Traditionally we are watching the amount of stream processors that NVIDIA puts into its graphics cores. Now this number has reached 216 and that's something new.
It's all very simple actually. The company takes a wafer of GT200 dies (240 stream processors; used in GeForce GTX 280) and searches for defects that are possible for objective reasons. So, crafty engineers isolate damaged parts thus reducing the number of stream processors (and consequently the number of texture units and ROPs) and preserve all other elements just like in a sterling GTX 280. This way there is no need to discard rejects. And that's why until recently the company has been manufacturing two modifications of this GPU: GTX 280 (240 stream processors) and GTX 260 (192 stream processors).
____________
Review: Digit-Life
Nov 4, 2008, 03:21 PM
