A new flagship GPU offering from the folks over at NVIDIA could enter the market as GeForce RTX 5090 with a huge monolithic GB202 ‘Blackwell’ die, reports Kopite7kimi. It will power the GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card and is expected to feature as many as 192 SMs (24,567 CUDA cores assuming it sticks with the existing design of using 128 per SM for its AD102 “Ada” chips). Recently unveiled details also confirmed the GPU will be monolithic.
More About the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU
NVIDIA has gone with a chiplet design for its HPC/AI chips like the B100 and B200, but so far the company does not appear to be willing-sized consumer GPUs leaving monolithically. The “Blackwell” GB202 GPU, on the other hand, is expected to be physically monolithic, possibly doubling up the number of SMs and cores in comparison with a cut-down GB203 die that fuels the GeForce RTX 5080. This difference is likely to be very important in the performance between RTX 5090 and 5080.
NVIDIA could use two GB203 die designs inside of one monolithic package, with better inter-die communication than traditional chiplet designs. The hardware solutions that NVIDIA offers, such as the NVLINK for dealing with communication bottlenecks are feasible, but they require capital, and costs might be reduced.
NVIDIA already connects two halves of a smaller die using an interconnect plus shared L2 cache approach in the GA100 and GH100 GPUs, which has scaled up well. The GB202 “Blackwell” GPU is also expected to utilize TSMC’s 4NP process node (5nm), offering a 30% increase in transistor density, which should enhance performance alongside architectural improvements.
There are also reports of a 512-bit interface for the RTX 5090 and a new cooling and PCB solution being developed. With rumors suggesting that AMD might withdraw from the ultra-high-end graphics segment with its RDNA 4 lineup, NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs, including the RTX 5090, could further solidify its dominance in the gaming market. The RTX 5090 is expected to launch shortly after the RTX 5080, which may be the first Blackwell gaming GPU available.
