While it was by no means an official NVIDIA codename so far as roadmaps go, the identify “Einstein” got here up in rumors a number of instances earlier this decade. At the time, Einstein was rumored to be the structure that will observe Maxwell within the NVIDIA lineup. And whereas we sadly didn’t discover out something new about NVIDIA’s future roadmap at this yr’s present – or any signal of Ampere or different 7nm chips – I did inadvertently discover out that the rumors about Einstein have been true. At least, from a sure standpoint.
While speaking with NVIDIA’s analysis group this morning about a few of their newest tasks (extra on this a bit later this week when I’ve the time), the group was speaking about previous analysis tasks. And, because it seems, a type of former analysis tasks was Einstein.
Rather than simply being a baseless rumor, Einstein was in actual fact an actual mission at NVIDIA. However quite than being an structure, per-se, it was a analysis GPU that the NVIDIA analysis group was engaged on. And though this analysis mission didn’t bear fruit underneath the Einstein identify, it did underneath one other identify that’s much more well-known: Volta.
So whereas this implies we are able to scratch Einstein off of the checklist of names for potential future NVIDIA architectures, the mission itself was actual, and it was really an enormous success for NVIDIA. As Einstein morphed into what grew to become the Volta structure, it has turn into the cornerstone of what at the moment are all of NVIDIA’s current-generation GPUs for servers and purchasers. This consists of each common Volta and it’s graphics-enhanced by-product, Turing.
