NVIDIA is confirmed to implement the GDDR7 memory standard with the top three GPU ASICs powering the next-generation "Blackwell" GeForce RTX 50-series, Tweaktown reports, citing XpeaGPU. By this, we mean the top three physical silicon types from which NVIDIA will carve out the majority of its SKUs. This would include the GB202, the GB203, and GB205; which will power successors to everything from the current RTX 4070 to the RTX 4090. NVIDIA is expected to build these chips on the TSMC 4N foundry node.

There will be certain GPU ASIC types in the "Blackwell" generation that will stick to older memory standards such as GDDR6 or even the GDDR6X. These would be successors to the current AD106 and AD107 ASICs, powering SKUs such as the RTX 4060 Ti, and below. NVIDIA co-developed the GDDR6X standard with Micron Technology, which is the chip's exclusive supplier to NVIDIA. GDDR6X scales up to 23 Gbps and 16 Gbit, which means NVIDIA can avail plenty of performance for the lower-end of its product stack using GDDR6X; especially considering that its GDDR7 implementation will only run at 28 Gbps, despite chips being available in the market for 32 Gbps, or even 36 Gbps. Even if NVIDIA chooses the regular GDDR6 standard for its entry-mainstream chips, the tech scales up to 20 Gbps.

Following Monday's blockbuster announcements of the "Blackwell" architecture and NVIDIA's B100, B200, and GB200 AI GPUs, all eyes are now on its client graphics derivatives, or the GeForce RTX GPUs that implement "Blackwell" as a graphics architecture. Leading the effort will be the new GB202 ASIC, a successor to the AD102 powering the current RTX 4090. This will be NVIDIA's biggest GPU with raster graphics and ray tracing capabilities. The GB202 is rumored to be followed by the GB203 in the premium segment, the GB205 a notch lower, and the GB206 further down the stack. Kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks, says that the GB202 silicon will be built on the same TSMC 4N foundry node as the GB100.

TSMC 4N is a derivative of the company's mainline N4P node, the "N" in 4N stands for NVIDIA. This is a nodelet that TSMC designed with optimization for NVIDIA SoCs. TSMC still considers the 4N as a derivative of the 5 nm EUV node. There is very little public information on the power- and transistor density improvements of the TSMC 4N over TSMC N5. For reference, the N4P, which TSMC regards as a 5 nm derivative, offers a 6% transistor-density improvement, and a 22% power efficiency improvement. In related news, Kopite7kimi says that with "Blackwell," NVIDIA is focusing on enlarging the L1 caches of the streaming multiprocessors (SM), which suggests a design focus on increasing the performance at an SM-level.

Speculative NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series "GB20X" GPU memory interface details appeared online late last week—as disclosed by the kopite7kimi social media account. The inside information aficionado—at the time—posited that the "memory interface configuration of GB20x (Blackwell) is not much different from that of AD10x (Ada Lovelace)." It was inferred that Team Green's next flagship gaming GPU (GB202) could debut with a 384-bit memory bus—kopite7kimi had "fantasized" about a potentially monstrous 512-bit spec for the "GeForce RTX 5090." A new batch of follow-up tweets—from earlier today—rips apart last week's insights. The alleged Blackwell GPU gaming lineup includes the following SKUs: GB202, GB203, GB205, GB206, GB207.

Kopite7kimi's revised thoughts point to Team Green's flagship model possessing 192 streaming multiprocessors and a 512-bit memory bus. VideoCardz decided to interact with the reliable tipster—their queries were answered promptly: "According to kopite7kimi, there's a possibility that the second-in-line GPU, named GB203, could sport half of that core count. Now the new information is that GB203 might stick to 256-bit memory bus, which would make it half of GB202 in its entirety. What this also means is that there would be no GB20x GPU with 384-bit bus." Additional speculation has NVIDIA selecting a 192-bit bus for the GB205 SKU (AKA GeForce RTX 5070). The GeForce RTX 50-series is expected to arrive later this year—industry experts are already whispering about HPC-oriented Blackwell GPUs being unveiled at next week's GTC 2024 event. A formal gaming family announcement could arrive many months later.

The next-generation GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards will be powered by the Blackwell graphics architecture, named after American mathematician David Blackwell. kopite7kimi, a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks revealed what the lineup of GPUs behind the series could look like. It reportedly will be led by the GB202, followed by the GB203, and then the GB205 and GB206, followed by the GB207 at the entry level. What's surprising here, is the lack of a "GB204" succeeding the AD104, GA104, TU104, and a long line of successful performance-segment GPUs by NVIDIA.

The GeForce Blackwell ASIC series begins with "GB" (GeForce Blackwell) followed by a 200-series number. The last time NVIDIA used a 200-series ASIC number for GeForce GPUs was with "Maxwell," as the GPUs ended up being built on a more advanced node, and with a few more advanced features, than what the architecture was originally conceived for. For "Blackwell," the GB202 logically succeeds the AD102, GA102, TU102, and a long line of "big chips" that have powered the company's flagship client graphics cards. The GB103 succeeds AD103, as a high SIMD count GPU with a narrower memory bus than the GB202, powering the #2 and #3 SKUs in the series. There is curiously the lack of a "GB104."