After unveiling a fake Fermi card, shrugging off AMD's lead, and months of uncertainty, Nvidia has provided a few details about the mass availability of its next-generation graphics cards. During a conference call, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed that Fermi would hit "full stride" in the second quarter of fiscal 2011 – or May to July of 2010.
That timeframe will bring several Fermi-based GeForce, Quadro and Tesla products spanning many price ranges, but the first cards should arrive before then. The company is expected to start shipping the highly-anticipated GeForce GTX 400-series graphics cards in the first quarter of fiscal 2011 (January to April, 2010). Other Fermi cards could also debut in current period, but nothing is official at the moment.
While details are limited, Huang did say that the speed of the transition to Fermi-based products depends on the supply of 40nm chips. We thought TSMC's 40nm production issues were resolved, but it seems Nvidia is still being underfed. Huang estimates that the shortage has cost Nvidia between $100 million and $200 million.