Wednesday, January 29th 2020
AMD to Debut 2nd Gen RDNA Architecture in 2020
AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su, in her Q4-2019 and FY-2019 earnings call, confirmed that the company debut its second-generation RDNA graphics architecture in 2020. "In 2019 we launched our new architecture in GPUs, it's the RDNA architecture, and that was the Navi-based products. You should expect those will be refreshed in 2020, and we will have our new next-generation RDNA architecture that will be part our 2020 lineup."
Second-gen RDNA, or RDNA2, is expected to leverage the new 7 nm+ (EUV) silicon fabrication process at TSMC, to dial up transistor-counts, clock-speeds, and performance. Among the two anticipated feature additions are VRS (variable rate shading) and possibly ray-tracing. The fabled "big Navi" silicon, a GPU larger than "Navi 10," is also on the cards, according to an earlier statement by Dr Su. More details about these upcoming graphics cards are expected to be put out in March, at the 2020 AMD Investor Day conference.
Second-gen RDNA, or RDNA2, is expected to leverage the new 7 nm+ (EUV) silicon fabrication process at TSMC, to dial up transistor-counts, clock-speeds, and performance. Among the two anticipated feature additions are VRS (variable rate shading) and possibly ray-tracing. The fabled "big Navi" silicon, a GPU larger than "Navi 10," is also on the cards, according to an earlier statement by Dr Su. More details about these upcoming graphics cards are expected to be put out in March, at the 2020 AMD Investor Day conference.
81 Comments on AMD to Debut 2nd Gen RDNA Architecture in 2020
Interesting.
2 sets of Navi GPUs in 2020.
if they want to compete with Nvidia 7nm, They better pull a Rabbit out of the Hat
"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. (...)"
The Navi20, seen in multiple places, could be the Navi10 Refresh. Maybe nobody found any name pointing to the Ray-tracing RDNA2, yet.
Nothing big, initial silicon often has rough edges/low hanging fruits. It just shows that I was right when many others were like "dude, don't upgrade now, wait for the big Navi". That's all. (fwiw, you can't play this waiting game if a part is not officially confirmed to land in a couple of months, otherwise you'll be waiting forever. but that's another story)
2.5 years later from my last GPU purchase and their best is only about 6% faster....but when they initially launched they were 20% faster...not sure what kind of fuckup causes that but it makes me think they aren't going to have their shit together until at least q2 2021.
This reminds me of Phenom gen 1....I hope so anyways.
Rdna1 refresh 7N and Rdna2 (with RT) to 7N+ in SKU 2020:
Rdna2 series 6900 - 6800, 700 ~ 350 $
Navi10 series 6700 - 6600, 250 ~ 150 $
Navi14 series 6500, 100 - 75 $
I don't think they throw rdna1 after just 1 year
Unfortunately, yet again we see many people and the a lot of the tech press drive expectations too high, as they did with Navi12 as "big Navi", "Arcturus", big Vega and big Polaris.
I do expect AMD will launch a refreshed and tweaked Navi, possibly one with more than 40 CUs. But we have to remember that even a 2nd gen Navi will still fundamentally be a Navi, it will scale like Navi, and set your expectations accordingly. Also, it will be facing the next generation from Nvidia. I would love to see AMD pull out a card that beats by a good margin RTX 2080 Ti, draws way less than 300W and that is affordable, but that would require a major architectural improvement to achieve, unless AMD have stumbled across fix that radically changes performance characteristics. If there ever was a plan for a bigger Navi 1x, then it was scrapped long before tapeout.
When Dr. Su said "refresh" she didn't mean new iterations of the currently available GPUs, but rather completely new products.
This according to a news article from Tom's, since they asked AMD for clarification on this.