NVLink not limited to powerpc CPU's?

[n0x1ous]

When Nvidia was initially discussing this it appeared that the CPU had to have support for the feature which would limit it to IBM cpu's in data centers. The question remained if they would replace the sli bridge with something similar to XDMA from AMD.

A new nvidia slide appears to show that it will work for gpu>gpu communication with x86, arm etc but that with cpu's specifically designed for it, it will leverage additional advantages. These leads me to think that Pascal gaming chips will do away with the SLI bridge.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-gpu-manufactured-tsmc-16nm-ff-node-flagship-single-chip-card-feature-16-gb-hbm2-vram/

 

[Sabrewings]

Interesting stuff there. I'm pretty curious to see what comes out of the conference on the 18th. A 1080 Ti sure would be nice, although I doubt anything like that launches first.

 

[ViRGE]

That's been the case since day one.

NVLink can be used both to link GPUs to CPUs and GPUs to other GPUs. However it does require a physical path way, so NVIDIA can only use NVLink if they retain an SLI-like connection for a dedicated NVLink path, or if they get x86 mobo manufacturers to include the NVIDIA GPU mezzanine connector.

This doesn't preclude NVIDIA from removing the SLI connection and doing something ala XDMA over the PCIe bus, but then it would have nothing to do with NVLink.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Just a small correction, NVLink at the moment is for POWER CPUs not PowerPC CPUs.