Monday, July 3rd 2017
AMD Raja Koduri Confirms RX Vega Die Size at 484 mm²
AMD's Raja Koduri, leader of the company's Radeon Technologies Group, has somewhat informally confirmed on Twitter the overall die size of AMD's Vega chips. After PC Perspective updated their prognosis regarding Vega's die-size to a beefier 512 mm², Twitter users plied Raja Koduri with questions regarding this subject. Koduri declined to answer directly, actually opting for a somewhat cryptic response, in that " (...) the answer [to Vega's die-size] is the closest perfect square number actually:)".
For the math-savvy around here (or even just for those of you who have read the headline), that particular equation should solve towards a perfect 484 mm² die area. Good news for AMD: this isn't the company's biggest die-size in consumer GPUs ever. That dubious honor goes to the company's Fiji XT silicon which powered the company's R9 Fury X, coming in at a staggering 596 mm² in the 28 nm process. For comparison, AMD's current Polaris 20 XTX-based RX 580 chip comes in at slightly less than half the confirmed RX Vega's die-size, at a much more yield-friendly 232 mm². NVIDIA's current top-of-the-line Titan Xp comes in at a slightly smaller 471 mm² die-size.
Source:
Raja Koduri @ Twitter
For the math-savvy around here (or even just for those of you who have read the headline), that particular equation should solve towards a perfect 484 mm² die area. Good news for AMD: this isn't the company's biggest die-size in consumer GPUs ever. That dubious honor goes to the company's Fiji XT silicon which powered the company's R9 Fury X, coming in at a staggering 596 mm² in the 28 nm process. For comparison, AMD's current Polaris 20 XTX-based RX 580 chip comes in at slightly less than half the confirmed RX Vega's die-size, at a much more yield-friendly 232 mm². NVIDIA's current top-of-the-line Titan Xp comes in at a slightly smaller 471 mm² die-size.
23 Comments on AMD Raja Koduri Confirms RX Vega Die Size at 484 mm²
The only good thing about it was HD4xxx after
Wake me up when Navi is there, as Vega woes are somehow not Raja's fault.
If all things are equal--same transistor/trace size inside the die (same manufacturing process) then bigger is always better.... The bigger the die, the more transistors you can cram into it, therefore, the more you can process in one cycle.
When they shrink down to a new process, say from 24nm to 14nm, the die shrinks to about half it's original size and keeps the same amount of transistors inside. Both chips can process the same amount of information in one cycle, just that the 14nm process die will do it with less power consumption.
There's die size and process size. Normally when they shrink down to a new process, they will just add more transistors to make up for the freed up power consumption.
For apples to apples comparison, a smaller die and process version of the same chip will be a 'better' chip.
So, yes, a smaller die is better. And no, a smaller die is not better.
And it is the path forward for almost everything. Nvidia has NVLink, Intel has Quickpath, etc.