NVIDIA’s NV42: New Reincarnation of the Old Technologies

The MSI NX6800-TD128E graphics card for the PCI Express x16 bus is based on NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GPU which has 12 pixel and 5 vertex processors. The MSI card is interesting for its using the new NV42 core which is manufactured by TSMC on 0.11-micron tech process.

The older core, NV40, was manufactured by IBM on 0.13-micron facilities and was installed on all the models of the family, i.e. on GeForce 6800, GeForce 6800 GT and GeForce 6800 Ultra, and on both AGP 8x and PCI Express versions of these cards. Since IBM seemed to have problems with producing the NV40 in sufficient quantities for a long time after the launch of the production of the chip, NVIDIA didn’t use the NV40 in PCI Express graphics cards of the so-called performance-mainstream class. As a result, the GeForce 6800 for PCI Express came out only in late 2004 and was based on a specially developed chip codenamed NV41.

The NV41 core included 12 pixel and 5 vertex processors against the NV40’s 16 and 6 processors, respectively. On the other hand, the NV41 was manufactured on TSMC’s 0.13-micron tech process and was cheaper than the NV40. Trying to reduce the manufacturing cost further, NVIDIA has developed another chip, NV42, which has the same characteristics as its predecessor, but is manufactured on a thinner, 0.11-micron process and features native support of the PCI Express interface (the NV40 natively supported AGP 8x and required the BR02 bridge).

The 0.11-micron process achieves a number of goals for NVIDIA:

• The smaller size of a die allows to get more chips out of one wafer
• The frequency potential can be increased above 325MHz as with the earlier core. It means a higher yield of chips capable of working at the desired frequency
• The power consumption of the chip is decreased, making it possible to simplify the power circuitry and to reduce the size of the graphics card

Thus, the manufacturing cost of the graphics processor and of the whole graphics card is reduced with the NV42, while the technical characteristics of the product remain the same. It means NVIDIA has got a graphics card with many pixel and vertex processors and with a 256-bit memory bus that can be used to oppose the RADEON X800 which has similar characteristics.