Tuesday, October 6th 2020
AMD Big Navi GPU Features Infinity Cache?
As we are nearing the launch of AMD's highly hyped, next-generation RDNA 2 GPU codenamed "Big Navi", we are seeing more details emerge and crawl their way to us. We already got some rumors suggesting that this card is supposedly going to be called AMD Radeon RX 6900 and it is going to be AMD's top offering. Using a 256-bit bus with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, the GPU will not use any type of HBM memory, which has historically been rather pricey. Instead, it looks like AMD will compensate for a smaller bus with a new technology it has developed. Thanks to the new findings on Justia Trademarks website by @momomo_us, we have information about the alleged "infinity cache" technology the new GPU uses.
It is reported by VideoCardz that the internal name for this technology is not Infinity Cache, however, it seems that AMD could have changed it recently. What does exactly you might wonder? Well, it is a bit of a mystery for now. What it could be, is a new cache technology which would allow for L1 GPU cache sharing across the cores, or some connection between the caches found across the whole GPU unit. This information should be taken with a grain of salt, as we are yet to see what this technology does and how it works, when AMD announces their new GPU on October 28th.
Source:
VideoCardz
It is reported by VideoCardz that the internal name for this technology is not Infinity Cache, however, it seems that AMD could have changed it recently. What does exactly you might wonder? Well, it is a bit of a mystery for now. What it could be, is a new cache technology which would allow for L1 GPU cache sharing across the cores, or some connection between the caches found across the whole GPU unit. This information should be taken with a grain of salt, as we are yet to see what this technology does and how it works, when AMD announces their new GPU on October 28th.
141 Comments on AMD Big Navi GPU Features Infinity Cache?
Even AMD uses the term IPC for their GPUs, though everybody here probably knows that IPC is mostly a CPU terminology and we just it for the sake of simplicity.
OR
it is high end and has some sort of hidden mumbo-jumbo, in this case Infinity Cache (aka very large cache) to offset the bandwidth.
Do you ppl really think AMD (it's engineers) went and made a 3080 competitor and then one day sat at a table and went "You know what this bad boy needs, a crippled memory bus. Let us go fuck this chip up so much that no one will ever buy it". And then everyone clapped and popped champagne bottles and ate caviar, confetti was flying, strippers came and everything.
I'm also quite reluctant to put "affordable" next to a $500+ GPU.
Which by the way is Instructions Per Clock, NOT Improved Performance per Clock. :shadedshu:
A lot of attention will be paid to the IPC/Clock Speed, but seems like logic enhancement situations right between the two and could pay nice dividends as a result hopefully. I was thinking 320-bit or 384-bit might make sense for the high end card, but if it has 16GB VRAM it certainly stands to reason might be 256-bit it would be more surprising if it wasn't. That said maybe that isn't Big Navi, but rather the mid range card that's 256-bit unless AMD confirmed otherwise. Cost could be a contributing factor actually, but it does stand to reason that Nvidia might've gotten the bulk of the supply which was another factor. Either way if AMD seems to have come up with a cost effective work around in the form a infinity cache both AMD and consumers should in essence win. I see that being beneficial to both. I think AMD wanted to avoid another HBM cost price tag premium scenario. Still wouldn't be shocked if 256-bit isn't the premium Big Navi card, but rather the mid range or maybe it is and they might use GDDR6 for one and HBM2 on another with that same memory bus. Really with HBM2 it's got heaps of bandwidth in the first place so they can get away with a smaller bus. I'm not sure that adds up entirely, but if you factor in the infinity cache along with it I think it certainly could. Perhaps they just use GDDR6 on the lowest model w/o the cache and the two tiers above it both use the cache one uses GDDR6 while the other swaps it out for HBM2. I'm not sure what differences they'd do with the cores between them, but that's here nor there.
Well at least AMD can earn higher margin on these Navi21 chips than the ones for XBX/PS5, so it's not all loss. AMD has already contracted to purchase 30 000 wafers of TSMC 7nm, they have to make use of them.
That is not 80-90% in any sliver of reality I know of. Not even with a minor shrink and IPC / efficiency bump. Because 50%... yeah. That is what they call en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking
The stars dó align with what we know of Navi so far and that is: +75~100W puts them at peak TDP budget. 256 bit GDDR6 severely limits their bandwidth cap to around 500GB/s, and even a 2080ti already has a good 20% more on tap. So EVEN if they have some magical cache design that provides breathing room... let's say they gain 20% and get an effective 600GB/s throughput or whatever performance equivalent that is for games. That'd be magical already.
So if they really did get 50% efficiency and really do get 300W TDP they have a grossly unbalanced GPU that will be memory starved half the time.
You have to be a really selective believer in rumors to get to your conclusion.
I mean look at Ampere, for comparison: we had good hints about a new power connector, some insane amount of VRAM, doubled RTRT performance. Of course, no product leaked entirely, but we had enough to set most expectations.
I think it's expected that we'll see some really good increases in competition out of AMD the longer Intel struggles to regain it's foothold in a convincing way as opposed to hey I'm great at low resolution high refresh rate gaming and bad security. On the plus side for Intel at least they've become more convincing at multi-core performance it sure is nice to not have 4 quad cores representing the high end CPU market these days in fact it's pretty much now the low end outside of laptops for now and that won't last either. I think 8 core CPU's will be lower mid range minimum sooner rather than later the way things have been going, but we might see compromise in that region like big LITTLE which isn't too terrible it's tolerable for that end of the market, but not ideal as much at the other end.
:clap: Aw, come on dude, don't change the topic. I know the NVIDIA is impeccable for you.