GeForce 400 series

GeForce 400 Series

Release date	April 12, 2010
Codename	GF100 / GF104 / GF106 / GF108 / GF114 (Fermi)
Models	GeForce Series GeForce GT Series GeForce GTS Series GeForce GTX Series
Fabrication process and transistors	260M 40 nm (GT218) 585M 40 nm (GF108) 1,170M 40 nm (GF106) 1,950M 40 nm (GF104) 1,950M 40 nm (GF114) 3,200M 40 nm (GF100)
Cards
Entry-level	GT 430
Mid-range	GT 440, GTS 450, GTX 460
High-end	GTX 465, GTX 470
Enthusiast	GTX 480
Rendering support
Direct3D	Direct3D 11.0
OpenCL	OpenCL 1.1
OpenGL	OpenGL 4.5
History
Predecessor	GeForce 200 Series
Successor	GeForce 500 Series

The GeForce 400 Series is the 11th generation of Nvidia's GeForce graphics processing units, which serves as the introduction for the Fermi (microarchitecture) (GF-codenamed chips), named after the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. The series was originally slated for production in November 2009,^[1] but, after a number of delays, launched on March 26, 2010 with availability following in April 2010.

Architecture

Nvidia described the Fermi (microarchitecture) as the next major step in its line of GPUs following the Tesla (microarchitecture) used since the G80. The GF100, the first Fermi-architecture product, is large: 512 stream processors, in sixteen groups of 32, and 3.0 billion transistors, manufactured by TSMC in a 40 nm process. It is Nvidia's first chip to support OpenGL 4.0 and Direct3D 11. No products with a fully enabled GF100 GPU were ever sold. The GTX 480 had one streaming multiprocessor disabled. The GTX 470 had two streaming multiprocessors and one memory controller disabled. The GTX 465 had five streaming multiprocessors and two memory controllers disabled. Consumer GeForce cards came with 256MB attached to each of the enabled GDDR5 memory controllers, for a total of 1.5, 1.25 or 1.0GB; the Tesla C2050 had 512MB on each of six controllers, and the Tesla C2070 had 1024MB per controller. Both the Tesla cards had fourteen active groups of stream processors.

In the more expensive "Tesla" configurations, the chip features optional ECC protection on the memory, and can perform one double-precision floating-point operation per cycle per core; the consumer GeForce cards are artificially driver restricted to one DP operation per four cycles. With these features, combined with support for Visual Studio and C++, Nvidia hoped to appeal to the High-Performance Computer users who might presently be using Tesla systems.^[2]

Current limitations and trade-offs

The quantity of on-board SRAM per ALU actually decreased proportionally compared to the previous G200 generation, despite the increase of the L2 cache from 256kB per 240 ALUs to 768kB per 512 ALUs, since Fermi has only 32768 registers per 32 ALUs (vs. 16384 per 8 ALUs), only 48kB of shared memory per 32 ALUs (vs. 16kB per 8 ALUs), and only 16kB of cache per 32 ALUs (vs. 8kB constant cache per 8 ALUs + 24kB texture cache per 24 ALUs). Parameters such as the number of registers can be found in the CUDA Compute Capability Comparison Table in the reference manual.^[3]

History

On 30 September 2009, Nvidia released a white paper describing the architecture:^[4] the chip features 16 'Streaming Multiprocessors' each with 32 'CUDA Cores' capable of one single-precision operation per cycle or one double-precision operation every other cycle, a 40-bit virtual address space which allows the host's memory to be mapped into the chip's address space, meaning that there is only one kind of pointer and making C++ support significantly easier, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. As with the G80 and GT200, threads are scheduled in 'warps', sets of 32 threads each running on a single shader core. While the GT200 had 16 KB 'shared memory' associated with each shader cluster, and required data to be read through the texturing units if a cache was needed, GF100 has 64 KB of memory associated with each cluster, which can be used either as a 48 KB cache plus 16 KB of shared memory, or as a 16 KB cache plus 48 KB of shared memory, along with a 768 KB L2 cache shared by all 16 clusters.

The white paper describes the chip much more as a general purpose processor for workloads encompassing tens of thousands of threads - reminiscent of the Tera MTA architecture, though without that machine's support for very efficient random memory access - than as a graphics processor.

Products

• ¹ SPs - Shader Processors - Unified Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units
• ² Each Streaming Multiprocessor(SM) in the GPU of GF100 architecture contains 32 SPs and 4 SFUs. Each Streaming Multiprocessor(SM) in the GPU of GF104/106/108 architecture contains 48 SPs and 8 SFUs. Each SP can fulfil 2 single precision fused multiply–add (FMA) operations per cycle. Each SFU can fulfil four SF operations per cycle. One FMA operation counts for two floating point operations. So the theoretical single precision peak performance, with shader count [n] and shader frequency [f, GHz], can be estimated by the following, FLOPS_sp ≈ f × n × 2 (FMA). Total Processing Power: for GF100 FLOPS_sp ≈ f × m ×(32 SPs × 2(FMA) + 4 × 4 SFUs) and for GF104/106/108 FLOPS_sp ≈ f × m × (48 SPs × 2(FMA) + 4 × 8 SFUs) or for GF100 FLOPS_sp ≈ f × n × 2.5 and for GF104/106/108 FLOPS_sp ≈ f × n × 8 / 3.^[5]

SP - Shader Processor (Unified Shader, CUDA Core), SFU - Special Function Unit, SM - Streaming Multiprocessor.

• ³ Each SM in the GF100 contains 4 texture filtering units for every texture address unit. The complete GF100 die contains 64 texture address units and 256 texture filtering units^[6] Each SM in the GF104/106/108 architecture contains 8 texture filtering units for every texture address unit. The complete GF104 die contains 64 texture address units and 512 texture filtering units, the complete GF106 die contains 32 texture address units and 256 texture filtering units and the complete GF108 die contains 16 texture address units and 128 texture filtering units.^[7]

All products are produced on a 40 nm fabrication process. All products support Direct X 11.0, OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 1.1. The only exception is the Geforce 405 which is based on the GT218 core only supporting DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.3 and no OpenCL Support

Model	Launch	Code name	Transistors (million)	Die size (mm^2)	Bus interface	SM count	Core config^1,3	Clock rate			Fillrate		Memory configuration				GFLOPS (FMA)^2	TDP (watts)	Release price (USD)
								Core (MHz)	Shader (MHz)	Memory (MHz)	Pixel (GP/s)	Texture (GT/s)	Size (MB)	Bandwidth (GB/s)	DRAM type	Bus width (bit)
GeForce 405 (OEM)	September 16, 2011	GT218	260	57	PCIe 2.0 x16	1	16:8:4	589	1402	1580	2.4	4.7	512 1024	12.6	DDR3	64	44.9	25	OEM
GeForce GT 420 (OEM)	September 3, 2010	GF108	585	116	PCIe 2.0 x16	1	48:8:4	700	1400	1800	2.8	5.6	2048	28.8	GDDR3	128	134.4	50	OEM
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)	October 11, 2010	GF108	585	116	PCIe 2.0 x16	2	96:16:4	700	1400	1600 1800	2.8	11.2	2048	25.6 28.8	GDDR3	128	268.8	60	OEM
GeForce GT 430	October 11, 2010	GF108	585	116	PCIe 2.0 x16	2	96:16:4	700	1400	1800	2.8	11.2	1024	28.8	GDDR3	128	268.8	49	$79
GeForce GT 440	February 1, 2011	GF108	585	116	PCIe 2.0 x16	2	96:16:4	810	1620	1800 3200	3.24	13.2	512 1024 2048	28.8 51.2	GDDR3 GDDR5	128	311	65	$79
GeForce GT 440 (OEM)	October 11, 2010	GF106	1170	238	PCIe 2.0 x16	3	144:24:24	594	1189	1800	14.26	14.26	1536 3072	43.2	GDDR3	192	342.4	56	OEM
GeForce GTS 450 (OEM)	October 11, 2010	GF106	1170	238	PCIe 2.0 x16	3	144:24:24	790	1580	1804	18.96	18.96	1024 1536	86	GDDR5	192	455	106	OEM
GeForce GTS 450	September 13, 2010	GF106	1170	238	PCIe 2.0 x16	4	192:32:16	783	1566	1804	12.53	25.06	512 1024 2048	57.73	GDDR3 GDDR5	128	601.3	106	$129
GeForce GTX 460 SE	November 15, 2010	GF104	1950	332	PCIe 2.0 x16	6	288:48:32	650	1300	3400	20.8	31.2	1024	108.8	GDDR5	256	748.8	150	$160?-$180?
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)	October 11, 2010	GF104	1950	332	PCIe 2.0 x16	7	336:56:24	650	1300	3400	20.8	36.4	1024	108.8	GDDR5	256	873.6	150	OEM
GeForce GTX 460	July 12, 2010	GF104	1950	332	PCIe 2.0 x16	7	336:56:24	675	1350	3600	16.2	37.8	768	86.4	GDDR5	192	907.2	150	$199
							336:56:32				21.6		1024	115.2		256		160	$229
GeForce GTX 460 v2	September 24, 2011	GF114	1950	332	PCIe 2.0 x16	7	336:56:24	778	1556	4008	18.67	43.57	1024	96.2	GDDR5	192	1045.6	160	$199
GeForce GTX 465	May 31, 2010	GF100	3200	529	PCIe 2.0 x16	11	352:44:32	607	1215	3206	19.42	26.71	1024	102.6	GDDR5	256	855.4	200	$279
GeForce GTX 470	March 26, 2010	GF100	3200	529	PCIe 2.0 x16	14	448:56:40	607	1215	3348	24.28	34	1280	133.9	GDDR5	320	1088.6	215	$349
GeForce GTX 480	March 26, 2010	GF100	3200	529	PCIe 2.0 x16	15	480:60:48	700	1401	3696	33.60	42	1536	177.4	GDDR5	384	1345	250	$499

On November 8, 2010, Nvidia released the GF110 chip, along with the GTX580 (480's replacement). It is a redesigned GF100 chip, which uses significantly less power. This allowed Nvidia to enable all 16 SMs (all 16 cores), which was previously impossible on the GF100 "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580". Various features of the GF100 architecture were only available on the more expensive Quadro and Tesla series of cards.^[8] For the GeForce consumer products, double precision performance is a quarter of that of the "full" Fermi architecture. Error checking and correcting memory (ECC) also does not operate on consumer cards.^[9] The GF100 cards provide Compute Capability 2.0, while the GF104/106/108 cards provide Compute Capability 2.1.

Chipset table

See also

• GeForce 200 series
• GeForce 500 series
• GeForce 600 series
• GeForce 700 series
• GeForce 800M series
• GeForce 900 series
• Nvidia Quadro
• Nvidia Tesla

Notes

• David Kanter (September 30, 2009). "Inside Fermi: Nvidia's HPC Push". realworldtech.com. Retrieved December 16, 2010.

References

1. "OFFICIAL: NVIDIA says GT300 on schedule for Q4 2009, yields are fine - Bright Side Of News*". Brightsideofnews.com. Retrieved 2010-09-20.
2. "Next Generation CUDA Architecture, Code Named Fermi". Nvidia.com. Retrieved 2010-09-20.
3. Compute Capability Comparison Table in "Page 147-148, Appendix G.1, CUDA 3.1 official reference manual" (PDF).. Page 97 in Appendix A lists the older NVIDIA GPUs and shows all G200 series to be compute capability 1.3, while Fermi-based cards have compute capability 2.x (page 14, Section 2.5).
4. http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/fermi_white_papers/NVIDIA_Fermi_Compute_Architecture_Whitepaper.pdf
5. siliconmadness.com (2010). "Nvidia Announces Tesla 20 Series".
6. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470: 6 Months Late, Was It Worth the Wait?
7. NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460: The $200 King
8. "Statement by NVIDIA on their General CUDA GPU Computing Discussion forum".
9. "NVIDIA Tesla C2xxx webpage"., note from the description one may infer that on Teslas, ECC may be switched on and off using 1/8 of existing on-board memory, unlike standard ECC memory modules which requires 1/8 extra memory chips (that is, one extra chip to be mounted on the printed circuit board for every 8).

External links

• The Next Generation of Nvidia GeForce
• Fermi architecture
• GTX 400 Overview
• GeForce GTX 480
• GeForce GTX 470
• GeForce GTX 465
• GeForce GTX 460
• GeForce GTS 450
• GeForce GT 440
• GeForce GT 430
• GeForce GTX 485M
• GeForce GTX 480M
• GeForce GTX 470M
• GeForce GTX 460M
• GeForce GT 445M
• GeForce GT 435M
• GeForce GT 425M
• GeForce GT 420M
• GeForce GT 415M
• GeForce 410M
• GeForce 405
• Nvidia Nsight