Chinese graphics maker is developing a GPU to rival Nvidia's GTX 1080

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: The GPU industry has been dominated by two major names for the better part of two decades but that could soon be changing. Intel, as you’ve likely heard, is working on its own discrete GPUs and now we’re hearing of a fourth potential contender.

Jingjia Micro, short for Changsha Jingjia Microelectronics Co., Ltd, is a Chinese vendor that has reportedly started researching its next GPU. Known as the JM9271, the chip will allegedly be as fast as Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080.

As Tom’s Hardware highlights, Jingjia Micro got its start in 2006 as a military-civilian integrated company specializing in electric component design and production. The firm is reportedly credited with building China’s first domestic GPU, the JM5400, on a 65nm process. Successive chips were refined significantly and the company found additional success on the 28nm node.

Its most recent GPU, the JM7200, offers performance that is equivalent to a GeForce GT 640 but has a TDP of less than 10 watts versus the 50W used by Nvidia’s chip.

The firm’s next chips, the JM9231 and JM9271, are already in the works. The former is said to boast performance rivaling Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 while the latter will be closer to the GTX 1080 with a boost clock north of 1,800MHz, 16GB of HBM and support for PCIe 4.0.

They won’t be as efficient as Nvidia’s 16nm offerings, however, as they’re still being built on the older 28nm process. TDPs are expected to be in the range of 150W and 200W, respectively, for the JM9231 and the JM9271.

Masthead credit: Video card by BokehStore. GPU by sdecoret.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/81587-chinese-graphics-maker-developing-gpu-rival-nvidia-gtx.html

 

[DukeJukem]

Omg not something better than the old 1080! wow and its made by chinese people who hate america and send us cyberattacks all the time and spy on us and steal our jobs! holy jumping jehoshaphat I can't wait to never buy that. get this chinese garbage out of here. supposedly the most advanced country when it comes to technology and you can't even compete with a 2080? what a joke.

 

[neeyik]

Jingjia face the same problems as any other hardware design company, trying to break into the GPU market - all of the technology required to achieve decent performance is patented to hell and back by the likes of Intel, AMD, Nvidia, PowerVR, Matrox, etc. Their current products have no support for Direct3D and there doesn't seem to be any plan to do so with future models. In other words, they're not aiming markets outside of China and let's face it, that's hardly a small market.

 

[Reallyhow]

Don't you love how anti-competitive the stacks of patents let AMD and NVIDIA be? If only there were some form of oversight committee to prevent the existence of a duopoly.

 

[texasrattler]

If it doesn't support Direct3D then what's the point? Don't most games require it?

Also what's the point of the this news when they aren't really a 4th player in the gpu if they only sell in one country? Not to mention its more of a gimped gpu and not a traditional one that most of the world know of.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

It'll be available on WISH and in local 99 cents stores by Quarter 4 2020

 

[neeyik]

Don't you love how anti-competitive the stacks of patents let AMD and NVIDIA be? If only there were some form of oversight committee to prevent the existence of a duopoly.

One can always licence the technology; for example, Apple did it for years for the iPhone/iPad GPUs.

If it doesn't support Direct3D then what's the point? Don't most games require it?

Linux all the way, baby

Also what's the point of the this news when they aren't really a 4th player in the gpu if they only sell in one country? Not to mention its more of a gimped gpu and not a traditional one that most of the world know of.

Because these times are a-changing. If anybody had reported 5 years ago that Intel were coming back into the discrete market after a 20 year gap, then people would have possibly said a similar thing. Jingjia might not be targeting other markets at the moment, but if their JM9271 turns out to be pretty reasonable at compute, and the price can undercut AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, then there will definitely be interest - probably not for gaming, but definitely for compute.

 

[Reallyhow]

That's the thing, isn't it? Who cares about Direct3D.

There's a 2.7 billion strong market between India and China alone. Develop a "competent" GPU, cultivate talent to go to work on it, and you'll see a new ecosystem of platforms and titles to fill them.

Just because the current "China special" right now is a famicom emulator with the same 33 games looping forever doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

 

[neeyik]

And the big game publishers will certainly be wanting a slice of that market too, so if that means making games only for China and India, they'll certainly be keeping an eye on this kind of development.

 

[Reallyhow]

And just think of that. A home brew, red-state 1080 based gaming console on store shelves in five years.

How are you going to stop Activision from flying out the door to get Call of Duty on that?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Uh huh. So the chinese claim they can make a GPU with 5x the power efficienty of nivdia, and now claim to be making a 1080 competitor.

This is the same country that claims, whole heartedly, that they have flying aircraft carriers and super stealth fighters to rival the F-22, when in reality they have no stealth capability, are the equivalent of, at best, a F-16, and their carriers wont fly unless gravity reverses itself somehow.

Somehow I find it hard to trust the chinese. Also their GPU driver likely acts as a keylogger for your system, just saying.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That's the thing, isn't it? Who cares about Direct3D.

There's a 2.7 billion strong market between India and China alone. Develop a "competent" GPU, cultivate talent to go to work on it, and you'll see a new ecosystem of platforms and titles to fill them.

Just because the current "China special" right now is a famicom emulator with the same 33 games looping forever doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

Game developers do. In case you havent noticed, the vast majority of PC games use Direct3D.

 

[pcnthuziast]

Luckily for them there's a huge market right there. Consumers abroad will know better and the existence of this company won't matter or ever be a factor.

 

[DukeJukem]

Game developers do. In case you havent noticed, the vast majority of PC games use Direct3D.

true but I think alot of devs need to start adopting vulkan. its pretty nice.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Game developers do. In case you havent noticed, the vast majority of PC games use Direct3D.

true but I think alot of devs need to start adopting vulkan. its pretty nice.

You "think" they are? What games out there are vulkan outside of idtech? mind posting links? The serious sam devs are the only other devs that embraced vulkan.

 

[neeyik]

Uh huh. So the chinese claim they can make a GPU with 5x the power efficienty of nivdia, and now claim to be making a 1080 competitor.

It's certainly an interesting claim - here's the basic specs of the JM7200:

So at 600 MHz, a fill rate of 3 Gpixels/sec means it has 5 ROPs; a GeForce GT 640 has 16. If we assume 80M gates is equivalent to 240M transistors, then it's significantly less than the 640's 1.27 billion. So, the power claim might well be true, but as for the performance claim....hmmm. Hmmmmmmm.

Edit: Here's another spec image that's slightly different:

Now that's odd, as that's quite a bit different to the other image. The FLOPs value is roughly in the same ball park as the GT 640 (500 vs 692) but fill rate is still quite a bit off (4.8 vs 7.2). Bandwidth value of 16 GB/s suggests it's a 128-bit memory bus; same as the GT.

Edit 2: IT would seem that the company isn't really aiming for the gaming industry at all:

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/45468543

"Since its establishment in 2006, Jingjia Micro has focused on the R&D, production and sales of highly reliable military electronic products. The main products are core modules and system-level products in the field of graphic display control and small special-purpose radar"

The idea that they're aiming for a 1080-like GPU is for the compute market, specifically for military applications for AI and autonomous vehicles.

 

[Reallyhow]

Game developers do. In case you havent noticed, the vast majority of PC games use Direct3D.

So? The PS4 and Switch don't use Direct3D. Android and iOS don't. And yet, somehow games are developed for them.
This isn't 1995, the PC isn't the lone bastion of gaming

 

[BadThad]

It's not amazing what the Chinese can do, after all, they surely stole American technology and illegally copied their IP like they did with most everything they have. BUY AMERICAN PEOPLE!

 

[BadThad]

Don't you love how anti-competitive the stacks of patents let AMD and NVIDIA be? If only there were some form of oversight committee to prevent the existence of a duopoly.

We don't need more committee's and government! What we need is another company willing to compete in the space - build something better and win. THAT'S AMERICA!

 

[BadThad]

That's the thing, isn't it? Who cares about Direct3D.

There's a 2.7 billion strong market between India and China alone. Develop a "competent" GPU, cultivate talent to go to work on it, and you'll see a new ecosystem of platforms and titles to fill them.

Just because the current "China special" right now is a famicom emulator with the same 33 games looping forever doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

2.7 billion with 99+% of them so poor they can't afford a bowl of rice. The TRUE market is much, much smaller than 2.7 billion!

 

[BadThad]

Uh huh. So the chinese claim they can make a GPU with 5x the power efficienty of nivdia, and now claim to be making a 1080 competitor.

This is the same country that claims, whole heartedly, that they have flying aircraft carriers and super stealth fighters to rival the F-22, when in reality they have no stealth capability, are the equivalent of, at best, a F-16, and their carriers wont fly unless gravity reverses itself somehow.

Somehow I find it hard to trust the chinese. Also their GPU driver likely acts as a keylogger for your system, just saying.

Indeed my friend, indeed!

 

[Reallyhow]

We don't need more committee's and government! What we need is another company willing to compete in the space - build something better and win. THAT'S AMERICA!

Where did you expect that company to find engineers, funding, and resources to compete?

Sure, they can license from AMD or NVIDIA, but at that point, can they really compete on the same level, in the same marketplace? Why would these companies share their innovation with someone who would take money out of their pockets.

 

[BadThad]

Where did you expect that company to find engineers, funding, and resources to compete?

Sure, they can license from AMD or NVIDIA, but at that point, can they really compete on the same level, in the same marketplace? Why would these companies share their innovation with someone who would take money out of their pockets.

It's AMERICA! We have a history of competing regardless of the elephants in the room. It's happened time and time again over our history.

 

[Reallyhow]

You... already are competing?

My question was how do you expect a new vendor to compete with the current vendors from the ground up. Aside from Intel, there haven't been any domestic vendors showing an interest in the "Premium" graphics space.

 

[amstech]

Omg not something better than the old 1080!

A GTX 1080 is faster then the $500 RTX 2070, and much faster then the Radeon in the PS4 Pro/X1X.
I just picked up an Asus Turbo GTX 1080 for $300 shipped in like new condition with very little use. It's more then enough GPU for years to come for my setup, or 1440p/144Hz gaming, regardless of its age. In 3-4 years when Ray Tracing is worth it I'll get a GPU that supports it but for right now, I'll pass.

If someone is making a GPU that has that type of performance, that's still pretty darn good.