Nvidia might be moving to Multi-Chip-Module GPU design

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 07/05/2017 08:02 AM | source: | 38 comment(s)

With Moore's law becoming more difficult each year technology is bound to change. At one point it will be impossible to shrink transistors even further, hence companies like Nvidia already are thinking about new methodologies and technologies to adapt to that. Meet the Multi-Chip-Module GPU design.

Nvidia published a paper that shows how they can connect multiple parts (GPU modules) with an interconnect. According to the research, this will allow for bigger GPUs with more processing power. Not only will is help tackling the common problems, it would also be cheaper to achieve as fabbing four dies that you connect is cheaper to do than to make one huge monolithic design.

Thinking about it, AMD is doing exactly this with Threadripper and EPYC processors where they basically connect two to four Summit Ridge (ZEN) dies with that wide PCIe lane link (they use 64 PCie lanes per link with 128 available), Infinity Fabric.

According to the researchers, as an example a GPU with four GPU modules they recommend three architecture optimizations that will allow for minimal loss off data-communication in-between the different modules. According to the paper the loss in performance compared to a monolithic single die chip would be merely 10%

Of course when you think about it, in essence SLI is already a similar methodology (not technology), however as you guys know it can be rather inefficient and challenging in scaling and compatibility. The paper states this MCM design would be performing 26.8% better compared to any multi-GPU solution. If and when Nvidia is going to fab MCM multi GPU module based chips is not known, for now this is just a paper on the topic. The fact that they publish it indicates it is bound to happen at one point in time though.

Sorry, I could not resist ... ;)

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Xendance
Senior Member

Posts: 5555
Joined: 2005-07-19

#5449986 Posted on: 07/06/2017 01:36 PM

both companies need to mask the amount of gpus from the OS driver level so the system only sees 1 and the onboard bios of the gpu decides out how the gpu dishes out the utilization otherwise we will be stuck waiting and hoping the developers figure it out

Same goes for CPU i really want to find the documents on this it was discussed way back in mid 2000's how its possible but no one wants to do it..

and from what I can find it has been done back in the earlier days aka voodoo and someother company forget which one where os and drivers only seen it as 1

That makes no sense at all.

Exascale
Senior Member

Posts: 390
Joined: 2017-06-09

#5450003 Posted on: 07/06/2017 02:48 PM

That makes no sense at all.

He didnt put it very elegantly but it makes perfect sense that the data locality and latency needs to be handled on as low a level as possible, so that software developers dont need to specially code their software to scale properly across all GPM partitions. Its actually discussed in the PDF if anyone actually read it. It would be something like automatic vectorization.

TieSKey
Senior Member

Posts: 223
Joined: 2015-09-26

#5450044 Posted on: 07/06/2017 05:00 PM

I like agree. But I just can't.
Alot people complain these days. About bad PC ports.. Broken game day one. Patches brings more bugs.
Complains about series getting very bored, coz they very schematic.
Using same effects, same engines, same procedures etc..
Also funny is, when developer say that "multi-gpu support is impossible".. Then some days latter, we can find sli-bits in net working good.

I still remember times when titles in day one was fully functional v1.0 meant something.
Today!? its a huge joke (in consumer face) devs relasing expensive DLC's, when game is bad condotion /unpleyable/bugged/unoptimized etc.

Why so many small studios open when, Crytek, Microsoft, and some other cut jobs..?
I not even expect they will speak the whole truth.
We living in times when, small studios can bring more fresh on the table, than huge devs. Its really shame.
Its shame programmers work under pressure or streess.
Its have very negative effect on evrything. Especially product quality.

I remember older times (10-20 yrs bck) when alot games use OpenGL. They look and perform really amazing, that times.
Sorry for abit long post, and greetings

I think it all comes down to the global tendency for quicker ROI.
Why risk innovating in a good and polished game when u can just release same crap with a different hat (Simpson pun) and get a lot of $$ anyway...

Small studios open cuz they have passion for games or whatever they do, they are willing to risk work hours and the few "cents" they have, while big companies only care about maximizing earning margins in the shorter term possible.

Add to that a huge portion of the customers don't give a s... and only care about the graphics, so AAA game studios (AAA in graphics and C in everything else) invest too much on artists and too few in technical/story stuff.

Back on topic. Since rendering is inherently positional, there's a lot of space in driver/engine land to mess up with data locality. For instance, divide screen in 4 pieces, keep mesh+texture data of object in 1st quadrant in chip A, move it to chip B once it moves (in game) to 2nd quadrant, etc.

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