NVIDIA releases roadmap for 2011 and 2013 GPUs

NVIDIA turned quite a few heads today at their GPU Technology Conference today. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang's biggest announcement was the roadmap they've set up for their future graphics products, including the next two core architectures codenamed "Kepler" and "Maxwell."

Kepler's release is planned for 2011, with products using the core coming later in the year. Kepler is planned to be based around a 28nm fabrication process with three times more efficiency in DP FLOPS per watt than Fermi's architecture. Maxwell, slated for 2013, will be based on a 22nm fabrication process with eight times the efficiency of Fermi. These improvements will not only be based on core design, but changes in chip architecture, design, and software as well.

Each new major architecture update will come with a complete GPU product refresh within three months of release, with a "mid-life kicker" in between to enhance the existing microarchitecture. Fermi's "kicker" is scheduled for next year.