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Emulating Nvidia GPUs

shankly1985

shankly1985

shankly1985

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Interesting Video here guys, I had no idea this kinder thing even happened.


Hope I not breaking forum rules here, talking about emulation? Please remove if so.
 
That's pretty cool to actually see the lab they do this in, I knew the chips were emulated but had never seen how it was done. I can only assume most chip manufacturer's do this, as it is really the only way to make the chips, they couldn't actually make them in silicon for every slightest change as that would take forever at the start of a chips life.

Anyway good find Shanks. :)
 
it only becomes illegal if people in this forum start buying hundreds of PCs off OCUK to build their emulation labs and steal GPU designs from nVidia and AMD
 
Wow very interesting new video of Nvidia emulation lab since I read SharkyExtreme article about Nvidia emulation lab back in 2002, massive changes in the last 14 years when the lab were called IKOS Lab. Nvidia IKOS Lab had around 10 small IKOS VStation 15M boxes, each box emulated 15 million transistors ran NV30 test at few KHz which was very slow. :)

Cant seemed find that old article so I searched google found few old article on Nvidia old IKOS Lab.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/998/8

Nvidia had blog on emulation lab in 2011.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2011/05/16/sneak-peak-inside-nvidia-emulation-lab/

Remembered Nile emulator was the hardware which replaced IKOS VStation 15M.
 
I'd assume both gpu vendors do this, But does Nvidia do it better? i mean usually Nvidia cards do quite well on release where as AMD cards seem to mature later in the lifespan?
Disclaimer Not trying to turn this into one vs another was just a thought i had today, and wondered if someone had maybe knowledge if AMD do have it on a similar scale?
 
triss said:
I'd assume both gpu vendors do this, But does Nvidia do it better? i mean usually Nvidia cards do quite well on release where as AMD cards seem to mature later in the lifespan?
Disclaimer Not trying to turn this into one vs another was just a thought i had today, and wondered if someone had maybe knowledge if AMD do have it on a similar scale?
Click to expand...

I think most of it has been down to resource restraints on AMDs part. It's also worth noting though that AMD has been playing a very long game and it has taken them a long time to see that play pay off which it just started to ever so slightly. If they succeed, well time will certainly tell.
 
AthlonXP1800 said:
Wow very interesting new video of Nvidia emulation lab since I read SharkyExtreme article about Nvidia emulation lab back in 2002, massive changes in the last 14 years when the lab were called IKOS Lab. Nvidia IKOS Lab had around 10 small IKOS VStation 15M boxes, each box emulated 15 million transistors ran NV30 test at few KHz which was very slow. :)

Cant seemed find that old article so I searched google found few old article on Nvidia old IKOS Lab.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/998/8

Nvidia had blog on emulation lab in 2011.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2011/05/16/sneak-peak-inside-nvidia-emulation-lab/

Remembered Nile emulator was the hardware which replaced IKOS VStation 15M.
Click to expand...


mannnnnnnnnnnnnnn I feel old i remember that Anandtech page from my teen years.
 
triss said:
I'd assume both gpu vendors do this, But does Nvidia do it better? i mean usually Nvidia cards do quite well on release where as AMD cards seem to mature later in the lifespan?
Disclaimer Not trying to turn this into one vs another was just a thought i had today, and wondered if someone had maybe knowledge if AMD do have it on a similar scale?
Click to expand...


The emulator is used for 2 things:
1) Design refinement, optimizations and testing. They can run modern computer games or compute workloads and test bottlenecks in the current generation of hardware, design improvements and then test their improvement in an accurate emulator. Analyses the results and find new bottles or other issues, go back and re-iterate a new design, re-test.
2) One the design is finalized then they can develop and optimize the drivers long before release.

I'm sure AMD does very similar things but my hunch is Nvidia put a lot of resources into their emulator side. I have read lots of articles going back 10-15 years where Nvidia talk up their ability to accurately emulate the chip and develop drivers before they even get silicon back. And as said in the video, within a few hours of getting delivery of a new chip from TSMC they have it up and running with reasonable driver support.

I question if AMD is so committed based on 2 points that people can feel free to argue, I simply don't now:
1) AMD drivers almost always suck at release and get better in time. Perhaps the emulator is to as advanced or they have less resources to develop drivers so completely
2) Bulldozer and failed CPU performance, they should have clearly know years before release that Bulldozer design was a failure for current software.
 
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