naming) and a 100hz + HDR monitor late next year. Hopefully we will not have to wait 8 months later for the Ti version like this time. If RTG has anything that competes then a FreeSync version maybe OK as well.