The RV770 Story: Documenting ATI's Road to Success
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 2, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
What’s Next?
Much like the R300 days, the success of the RV770 was partially ensured by NVIDIA’s failure. Unlike NV30 however, GT200 wasn’t delayed nor was it terribly underperforming - it was simply overpriced. ATI got very lucky with RV770, NVIDIA was tied up making a huge chip and avoided two major risks: 55nm and GDDR5, both of which ATI capitalized on.
The next round won’t be as easy, NVIDIA will be at 55nm and they’ll eventually transition to GDDR5 as well. ATI can’t pull off another Radeon HD 4800 launch every year, so chances are 2010 will be closer. Even today NVIDIA has managed to close the gap quite a bit by aggressively pricing the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, but there’s still the problem of there not being any mainstream GT200 derivative nor will there be until sometime in 2010. Not to mention the impact of selling a 576mm^2 die at the same price as ATI selling a 260mm^2 die will have on NVIDIA’s financials.
Carrell was very upfront about the follow-on to RV770, he told me frankly that it was impossible to have the perfect product every time. He’d love to, but the reality was that they’re not going to. There are many factors in doing this business that are out of ATI’s (or NVIDIA’s) control, but sometimes the stars align and you get a launch like the Radeon HD 4800 (or the Radeon 9700 Pro).
Carrell did add however that it is possible to, within the limits imposed by those outside factors, ATI can do things that are of compelling value. It’s possible to do the best you can within constraints, and while that may not result in one of these perfect products, it can be something good.
I asked specifically what would made the RV8xx series special all he could tell me was that ATI does have some things that are very interesting, very novel and very useful for the next product. I wanted more but given what Carrell and the rest of ATI had just given me, I wasn’t about to get greedy.
A Little About Larrabee
The big unknown in all of this is Larrabee, Intel’s first fully programmable GPU. Naturally, I talked to Carrell and crew about Larrabee during my final 30 minutes in the room with them.
First we’ve got to get the let’s all be friends speak out of the way. ATI and Intel (and NVIDIA) all agree that data parallelism is incredibly important, it’s the next frontier of compute performance. We don’t exactly know in what form we’ll see data parallel computing used on desktops, but when it happens, it’ll be big. Every single person in that room also expressed the highest respect and regard for ATI’s competitors, that being said, they did have some criticisms.
Like NVIDIA, ATI views the Larrabee approach as a very CPU-like approach to designing a GPU. The challenge from approaching the problem of accelerating data parallel algorithms from the GPU side is to get the programming model to be as easy as it is on the CPU. ATI admitted that Intel does have an advantage given that Larrabee is x86 and the whole environment is familiar to existing developers. ATI believes that it’ll still have the performance advantage (a significant one) but that Larrabee comes out of the gates with a programming advantage.
The thing worth mentioning however is that regardless of who makes the GPU, ATI, NVIDIA or Intel, you still need to rewrite your code to be data parallel. ATI believes that to write efficient parallel code requires a level of skill that’s an order of magnitude higher than what your typical programmer can do. If you can harness the power of a GPU however, you get access to a tremendous amount of power. You get ~1 TFLOP of performance for $170. If you’re a brilliant programmer, you know exactly what you should view as your next frontier...
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pastyface - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Great job on the article! Generally today's reviews consist of me quickly going to the benchmarks portion and seeing if a new game was used or if any screwy results came out. This article however was much different. You had my attention from the get go and I didn't take a break in my reading until the whole article was finished.It is a real shame that so much of the work in reviews are overlooked in favor of simple graphs but this article was different and I thank you for that.
MarchTheMonth - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
I really enjoyed the read, and it really gives me an appreciation for the card i just happen to get (hd 4850).I may not speak for others, but these are the kind of articles I like to read, the kind that really explain in detail what's really happening. Anand, you did an excellent job of giving perspective (be in ATI's shoes in 2007 when nvidia was doing this...etc) to the article that gave definition between the "so obvious" hindsight we have now to the "this is suicide!" view that it must have seemed like to be there in 2005.
Now, for my own counter-perspective, I can understand why AMD, Intel, and nVidia may not do this very often. On the flip side of the coin, I'm not a mainstream user, and I don't exactly build 1000s of computers that ATI can sell. Bottom line speaking, a story that's interesting to me, I don't bring them $$$$. And on top of that, this story is also giving a lot of info to the competition, which can be at best a double edged sword, and at worst too much information to be self-destructive.
belladog - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Excellent article, we love this stuff. Benchmarks gets a bit boring after a while.I wonder what affect if any, the revelations about price fixing(between ATI and Nvidia) had on the pricing of the RV770 GPU's??
I mean if the lawyers hadnt broken up the party maybe the 4870 could have been $80-$100 dearer?
Anyway, interesting article.
Griswold - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
The price fixing took part before AMD bought ATI. And it would be safe to assume that it stopped at the latest at that time, but it probably did stop well before that (the earliest evidence is an e-mail from 2002). AMD should know better than to point the finger at Intel and do something that is equally wrong in another segment of their business.feelingshorter - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Keep up the good work and never let the haters get you down! There's always people b!tching when they don't know how hard it is to write well (any moron can "write"). But its good stories like this that has been the bread and butter of Anandtech.
The pressure of deadlines, writer's block, or not having enough to write. I appreciate what you do and I know its stressful at times. Others can sympathize but I can empathize having been an amateur journalist myself (in high school and at the university newspaper).
san1s - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
If this article was about an nvidia GPU then the ati fanboys would proclaim it reeks of bias.good article though anamdtech
Adul - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
That was one of the best article I read in a while. It was very enjoyable to get an idea of how things are worked out years in advanced of when the product launches.This was a huge gamble on AMD/ATI part. My hats off to them for having the balls to do something different.
dani31 - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Speaking of AMD, it would have been nice to have more insight on how the acquisition of ATI fitted in the design process.But this topic seems to have been deliberately omitted in this article.
JonnyDough - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Maybe that's because the interviewed the ATI chip designers and not the AMD head haunchos? Just a thought.lifeobry - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Really fascinating article. The amount of work put into creating these cards and the competition between the two companies is compelling stuff.