Although we haven’t seen anything of Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell graphics cards just yet, engineers are already well into developing its successor. Reportedly codenamed Rubin, the next next-generation GPUs could enter production as soon as late 2025.
TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes R100 chips will usher in another new architecture as part of the R-series, built with eight HBM4 memory units on TSMC’s 3nm node. As the name suggests, the first batch will target AI (artificial intelligence), hoping to overcome the increasing power consumption concern in the server market. After all, current AI GPUs are already dangerously close to the kilowatt mark for a single card. System and rack solutions will supposedly follow in the first half of 2026.
Nothing’s set in stone just yet, but Rubin R100 GPUs will apparently use a 4x reticle. This is a notable increase from Blackwell’s 3.3x, although it falls short of TSMC’s planned 5.5x by 2026. It’ll also use the same Chip-On-Wafter-On-Substrate-L (CoWoS-L) technology as Blackwell’s B100. Nvidia is still ruminating over R100’s interposer size, selecting between two to three remaining options. Eventually, these will power an upgraded Grace GR200 module, giving data centres an uplift.
Following Nvidia’s traditional convention, Team Green has named the architecture after renowned astronomer Vera Rubin. Known for her contributions towards proving the existence of dark matter and the galaxy rotation problem, she also left her mark as a mentor for women in science.
There are plenty of questions remaining. What’s the height of the HBM4 stacks? And why, exactly, is Nvidia racing another generation out the door? Anyone in the server market who wants to upgrade now has the dilemma of whether to wait. Sure, that’s always the quandary, but the AI space has far larger generational leaps compared to other segments, adding value to the wait.
Don’t expect Rubin to dominate our best graphics card list just yet. For now, the spotlight is currently on Blackwell, and we’ll probably hear more about Rubin during Nvidia GTC 2025. Meanwhile, Computex 2024 is fast approaching and will likely give us insight into the next-generation series. Currently, we know Nvidia is testing 250W and 600W coolers, RTX 5060 laptops might not be all they’re cracked up to be, and we could see RTX 5080 first.
