Fermi (microarchitecture)

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Fermi is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, first released to retail in April 2010, as the successor to the Tesla microarchitecture. It was the primary microarchitecture used in the GeForce 400 series and 500 series. All desktop Fermi GPUs were manufactured in 40nm, mobile Fermi GPUs in 40nm and 28nm^{[citation needed]}. Fermi is the oldest microarchitecture from Nvidia that receives support for Microsoft's rendering API Direct3D 12 feature_level 11.

Fermi was followed by Kepler, and used alongside Kepler in the GeForce 600 series, GeForce 700 series, and GeForce 800 series, in the latter two only in mobile GPUs.

In the workstation market, Fermi found use in the Quadro x000 series, Quadro NVS models, and in Nvidia Tesla computing modules.

The architecture is named after Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist.