NVIDIA Volta GPU sticks with 16nm FinFET process

NVIDIA's next GPU architecture is Volta and FUD Zilla just heard a rumor that this architecture will indeed stick to the 16nm FinFET process. It seems the green team is sticking to a tick-tock GPU schedule: Maxwell was a new architecture on an old process, Pascal is a die shrink with a bunch of improvements and Volta is a new architecture on the 14nm process.

Not a lot is known about Volta, these GPUs are expected to feature HBM2 and are rumored to have tremendously better performance per Watt. The launch of Volta is expected in 2017.

Our same deep throat told us that the performance per watt is expected to increase tremendously. Although this might be vague, little is known about Volta other than it is arriving after Pascal so any information we get is news. The earliest we expect Volta is 2017.

It is interesting to see that the lag between the GPU manufacturing and mobile processor manicuring is getting bigger. We expect to see Apple and Qualcomm making their first 10nm chips this year and it is unlikely that the GPU guys can match them.