The R520 "Fudo" could have 300 million transistors
Double the number of the R420
By Fuad Abazovic in Londinium: Thursday 02 September 2004, 16:22
ATI'S FUTURE R520 graphics chip could have as many as 300 million transistors on it, it has emerged.
We dont have the exact number yet, but in a conversation with a source, we were reminded that with every single chip generation ATI ended up with twice as many transistors as the previous chip.
If we take into account that the R420 chip codenamed Loki and commercially known as X800 series ended up with number close to 150 millions of transistors, the 300 million figure may be close to the mark.
ATI decided not to go for Shader Model 2.0b with its new generation and saved some 60 million transistors since otherwise it would have 225 million, the number that Nvidia ended up. This also made the ATI card less advanced but easier to produce.
We are prettu sure that Fudo, R520 will end up with Shader Model 3.0+ not 4.0, as this one will be out with Longhorn late 2006. If you think about it we will be talking about R620 at that time and I am sure that this one will have Shader Model 4.0 support.
We all know that this chip will use 110 nanometre marchitecture as ATI never likes to take the chances with a non proven process and high end chip while we will see some of chips built with 90 nanometres in 2005.
Imagine what can you put into 300 million transistors, many new pipelines and much more memory as well as some wicked shaders.
R520 comes in the first half of 2005 anyway so I would expect to see it sometime in May if not earlier, just a year after the R420. µ
