Misinformation on NVIDIA's G100 and Shader Model 5.0
Tuesday 13th March 2007, 03:03:00 PM, written by Arun
X-bit labs is reporting that NVIDIA's new SDK supports Shader Model 5.0... Given how much this incorrect information might spread (since it'd be quite big news - if it was true!), we thought we'd explain why it's inaccurate and how they are misunderstanding the data.
The confusion stems from NVIDIA's naming scheme for Cg profiles. The new SDK supports Fragment50, Vertex50 and Geometry50, but these are actually equivalent to Shader Model 4.0 and are fully supported on the the G80 architecture. The reasoning behind these names is that they are for the "NV50" architecture, also more commonly known as G80. The NV40 supports Fragment40 and Vertex40.
While our understanding is that the NV50 codename was replaced in the early phases of the chip's design, it has still been used by NVIDIA in more recent times, for example when they could not publicly use the correct codename in presentations. One such example is Chris Malachowsky's excellent presentation on testing costs and ASIC development in general.
In related news, VR-Zone is also quoting MyDrivers and Fudzilla as claiming that NVIDIA's G100 will be launched in Q1 2008, and that it's a new architecture. Before anyone gets overly excited, it might be worth noting that it's extremely unlikely it will be anything more than DirectX 10.1; which implies whatever NVIDIA releases in that timeframe should be a derivative of the G80. It remains to be seen, however, what codename will actually be used for NVIDIA's DirectX 10.1 architecture, and what kinds of architectural tweaks will be done.
Tagging
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