AMD's next-generation RDNA4 graphics architecture will retain a design-focus on gaming performance, without being drawn into an AI feature-set competition with rival NVIDIA. David Wang, SVP Radeon Technologies Group; and Rick Bergman, EVP of Computing and Graphics Business at AMD; gave an interview to Japanese tech publication 4Gamers, in which they dropped the first hints on the direction which the company's next-generation graphics architecture will take.

While acknowledging NVIDIA's movement in the GPU-accelerated AI space, AMD said that it didn't believe that image processing and performance-upscaling is the best use of the AI-compute resources of the GPU, and that the client segment still hasn't found extensive use of GPU-accelerated AI (or for that matter, even CPU-based AI acceleration). AMD's own image processing tech, FSR, doesn't leverage AI acceleration. Wang said that with the company introducing AI acceleration hardware with its RDNA3 architecture, he hopes that AI is leveraged in improving gameplay—such as procedural world generation, NPCs, bot AI, etc; to add the next level of complexity; rather than spending the hardware resources on image-processing.

AMD Financial Analyst Day presents an opportunity for AMD to talk straight with the finance industry about the company's current financial health, and a taste of what's to come. Guidance and product teasers made during this time are usually very accurate due to the nature of the audience. In this live blog, we will post information from the Financial Analyst Day 2020 as it unfolds.20:59 UTC: The event has started as of 1 PM PST. CEO Dr Lisa Su takes stage.

AMD's Radeon Technology Group (RTG) continues to be in a state of flux, with another executive leaving the company. This time, RTG General Manager and Senior Vice President, Mike Rayfield (pictured on the left below) will be resigning by year's end, marking the second time in a calendar year the group has been devoid of a formal leader. Rayfield previously worked for NVIDIA as the General Manager of their Tegra business unit, and was Vice President and General Manager of Micron's mobile storage business unit prior to that. Having served in all these roles for quite some time, it is somewhat of a surprise to see him leaving AMD so quickly, having only just joined the company back in February 2018. With that said, AMD has said the reason for this departure is so that he can "spend more time with his family and pursue his personal passions".

David Wang (picture on the right below), the current Senior Vice President of Engineering at RTG, will be his interim successor. He already has a storied history at AMD, having worked on ATI/AMD graphics cards as a GPU engineer from the R300 to GCN 1.0 in a time period ranging from the years 2000 to 2012. Under AMD's dual leadership model which was implemented after Raja Koduri's resignation, both Wang and Rayfield have worked together leading the RTG group. Thanks to this, the transition of duties should be relatively smooth even though Wang's role is only temporary, and it will be interesting to see whom AMD picks as Rayfield's long-term successor.

We don't know when, but it seems AMD will someday have support for DirectX Raytracing , a feature introduced by Microsoft on March 2018. David Wang, Senior Vice President of Engineering at AMD's Radeon Technologies Group, told so in an interview on the Japanese gaming website 4Gamer. Overclock3D confirmed the comments with the assistance of a Japanese speaker who helped to translate the interview without misunderstandings. It's important to clarify that what Wang said was "a personal view", not an official statement from AMD.

Nevertheless, this executive seems to be that "AMD will definitely respond to DXR", although right now the company is focused on improving its current CG production environment based on Radeon ProRenderer. Wang went further on his comments and told also that "the spread of Ray-Tracing's game will not go unless the GPU will be able to use Ray-Tracing in all ranges from low end to high end". Therefore he thinks that ray tracing technology will not become mainstream until there is support for all types of products, from low-end to high-end, but that doesn't mean that AMD won't offer that support gradually when it sees fit. And he seems to think it will be entirely appropriate at some point, and that's what's important.

It's been interesting to see how the industry's giants try and find ways to rejuvenate themselves with blood from other companies - and there's got to be no better feeling than taking someone from under a competitor's mantle. It's the old two kills with one stone adage, really: one reinforces one's position by hampering a competitors'. But until now, it seemed most high-profile movements between AMD and Intel were a game of squash, with Intel claiming AMD's chief graphics division experts such as Raja Koduri and Chris Hook.

Now, AMD has seemingly turned the game into a sort of tennis encounter, having successfully headhunted Intel's Martin Ashton, formerly "Vice President, Core and Visual Computing Group, Chief Engineer, VTT and Director of Hardware and Co-Director of Architecture, VPG at Intel." Martin Ashton, as the extensive position descriptor somewhat cloudily states, was an important piece of Intel's overall graphics strategy - though arguably not as important as the players Intel snagged from AMD. Still, Martin Ashton has long-standing roots on the graphics landscape, particularly at Imagination Technologies; and AMD's David Wang seems to think he's a great fit for the team - and AMD's vision. He's now part of AMD as Corporate Vice President.Martin Ashton, left, and David Wang, right