Nvidia’s new graphics processor, code-named Fermi, was designed to be the video guts of a new supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but the company is also positioning it for use in personal computers.

Nvidia wasted no hyperbole on their new super-chip when it was introduced last week, talking mainly about the new processor’s role as the co-star of a supercomputer. Now, though, they are also saying that the Fermi processor, in its current form and in future changed guises, could be used to advantage with the Windows (Microsoft) and Snow Leopard (Apple) operating systems, since both of those systems have support for multiple cores, which is the strong suit of the Fermi chip.

Bill Dally, the chief scientist at Nvidia, said during a conference call the day after the supercomputer-dominated event that the Fermi was a much more broad-based chip than had been discussed the day before, according to a CNET story. Dally said, “A lot of (the chip’s new) features accelerate key consumer applications. Both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 enable the GPU to be used as a co-processor to accelerate third-party applications.” He continued by saying that a “discrete (standalone) GPU they can get very good performance on these applications.”

Dally also made it clear that the Fermi was an ideal graphics chip for gaming when he said “it’s a zero-sum game. You have a certain amount of die (chip) area, a certain power budget. It is the case that we put a bunch of die area into double-precision floating point, a bunch of die area into ECC. And for gaming graphics applications, those give less returns than they do for the scientific applications.” However, he qualified that statement by saying that the available real estate on the Fermi could be easily reconfigured for better gaming performance.

He also said that the Fermi could be reconfigured to have fewer than the 512 cores that make is such a good choice for a supercomputer, which would make it a lower power consumer and thus a better choice for personal computers and gaming devices. Dally also made it clear that his company was already planning reconfigured Fermi chips for different applications. If true, this may be the boost that Nvidia needs after its quality problems of the past eighteen months.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm under Apple, Microsoft, Technology.

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