How far in advance are products finalized?

[TrainFan475]

idk if this is a dumb question, but how long does amd/nvidia wait to announce their products after actually completing them? like could there already be an rtx 4080 prototype somewhere in nvidia's labs? (i know probably not, just an example)

[givingtnt]

5 minutes ago, TrainFan2020 said:

idk if this is a dumb question, but how long does amd/nvidia wait to announce their products after actually completing them? like for example could there already be an rtx 4080 prototype somewhere in nvidia's labs?

PRoduct launches have a lot of factors in play.
You want to release at a time where your product will be compelling to buyers when comparing to both your competition and your previous lineup. 

You also want to launch at the appropriate time in the year. No one is gonna shell out thousands on new equipment in January, arguably the biggest down time of the year for most companies.

Some companies can afford not to release immediately if their competition is not catching up (say, Nvidia VS AMD here and there) and they can wait, giving them more time for R&D into their next product or refining the current one and prolonging the life of their current lineup. 

Other companies & product like the Xbox & PlayStation consoles, can't afford to release at an off-beat pattern. When one of them release, you better have your own product ready. Otherwise you'll miss out on the next-gen panic/hype.

On the other hand, I doubt Nvidia is really holding back anything. There is more than enough demand all over the world for their products that it would be absurd not to take that cash.

[porina]

Products can be in various degrees of "completeness". It isn't a binary done or not done. Don't know who said it, but perfect is the enemy of good enough. They have to decide when a product is ready enough to be sold. Sometimes that doesn't go smoothly if they release early to hit certain dates for example.

 

Products aren't made sequentially. Large organisations will have multiple teams doing different things going into future products. For example, you have to support what is being sold right now. You actively work on what will be the next release. You will be researching what to put in the release after that. You may have another team looking even further forward at what technologies that don't even exist yet, but will impact the products further out. 

[dizmo]

There very likely is a 4000 series GPU in early stages of design somewhere. Most companies start design work on stuff like this many years in advance. 

 

Cell phones, I think it's around 6 or 7 months prior to launch. 

[LogicalDrm]

With very limited knowledge (some documentaries, like one of LEGO) of manufacturing process, I think 6 months from finished to launch. Maybe less, since all the leaks start to come like 3 months prior.

[divito]

There are far too many factors for it to be a matter-of-fact time. Something that affects CPUs and GPUs specifically is not only the platform and fabrication, but there is R&D being done well in advance before the technology and materials to actually create and assemble products starts to take shape into a product.

[Mark Kaine]

no, they're announcing them far before finalizing them. 

 

sometimes they also release them before finalizing them.

see Nvidia 30xx

 

it's called "paper launch" apparently.

 

 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I'd actually like to know how far in advance products start development, research, design, "coming up with the idea in someone's dream", etc, even before the CEO knows the details or even the name of said product.

 

For example, did (whoever at Intel then) start thinking of whatever would become the i9-10900K when, say, the Q6600 was launched, or was it not until the i7-7700K was EOL?

 

Was Jensen Huang brainstorming what would become the RTX 3090 when Nvidia was launching the Riva TNT?

 

Was Lisa Su (or whoever) thinking of what they wanted from what would become the Ryzen 9 5950X or Radeon 5900 XT when the AMD K6 architecture or ATI CGA/EGA/VGA Wonder series reigned supreme?

[Elad.Evron]

22 hours ago, TrainFan2020 said:

idk if this is a dumb question, but how long does amd/nvidia wait to announce their products after actually completing them? like could there already be an rtx 4080 prototype somewhere in nvidia's labs? (i know probably not, just an example)

So there is a different between having a prototype to finilazing a design. Romers say that AMD waited on Nvidia 30x0 luch to finilaze their "big navy" GPU's but that was only some very minor tweeks, they probably finalated around 95% of it and just left some stuf to match Nvidia. And if i would have to guess I would say that everyone does what AMD did which means that they finilaze the complete final design around 2-3 weeks before lunch event because a finalazted product that is just sittin in the lab is a waste of money becasen if they had the RTX 4080 finilazed they would release it and capture the whole market because they will have a big prefornace advantage. 

[Elad.Evron]

14 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I'd actually like to know how far in advance products start development, research, design, "coming up with the idea in someone's dream", etc, even before the CEO knows the details or even the name of said product.

 

For example, did (whoever at Intel then) start thinking of whatever would become the i9-10900K when, say, the Q6600 was launched, or was it not until the i7-7700K was EOL?

 

Was Jensen Huang brainstorming what would become the RTX 3090 when Nvidia was launching the Riva TNT?

 

Was Lisa Su (or whoever) thinking of what they wanted from what would become the Ryzen 9 5950X or Radeon 5900 XT when the AMD K6 architecture or ATI CGA/EGA/VGA Wonder series reigned supreme?

The PC industry is a vey generatianal one and new products are not that far off in overall disgn from the products from the year and even 10 years before, so every company has thier own pace but because of the "modular" nature of the products i would guess that first ideas and sketches are around 2-4 years before lunch and serious work is stared between 1.5-2 years before 

[Roswell]

I remember Jen-Hsun Huang walking on stage with a prototype Pascal or Maxwell (I forget which) PCB like 2 or 3 years before release. I wish I could remember which event it was so I could link it. I remember him joking around that it was the most valuable card in existence and someone could buy it if they really wanted to for a fortune... or something along the lines of that.

[PeachGr]

i will just say that samsung is working on 6G
as soon as a product is out, research team is searching on the new line up, and another smaller team is doing software updates for the previous generation