2012-13 promises to be a period of big graphics product launches, centric to a new DirectX version, DirectX 11.1, which will ship with Microsoft's next major Windows version (currently referred to as Windows 8). Information compiled by ExpertsPC.com and 4Gamer.net tables what NVIDIA's next-generation graphics family could look like, and around what time it could be released to market. With its next-generation GeForce Kepler family of GPUs, NVIDIA will follow a sensible bottom-up product release model, to ensure that it isn't met with any technical hurdles with TSMC's new 28 nm manufacturing process, and so it could launch GPUs with increasingly higher transistor counts, till its top-of-the-line GPU is outed.
The first GPU in NVIDIA's pipeline is the GeForce Kepler 107 (GK107), on which will be based entry thru lower-mainstream SKUs. The data doesn't reveal things like core counts, but points out that GK107 will have a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, will use the current-generation PCI-Express 2.0 bus, will be built on the 28 nm process, and will support DirectX 11.1. This will be followed by the GK106, on which "sweet-spot" SKUs could be based. This will be NVIDIA's first PCI-Express 3.0 compliant GPU, it will have a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface.
Moving further up, there is GK104, NVIDIA's high-performance (≠ high-end) GPU. Think of it as NVIDIA's equivalent of AMD's "one high-performance GPU to rule them all" approach. GK104 will have a zesty 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface, and will support PCIe 3.0. NVIDIA's fastest product for 2012, codenamed GK110, will use two of these GK104 GPUs to give you an SLI-on-a-stick solution. Finally in 2013, when TSMC's 28 nm process will have achieved a certain degree of maturity, NVIDIA will launch a monolithic high-end GPU, the GK112. This one will feature a massive 512-bit GDDR5 memory interface.
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