NVIDIA Admits Kepler GPU Only In Production Come 2012

NVIDIA has confirmed reports that its next-gen Kepler GPUs will only enter production in 2012, despite implying at the chipsets' initial reveal that they would ship in late 2011. "Although we will have early silicon this year, Kepler-based products are actually scheduled to go into production in 2012," NVIDIA spokesperson Ken Brown told X-bit Labs. "We wanted to clarify this so people wouldn't expect product to be available this year."

Speculation about the full release not taking place until next year began last month, with leaks from graphics card manufacturers suggesting that NVIDIA had been encountering poor performance from early chip samples and low yields from production partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Further sources indicated that, even if NVIDIA managed to begin production in Q4 2011, it would be so late in the quarter as to make only an early 2012 release of commercial products viable.

NVIDIA has, unsurprisingly, not commented on either yield or performance. Kepler is expected to be more flexible in how it can be used by software applications, offering GPGPU (general purpose processing on GPU) functionality and the ability to crunch data on its own without requiring the guiding hand of the system's main CPU.

[via The Tech Report]