NVIDIA's next-generation "Volta" GPU architecture got its commercial debut in the most unlikely class of products, with the Xavier autonomous car processor. The actual money-spinners based on the architecture, consumer GPUs, will arrive some time in 2018. The company will be banking on its old faithful fab TSMC, to build those chips on a new 12 nanometer FinFET node that's currently under development. TSMC's current frontline process is the 16 nm FFC, which debuted in mid-2015, with mass-production following through in 2016. NVIDIA's "GP104" chip is built on this process.

This could also mean that NVIDIA could slug it out against AMD with its current GeForce GTX 10-series "Pascal" GPUs throughout 2017-18, even as AMD threatens to disrupt NVIDIA's sub-$500 lineup with its Radeon Vega series, scheduled for Q2-2017. NVIDIA's "Volta" architecture could see stacked DRAM technologies such as HBM2 gain more mainstream exposure, although competing memory standards such as GDDR6 aren't too far behind.