According to new information from Tom's Hardware, AMD has announced plans to unify its consumer-focused gaming RDNA and data center CDNA graphics architectures into a single, unified design called "UDNA." The announcement was made by AMD's Jack Huynh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, at IFA 2024 in Berlin. The goal of the new UDNA architecture is to provide a single focus point for developers so that each optimized application can run on consumer-grade GPU like Radeon RX 7900XTX as well as high-end data center GPU like Instinct MI300. This will create a unification similar to NVIDIA's CUDA, which enables CUDA-focused developers to run applications on everything ranging from laptops to data centers.

Jack HuynhSo, part of a big change at AMD is today we have a CDNA architecture for our Instinct data center GPUs and RDNA for the consumer stuff. It's forked. Going forward, we will call it UDNA. There'll be one unified architecture, both Instinct and client [consumer]. We'll unify it so that it will be so much easier for developers versus today, where they have to choose and value is not improving.

AMD's future RDNA 5 graphics architecture will bear a "clean sheet" design, and may probably not even have the RDNA branding, says WJM47196, a source of AMD leaks on ChipHell. Two generations ahead of the current RDNA 3 architecture powering the Radeon RX 7000 series discrete GPUs, RDNA 5 could see AMD reimagine the GPU and its key components, much in the same way RDNA did over the former "Vega" architecture, bringing in a significant performance/watt jump, which AMD could build upon with its successful RDNA 2 powered Radeon RX 6000 series.

Performance per Watt is the biggest metric on which a generation of GPUs can be assessed, and analysts believe that RDNA 3 missed the mark with generational gains in performance/watt despite the switch to the advanced 5 nm EUV process from the 7 nm DUV. AMD's decision to disaggregate the GPU, with some of its components being built on the older 6 nm node may have also impacted the performance/watt curve. The leaker also makes a sensational claim that "Navi 31" was originally supposed to feature 192 MB of Infinity Cache, which would have meant 32 MB segments of it per memory cache die (MCD). The company instead went with 16 MB per MCD, or just 96 MB per GPU, which only get reduced as AMD segmented the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 GRE by disabling one or two MCDs.

The mysterious Zen 6 "Morpheus" processor architecture was leaked accidentally by an AMD engineer's LinkedIn profile—news outlets picked up on this information last April. Naturally, Team Red's next priority is Zen 5—the latest reports suggest that two different chiplet designs are penciled in for mass production within the second quarter of 2024. Last September, insiders claimed that a proposed EPYC 9006 "Venice" CPU series was based on the sixth-gen microarchitecture. Everest/Olrak_29 has revealed various bits of speculative material regarding futuristic "Ryzen Client" processor designs since the start of 2024.

The latest postings to social media posit that AMD has selected an RDNA 5-based integrated graphics solution (possibly occupying a tile), thus "skipping RDNA 4" on their "Medusa" lineup of Ryzen Client processors. Leaked Microsoft documents revealed that its Xbox hardware design division was considering RDNA 5 for next-gen console specs. Medusa's CPU aspect is allegedly populated by Zen 6 "Morpheus" cores—as claimed in a January tweet. A new package design was also riffed on at the time: "Yes, I have teased this before...Medusa will use 2.5D interconnect with a much higher bandwidth," instead of a "traditional" multi-die design. Industry speculation has AMD's Zen 6 client architecture linked to a loose 2025/2026 launch window.

A comprehensive leak of documents—from a FTC versus Microsoft case—has exposed short and long-term plans in the world of Xbox. It seems that a relatively mild refresh of current generation Xbox Series X and S is lined up for the second half of 2024, but presentation material (dated April 2022) also reaches far into the future with strategies for next-gen gaming hardware. The bigwigs at Xbox were projecting a "full convergence" of their proprietary "xCloud" gaming platform and physical console hardware to deliver "cloud hybrid games" for 2028—schemes and priorities could have shifted in the interim, given various legal challenges and takeover bids.

One of the slides points to Microsoft getting the technical nitty-gritty sorted by CY2023—with two main options presented for consideration: a licensed ARM 64 design or a "Zen 6-based" AMD 64 processor. The next-gen Xbox's GPU aspect could incorporate a Navi 5 design (RDNA 5)—weighing up either a co-operation with AMD, or an IP license of said graphics architecture. VideoCardz theorizes that: "the latter option seems more likely if the ARM 64 chip is chosen over the Zen 6 APU." A key goal in this area seems to be an implementation of "Next-Gen DirectX Ray tracing" and "ML-based Super Resolutions" features. A Neural Processing Unit (NPU) is marked as a key provision for the 2028 console—granting some nice-to-have perks including: latency compensation, frame rate interpolation and various enrichments of the user experience.