Gamerbannas

While Fermi is still blazing hot, if not in temperature, then in bang-for-your-buck ability, Nvidia apparently has “hundreds of engineers” sweating it while building the company’s new generation of GPUs, codenamed Kepler. Based on the 28nm process, Kepler will apparently boast 3-4 times the performance per watt of the Fermi lineup, and will apparently also be incredibly power-efficient. Pictured on the roadmap as 2011, you can expect real GPUs to hit the streets only by 2012, if the Fermi’s 2009 development and mid-2010 launch are anything to go by. Next in line from Kepler is codename Maxwell, which will apparently deliver a 16x increase in parallel graphics computing performance compared to Fermi, and will be in development in 2013, and on shelves in 2014. Maxwell will apparently also deliver some very fancy technologies, including autonomous processing.

With Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell all featuring, and 16x performance promised, we’re all awaiting Einstein to turn everything on its head of course. If you are worried after seeing the above roadmap that Nvidia will only deliver new GPUs every alternate year, you can rest easy, as CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has assured everyone that there will be plenty of "mid-life kicker" product launches in-between, refreshing and upgrading the lineup. We are also expectant of AMD putting in some new killer technologies into its 28nm Northern Islands GPUs, and like the rest of the eager world, will have to wait to see how both the green giants go head to head.