Stefan Mileschin

It looks like NVIDIA's next GPU architecture launch will play out much like its previous two generations - launching the second biggest chip first, as a well-priced "enthusiast" SKU that outperforms the previous-generation enthusiast product, and launching the biggest chip later, as the high-end enthusiast product. The second-biggest chip based on NVIDIA's upcoming "Pascal" architecture, which could let NVIDIA win crucial $550 and $350 price-points, will be a lean machine. NVIDIA will design the chip to keep manufacturing costs low enough to score big in price-performance, and a potential price-war with AMD.

As part of its efforts to keep GP104 as cost-effective as possible, NVIDIA could give exotic new tech such as HBM2 memory a skip, and going with GDDR5X. Implementing GDDR5X could be straightforward and cost-effective for NVIDIA, given that it's implemented the standard on three previous generations. The new standard will double densities, and one could expect NVIDIA to build its GP104-based products with 8 GB of standard memory amount. GDDR5X breathed a new lease of life to GDDR5, which saw its clock speeds plateau around 7 Gbps/pin. The new standard could come in speeds of up to 10 Gbps at first, and eventually 12 Gbps and 14 Gbps. NVIDIA could reserve HBM2 for its biggest "Pascal" chip, on which it could launch its next TITAN product.

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