An obscure research paper detailing the use of GPU computing for radio telescopes has revealed the existence of three upcoming Nvidia GPUs. 3D Center spotted the paper (PDF), which was authored by researchers from the Institute of Space Science and Astronomy in Malta, the International Centre for Radio Stronomy Research in Australia, the University of Oxford in the UK, and Nvidia's operations in Los Angeles.

Much of the contents are way over my head, and the discussion is largely centered on how the Tesla K40 compares to the GeForce GTX 750 Ti. However, the penultimate page contains the following table:

GPU architecture FLOPS/Watt Timeline GK110 12 Current GK210 14 Summer 2014 GM200 25 End of 2014 GP100 35 Beginning of 2016

GK210 presumably refers to a new "Big Kepler" variant. That chip is imminent, according to the timeline, but it could be restricted to Tesla-class GPU compute products. A Maxwell-based GM200 GPU is apparently coming before the end of the year, while a Pascal-based GP100 is slated for early 2016.

Those last two will deliver big gains in performance per watt, according to the paper, but that's only for a specific use case. The numbers are also "predictions" rather than hard data. The fact that an Nvidia staffer is named as a contributor gives the figures more credibility than typical GPU rumors, but I'd still recommend a dash of salt.