Anlässlich der Veröffentlichung der Geschäftszahlen hat Nvidia-CEO Jen-Hsun Huang auch vorab das ein oder andere Wort über die neue Grafikkarten-Architektur namens Fermi verloren, die im Gegensatz zur neuen AMD-Architektur revolutionär statt evolutionär sein soll.

"There is -- and the enthusiasm behind Fermi, our next generation GPU architecture, is just out of this world. I mean, it’s just way over the top. And the reason for that is this is because the first brand new architecture we have created in four years and instead of an incremental change to DX11, this is a fundamentally new architecture and the performance is fabulous."

"And relative to the competition, the market has really spoken -- although it’s a fast chip, it’s not that fast and it is basically an RV770 with DX11. And I think that you could incrementally make changes for a number of years but certainly not forever and we are going to really change the marketplace going forward with Fermi and so that’s our focus and we are trying to get it shipped as soon as possible. The demand is really, really strong for it and we will tell you about all the great graphics features when we launch."

Darüber hinaus verriet er, dass man TSMC beauftragt hat, die 40 Nanometer-Produktion im ersten Quartal 2010 stark hochzufahren, weil für jenen Zeitraum auf Basis der neuen Fermi-Architektur nicht nur Geforce-, sondern auch Quadro- und Tesla-Produkte zu erwarten sind.

"We didn’t announce anything on graphics because it wasn’t graphics day. When we announce GeForce and Quadro, we are going to talk about the revolutionary graphics ideas that are designed into Fermi and so we are looking forward to do that in the near future."

"Next year is going to be an interesting first quarter because in fact, we will need more wafers than ever in Q1. And the reason for that is because -- and I mean more 40-nanometer wafers than ever in Q1 because we are ramping -- we are obviously fully ramping Fermi for three different product lines, GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla."

Auch wenn Huang sich bewusst über den genauen Launchtermin ausschwieg, so deutet doch das ein oder andere Zitat darauf hin, dass spätestens bis März 2010 die neue Architektur fest am Markt ist. Vorab ist ein Paperlaunch im Rahmen der CES Anfang Januar, wie in den letzten Tagen spekuliert, nicht auszuschließen, zumal vor wenigen Tagen offenbar das finale Silizium (A2-Stepping) geglückt ist.

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