NVIDIA RTX 40-Series 'Ada' AD102 GPU Enters Phase of Testing

Nvidia's next-generation GPU family, codenamed Ada Lovelace, is anticipated to ship this autumn, and it's about time for the firm and its partners to begin testing the new graphics processors. 

According to the well-known and often accurate leaker Kopite7Kimi, this is precisely what they are doing.

"Let's turn our attention to GPU," tweeted kopite7kimi. "AD102 has started testing." 

Typically, it takes little more than a year for a GPU to be brought up to speed, in this case AD102 processors. Of course, the chip and its drivers should be ready for internal and external testing by now, and while we cannot verify the tweet's accuracy, the information sounds reasonable. Previous unauthorized leaks regarding Nvidia's Ada Lovelace GPUs indicate that the company is optimizing the new family's performance, which will result in an increase in GPU power consumption and, consequently, the use of 12+4-pin auxiliary PCIe power connections.

Ada Lovelace a next-generation GPU architecture for gaming graphics processors (so expect the GeForce RTX 4000-series to be among the best graphics cards available), in contrast to the company's Hopper architecture, which is optimized for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4000-series 'Ada Lovelace' GPUs are planned to be manufactured utilizing TSMC's N5 (5 nm-class) manufacturing technology. As a result, it is reasonable to expect them to outperform existing GeForce RTX 3000-series 'Ampere' GPUs, both architecturally and through the use of significantly more advanced fabrication technology, which enables Nvidia to pack in more transistors and increase clock speeds while maintaining low power consumption. Nvidia has not confirmed in writing that its next-generation GeForce RTX 4000-series 'Ada Lovelace' GPUs will be available this year. However, given that the firm typically introduces entirely new GPU families every two years, it is about time for the company to unveil its next-generation GeForces in 2022.