AMD Linux Driver adds “Sienna Cichlid” support – Is this RDNA 2?
AMD Linux Driver adds “Sienna Cichlid” support – Is this RDNA 2?
When compared to AMD’s existing Navi/RDNA products, this new graphics card features new VCN 3.0 video encoders and DCN3 display fronts, signifying a major upgrade over Navi’s VCN2 and DCN2 capabilities. These changes suggest that RDNA 2 will feature stronger encoding capabilities than today’s RDNA graphics cards, which is great news for streamers and video producers.Â
Phoronix speculates that the timing of these patches are ideal for the release of new graphics cards later this year, within the same timeframe and AMD’s already planned RDNA 2 launch window.Â
AMD’s Alex Deucher, who wrote Sienna Cichlid’s patch notes, stated the following, confirming that these
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  Sienna Cichlid is a GPU from AMD. This patch set adds support for it including power management, display, kfd, interrupts, gfx, multi-media, etc. The new register headers are really big so I haven’t sent them to the list. You can view the new patches including the register headers on the following git branch:
With RDNA 2 featuring a huge 50% boost in performance/watt over RDNA, it makes sense for changes to the architecture’s “power management” makes a lot of sense. RDNA 2 is expected to represent a major leap for Radeon, adding performance/watt enhancements, variable-rate shading, hardware-accelerated attracting, Mesh Shaders support and more. Â
You can join the discussion on AMD’s “Sienna Cichlid” graphics card on the OC3D Forums.Â