AMD is rumoured to be creating a new GPU micro-architecture
AMD is rumoured to be creating a new GPU micro-architecture
We must remember that Radeon’s upcoming Navi architecture remains shrouded in mystery, leaving looks further down RTG’s roadmap shrouded in even more secrecy. Nothing here is confirmed and everything reported on this topic right now shouldn’t be considered anything other than hearsay, so remember your daily helping of salt when assessing these rumours.Â
Reports of a successor to GCN started circulating from WCCFTech, stating that Navi will be AMD’s last GCN-based architecture and that the company expects a significant leap in performance with their “Next-Gen” product. Â
New CPU and Graphics architectures take a long time to create, with work on AMD’s Zen architecture starting in 2012, when the CPU Guru Jim Keller returned to the company. Ryzen released in Early 2017, giving an approximately 4-5 year timeframe for a new architecture to move from the concept phase to shipping systems.Â
Taking the same timeframe and applying it to Radeon and this suggested early 2020 release for their “Next-Gen” architecture, and we can see that this timescale roughly correlates with the creation of the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) under Raja Koduri. This similarity does not mean that AMD has plans to create a new GPU architecture, but the formation of RTG seems like the perfect time to get started on from the ground up redesign.
Raja Koduri left AMD in November 2017, with his leaked message to RTG employees making several references to the company’s roadmap. This included comments such as “I’m fully confident that they can execute on the compelling roadmap ahead“, “I believe wholeheartedly in what we are doing with Vega, Navi and beyond, and I am incredibly proud of how far we have come and where we are going” and in his final requests to RTG “Stay focused on the roadmap!“. None of these comments explicitly point towards a new GPU architecture, but they do point towards some significant changes in the future.Â
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If AMD has started work on a new GPU micro-architecture, the design will have been primarily created by Radeon during Raja Koduri’s time at RTG, leaving this hypothetical design to Radeon new leadership to execute Raja’s vision and build upon it moving forward.Â
With Radeon receiving separate leaders in both their business and engineering segments, it looks like AMD plans to increase their focus on Radeon in the coming years, hopefully allowing the group to become a stronger competitor in both the graphics and compute markets. With such extensive changes in management, it is hard to guess what AMD’s plans are with Radeon, though a new GPU micro-architecture is certainly possible. Â
You can join the discussion on AMD’s rumoured “Next-Gen” GPU architecture on the OC3D Forums. Â