Quick Notes: Navi Refresh and RDNA2 Both In 2020, According to AMD
by Ryan Smith on January 28, 2020 9:00 PM EST
As part of today’s FY2019 earnings call, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su had a few words to say about AMD’s future GPU plans – an unexpected nugget of information since we weren’t expecting AMD to reveal anything further at this time.
In short, for this year AMD is planning on both Navi product refreshes as well as parts based on the forthcoming RDNA 2 GPU architecture. To quote Lisa Su:
In 2019, we launched our new architecture in GPUs, it's the RDNA architecture, and that was the Navi based products. You should expect that those will be refreshed in 2020 - and we'll have a next generation RDNA architecture that will be part of our 2020 lineup. So we're pretty excited about that, and we'll talk more about that at our financial analyst day. On the data centre GPU side, you should also expect that we'll have some new products in the second half of this year.
All told, it looks like AMD is setting themselves up for a Vega-like release process, launching new silicon to replace their oldest existing silicon, and minting new products based on existing and/or modestly revised silicon for other parts of their product stack. This would be very similar to what AMD did in 2017, where the company launched Vega at the high-end, and refreshed the rest of their lineup with the Polaris based Radeon RX 500 series.
AMD's GPU Roadmap As Of July 2019
But as always, the devil is in the details. And for that, we’ll have to stay tuned for AMD’s financial analyst day in March.
Source: AMD FY2019 Earnings Call
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Korguz - Thursday, January 30, 2020 - link
i never said they did.. to blame one company for one thing, when another company does the same, and not acknowledging it, is kinda of dumb... and some may thing of you as a fanboy yourself...but what what ever...
Hul8 - Saturday, February 1, 2020 - link
@KorguzI chose to not acknowledge Nvidia facts because I was resisting your attempt to derail the discussion, which was about AMD's GPU plans. Not their past. Not Nvidia. Not the GPU market at large. Not sharing the blame.
I also wasn't actively "blaming" AMD, but using their history as a building block for some speculation. If you want to make any guesses as to what a company is likely to do, you have to consider what they've said publicly and what they've done in the near past.
All companies should be held to the same high standards, and I would voice that opinion - and blame companies - as long as it was on-topic to the discussion at hand.
Hul8 - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Now correcting myself:Tom's Hardware clarified with AMD (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amds-navi-to-be-...
The "refresh" Dr. Lisa Su was referring to seems to be less of a "refresh" as computer enthusiasts understand it, and more a "refresh" as investors understand it - a new line of products.
Yojimbo - Tuesday, January 28, 2020 - link
What is the official explanation of what RDNA2 is supposed to be? Maybe RDNA2 is going into the consoles and they are refreshing Navi for PC?RDNA2 is a 7+ part whereas Navi is a 7 part. According to TSMC, there are significant design characteristic differences between the two processes, it's not like going from 16 to 12. I'm just making the fracture at what seems the most natural place, APU versus discrete. I guess they could fracture somewhere in their discrete GPU stack, but surely they'd be saving less money that way. I just don't know how much less. I would think rather than paying debt down it would make more sense to bring out RDNA2 up and down their stack once they created a 7+ discrete GPU based on the RDNA2 architecture, but I don't really know. One thing that seems likely to me is that if they expected significant market share from the parts that should be the case. But RDNA2 should be the high end whereas Navi the low end, and they would expect bigger market share on the low end, then what gives? So if it does split within the discrete GPU stack then I think the best conclusion would be that RDNA2 does not provide much architectural performance increase over RDNA. Otherwise surely having it up and down their lineup would be worth it. So it would offer mostly ray tracing and variable rate shading and other features not considered critical for the low end PC gaming market.
SaberKOG91 - Tuesday, January 28, 2020 - link
Given that RDNA2 will likely start as a high-performance, low-volume part in the consumer space, as well as a high-margin, higher-volume part in the professional/datacenter space, I think AMD will more than break even. Besides, the long-term investment of demonstrating that AMD can compete at the high end with Nvidia is worth every penny. A Navi refresh on 7nm+ is a low-risk, low-cost way to keep the mid-to-low range lineup well represented as well. It's really no different than selling Polaris and Vega at the same time, with the exception that I believe RDNA2 will deliver what Vega could not.Veradun - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Just an example lineup:RX6900XT rdna2
RX6900 rdna2
later on RX6800XT rdna2 (third cut of the chip, like 5600XT is for Navi10)
RX6700XT rdna (tweaked 5700XT - might be 16gbps ram and/or more frequency)
RX6700 rdna (tweaked 5700)
RX6600XT rdna (tweaked 5600XT)
later on RX6500XT rdna (tweaked 5500XT)
JKflipflop98 - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
As the consumer, I think I'd rather have the new 2.0 architecture even if it is a mid-range card. I'm guessing the 2.0 will be the "big boy" on the high-end of the stack and the revised 1.0 will be entry-level to mid-range. Seems silly to me as one of the ways you save money during fabrication is chopping down your defective high-end parts to mid and low ranges.Whatever, if the beancounters say that's the way to go, then that's the way they'll go. Sadly.
Korguz - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
its called die harvesting.. amd, intel and nvida have been doing it for ages now.. it not a silly way to save money, why throw out a die if only part of it is bad.. but the rest is still usable ? aka.. athlon x4. made into an x3 because 1 core had defects....extide - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
Because we will get the 6000 series. Existing 5500, 5600 and 5700 will get 'refreshed' to 6000 series equivalents -- perhaps with a mild die rework or process update -- and then big navi will be released at the top at RDNA2SolarBear28 - Tuesday, January 28, 2020 - link
If RDNA 2 supports ray tracing it makes sense that it would debut on cards that are actually powerful enough to do it (aka Big Navi). While the rest of the lineup gets a refresh probably without ray tracing.