NVIDIA's Next-Gen GeForce RTX 4000 Ada Lovelace GPUs Allegedly Set For 2022 Launch
One thing we've learned over the past year is to never take anything for granted. So yes, while it is generally assumed NVIDIA will release its next-gen GeForce RTX 4000 series in 2022, we wouldn't exactly be shocked if those plans changed. It doesn't look like they will, though—rumor has it factories have already begun prepping for NVIDIA's next-gen lineup.
Past rumors and speculation have suggested Ada Lovelace will succeed Ampere. If the leaked information up to this point is correct, Ada Lovelace will be built on a 5-nanometer manufacturing process at TSMC, with a full-fat AD102 graphics chip wielding 18,423 CUDA cores. Compare that to the top consumer Ampere card, the GeForce RTX 3090 with 10,496 CUDA cores.
The potentially massive increase in CUDA cores at the top end is reason alone to anticipate a big performance uplift. Then there is whatever gains a new architecture brings to the table, as well as other parts of the package (like improved RT and Tensor cores, and so forth). We don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but it's certainly conceivable that the GeForce RTX 4000 series will be a major leap over the GeForce RTX 3000 series. We'll see.
As to the production of next-gen GPUs, a translated report from Digitimes suggests factories are gearing up for a major refresh next year, on 5nm. Same goes for Hopper, which is the codename for NVIDIA's next-gen GPU architecture for the data center and high performance computing (HPC) clients. Rumor has it Hopper could adopt an MCM chiplet configuration, versus Ada Lovelace being a single-chip solution.
Circling back to past leaks again, Ada Lovelace could manifest with a die size of 600mm2, which is quite large. NVIDIA's flagship consumer card based on Ada Lovelace (GeForce RTX 4090, if sticking with its present and past naming conventions) is said to feature a 2.2GHz clock speed, GDDR6X memory, and a 384-bit memory bus.
It's also been suggested that the GeForce RTX 4090 will offer double the performance of the GeForce RTX 3090, albeit at twice the power. Whether either or both of those holds true or not, only time will tell.
