8800GTS with 112 shaders, unlockable by software/drivers?

Dutch Guy · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:22

There is the possibility that they lockes non-functional shader blocks much like the locked pipes on 6800 cards, so even if they can be unlocked they might not even work.

@Scougar, sorry for the joke about the soldering.

Darkwave · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:26

Cyber-Mav said:
thats some precision cutting going on there, one slip and the entire core is useless, hence why cutting the pipes is not an option, also due to the way these stream processors are laid out cutting is going to be very tricky indeed.
no chip maker would be doing this due to the risks and also the time consumed in cutting the pipes then testing the core again. its far easier to just lock them in bios, or lock them in a different way.

Honestly, are you on drugs? It's how it's done and has always been done as far as I know.

There's no risk involved whatsoever, and doing it through software is definitely not a better idea because, as Tom pointed out, people would just unlock their cheap cards to the same specs as top end stuff.

I seriously hope you get suspended soon because your posts are nothing but drivel, especially lately.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:41

we are taking precision cutting here, even with a laser, working with cores that are 90nm or even smaller makes them very tricky to work with. if you have seen a 90nm die maginifed even 10 fold you will see even for a tiny laser its gonna be tricky.

ofcourse they don't do it by hand, i never suggested they did.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:42

Ulfhedjinn said:
Honestly, are you on drugs? It's how it's done and has always been done as far as I know.

There's no risk involved whatsoever, and doing it through software is definitely not a better idea because, as Tom pointed out, people would just unlock their cheap cards to the same specs as top end stuff.

I seriously hope you get suspended soon because your posts are nothing but drivel, especially lately.

maybe you shoudl have read my post properly before going into silly mode. i did state near the bottom:

im just guessing though because the method i described above seems to be a lot safer and easier to do than the cutting approach

showing that i was taking a guess, not stating hard facts. its my opinion and im entitled to it.

Tom|Nbk · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:45

Cyber-Mav said:
we are taking precision cutting here, even with a laser, working with cores that are 90nm or even smaller makes them very tricky to work with. if you have seen a 90nm die maginifed even 10 fold you will see even for a tiny laser its gonna be tricky.

ofcourse they don't do it by hand, i never suggested they did.

Your suggesting there is huge risk involved when in actual fact there will be next to none. You don't become the worlds biggest GPU manufacturer without having the correct tools to produce these things. Don't worry Mav cutting them will involve no risk and the lasers they use will be some of the worlds finest. Just make sure you look at one directly

Scougar · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:45

I think if they work with multi million transistors they can work with small lasers easily enough.

@dutch guy> I thought you were just being optimistic when you mentioned the solder

I didn't realise you were just joking lol

Matthew

Darkwave · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:47

Cyber-Mav said:
we are taking precision cutting here, even with a laser, working with cores that are 90nm or even smaller makes them very tricky to work with

We're talking about something that's been done for years by companies that have it down to an art.

It's not "tricky", it's not risky, and you cannot think of a better way to do it or you'd be sleeping on top of a pile of money every night. If you think you can, go tell Nvidia or ATI.

Cyber-Mav said:
maybe you shoudl have read my post properly before going into silly mode. i did state near the bottom:

showing that i was taking a guess, not stating hard facts. its my opinion and im entitled to it.

Didn't you say that you work "in the industry" a few times on this forum? I guess we now know you don't.

P.S. I wasn't going into "silly mode", I was going into "oh God, Mav is talking tripe again" mode. Unfortunately I'm going into that mode so often lately that I'm posting less in Graphics Cards and PC Games and posting more in consoles, I better not have you to blame for this.

Tom|Nbk · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:49

Scougar said:
I think if they work with multi million transistors they can work with small lasers easily enough.

Spot on. Common sense has gone out the window with Mav

As for Mav working in the industry LOL funny ****. I believe he would fit well in the armchair industry

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:50

Tom|Nbk said:
Your suggesting there is huge risk involved when in actual fact there will be next to none. You don't become the worlds biggest GPU manufacturer without having the correct tools to produce these things. Don't worry Mav cutting them will involve no risk and the lasers they use will be some of the worlds finest. Just make sure you look at one directly

i was under the impression that they did not have a laser which is that small / accurate, and they just slap on the transistors and logic gates/diodes etc onto the silicon in one go, fiddling around with it once its on the wafer i thought would be too tricky.

guess we need to hear from some gfx card engineers to find out the exact process. but i doubt they would reveal that.

as for looking at the laser, if u say its as small as it is, i doubt it will do any harm at all for a person to look at it.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:52

Ulfhedjinn said:
We're talking about something that's been done for years by companies that have it down to an art. It's not "tricky", it's not risky, and you cannot think of a better way to do it or you'd be sleeping on top of a pile of money every night.

Didn't you say that you work "in the industry" on this forum a few times?

I guess we now know that you don't, and never have.

P.S. I wasn't going into "silly mode", I was going into "oh God, Mav is talking tripe again" mode.

i don;t work in the gfx card manufacturing industry. being a systems engineer is a far different role to being a fabrication engineer for a gfx card company.

LabR@t · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:56

so get a 640mb card now or wait for 512mb card?

Darkwave · 5 Oct 2007 at 15:59

Cyber-Mav said:
as for looking at the laser, if u say its as small as it is, i doubt it will do any harm at all for a person to look at it.

So it can't damage your eye but "one slip can render a whole [GPU] core useless" eh? Make your mind up.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:06

Ulfhedjinn said:
So it can't damage your eye but "one slip can render a whole [GPU] core useless" eh? Make your mind up.

i don;t think you understand fully how small a gpu core is, and is a laser cuts into even 1 micron in the wrong direction, or there is some viberation in cutting then it could hit a transistor or something and the core could be useless.
now im not sure if they use nanobots or something when doing this laser cutting, but searching the net the smallest laser cutter i came across was accurate up to 0.1millimeter, which i don;t think is good enough when working with something as small as the core. remember there are something like 300 million transistors or more even packed on the a core smaller than a 50p coin.
im not saying its totally impossible, but thats one heck of a tiny laser needed to pull something like that off.

as for the eye, if the laser is powerful enough to damage a eye then its probaby too powerful to use for working with gpu cores.

Scougar · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:10

So what exactly do you or did you do 'in the industry' Mav?

EDIT: I'm a (J2EE) Java Software Developer for the government

Matthew

Tom|Nbk · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:16

Scougar said:
So what exactly do you or did you do 'in the industry' Mav?

Matthew

Oh wait didn't you hear?

Mav shoots out all the instructions to ATi and NVIDIA from his armchair :eek:

"Armchair Operations Director"

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:17

Scougar said:
So what exactly do you or did you do 'in the industry' Mav?

Matthew

just a builds engineer providing 3rd level support. main probs i work with now are software based. 5 yeras ago i was more hardware based with fault diagnostics and repairs.

only reason im not agreeing with tom and ulf here is because for a laser to be able to cut pipes, its gonna have to be like a fraction of a nanometer across in beamwidth, and the robot controlling it has to be 10 times or even more precise than a hard drive actuator arm.
im not sure technology has evolved that much but if someone has a link to such a small laser cutter tool then please provide, even id like to know if there is something out that that can be so precise in its work.

Darkwave · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:19

Cyber-Mav said:
Blah blah blah blah blah.

You should get a job at The Inquirer.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:26

Ulfhedjinn said:
You should get a job at The Inquirer.

if you have nothing useful to post then you may as well stop trying to bait me.

for others:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G80#Technical_Summary

GTX has 681 to 690 million transistors done on 90 nm so all those transistors are packed onto probably a die size around the size of a 50p coin.

thats some real precision cutting required there, its probably just me that can;t imagine with current technology a laser being small enough to do that.
but then again if there is tech out there to make 600million transistors fit in such a small size to begin with, then you never know. :confused:

id be interested if someone finds a link to such a laser, it would a fascinating read.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:32

another question, if pipes were physically cut from the core, then would rivatuner actually see those pipes as still being there but disabled? not sure how the detection routines work in rivatuner, i doubt they scan the entire core for pipes, and just go from a database record insted, not sure on this one though.

but if the pipes were physically cut then rivatuner should just show the core to be a native 96 shader one and not show the rest as being locked or disabled,?

again thats just a guess, got no real idea behind the workings of it but if someone else with more knowledge on this subject could give a few more ideas it would be great.

Scougar · 5 Oct 2007 at 16:33

What I think of as laser cutting is the old Athlon XP with the bridges cut. That looked like some pretty vicious cutting, originally I was thinking along those lines, with exposed wires/fuses on the surface to be easily cut.

Has anyone removed the top of a GTS chip to see what's underneath?

I think Mav's discussion is actually valid.

Matthew