Report claims Nvidia’s Volta GPUs could launch next year

We may have only just got our first batch of Pascal graphics cards over the last couple of months but that isn't slowing the rumour mill down at all, with attention now turning to Nvidia's Volta architecture. According to reports this week, the first Volta graphics cards may end up launching in 2017, a year earlier than expected.

Right now, the official Nvidia GPU roadmap puts Volta's release in 2018. However, we recently heard a rumour that Volta would not be a 10nm GPU, but would instead stick to the 16nm FinFET process, which is currently used for Pascal. According to wccftech, we have yet to see a gaming GPU that makes the most of the 16nm node, even next month's Titan X is based on a smaller die, so Nvidia could build bigger chips for consumers based on 16nm technology to get the most out of it.

We have already seen Nvidia speed things up a bit, with the GTX 1060 launching just a month after the GTX 1080 hit store shelves. On top of that, the Pascal-based Titan X was announced sooner than expected, with a surprise reveal made last week.

The final rumour doing the rounds in these reports is that we may see the first Volta GPU at Nvidia's annual Graphics Technology Conference in May next year. Right now, we don't have any official information to point towards this being true but it will be interesting to see if Nvidia's internal GPU roadmap has changed.

KitGuru Says: If Nvidia can squeeze more out of 16nm, then it makes sense to do so while we wait for 10nm to come to fruition. However, we don't have much information to go off right now outside of some rumours and speculation. Perhaps things will become clearer closer to the time. 

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