Wednesday, August 7th 2013
New AMD GPU Family Codenames "Volcanic Islands" and "Pirate Islands"
AMD's next generation GPU family that leverages upcoming silicon fab technologies to increase transistor counts, while maintaining or lowering thermal envelopes, is codenamed "Volcanic Islands," and we've known about that for some time now.
The centerpiece of "Volcanic Islands" family is "Hawaii," a high-end GPU that makes up top single- and dual-GPU SKUs; followed by "Maui" and "Tonga." Not much is known about these two. A dual-GPU product with two "Hawaii" chips is confusingly codenamed "New Zealand," which is already used to designate certain Radeon HD 7990 graphics cards. AMD is expected to debut its first "Volcanic Islands" GPUs in Q4-2013, when foundry partner TSMC's swanky new 20 nm node is expected to take flight.
When digging through change-logs of system information tool HWInfo, 3DCenter.org discovered what it hypothesizes to be a successor to "Volcanic Islands." Called "Pirate Islands," the GPU family contains chips codenamed after popular islands where sea pirates took shore leave; that's "Bermuda," "Fiji," and "Treasure Island."
AMD could also do away with the Radeon HD xxxx model number scheme, replacing it with something that looks like "Radeon R# xxxx." We have two theories on how something like that could be worked out. First, of course, is that "R#" could denote generation, "xxxx" the model number (eg: Radeon R9 1900), a simple replacement of the "HD" moniker; and second is that "R#" could denote market segment, and "xxxx" model number (eg: Radeon R9-170 for "Hawaii XT," R8-170 for "Maui XT," R7-170 for "Tonga XT," and R9-270 for "Bermuda XT," etc.)
Source:
3DCenter.org
The centerpiece of "Volcanic Islands" family is "Hawaii," a high-end GPU that makes up top single- and dual-GPU SKUs; followed by "Maui" and "Tonga." Not much is known about these two. A dual-GPU product with two "Hawaii" chips is confusingly codenamed "New Zealand," which is already used to designate certain Radeon HD 7990 graphics cards. AMD is expected to debut its first "Volcanic Islands" GPUs in Q4-2013, when foundry partner TSMC's swanky new 20 nm node is expected to take flight.
When digging through change-logs of system information tool HWInfo, 3DCenter.org discovered what it hypothesizes to be a successor to "Volcanic Islands." Called "Pirate Islands," the GPU family contains chips codenamed after popular islands where sea pirates took shore leave; that's "Bermuda," "Fiji," and "Treasure Island."
AMD could also do away with the Radeon HD xxxx model number scheme, replacing it with something that looks like "Radeon R# xxxx." We have two theories on how something like that could be worked out. First, of course, is that "R#" could denote generation, "xxxx" the model number (eg: Radeon R9 1900), a simple replacement of the "HD" moniker; and second is that "R#" could denote market segment, and "xxxx" model number (eg: Radeon R9-170 for "Hawaii XT," R8-170 for "Maui XT," R7-170 for "Tonga XT," and R9-270 for "Bermuda XT," etc.)
33 Comments on New AMD GPU Family Codenames "Volcanic Islands" and "Pirate Islands"
If it is 28nm which seems the more likely, then your ~300W estimate may prove to be on the money. Can't see AMD stripping out features like double precision to save die space. I also can't see AMD risking a "Fermi" situation with a huge die on a largely untried 20nm process unless yields are spectacular- and if yields are that good I'm pretty sure TSMC might be already yelling that from the rooftops.
I got some special day dreaming skills eh but anything almost is possible.
Although, knowing what Bonaire (GCN 1.1) provided on a 30% die increase, with about 30% in transistors, 40% increase Sp and TMU’s, though no bump in ROP's. That provided a 20-25% in performance, while a 20% lower watt/perf from the 7770. However, with artificially low clocks and 128-Bit I think there was a bunch of under-utilized potential leftover.
Now I could be wrong, but honestly I sense Tahiti was not all that optimize for the size (ie. more ROP’s?). I'm holding out hope there's a still a good amount of juggling of that GCN to pull more performance (25%) without any major bump in die size, TDP, and perhaps three true product derivatives. I don't believe AMD need/wants to build a chip that escalates what Titan does, "just best it" at a price that makes bringing a "full GK110" not a competitively priced alternative. But then knowing Nvidia they'd release it just to claim the "Crown" no matter the price.
The whole speculating and/or reading the tea leaves is just recreation. We watch and B.S. what we see/feel. :toast:
If it's still 28nm I'm gonna bet those power figures are plausible.