We are nearing the arrival of AMD's Radeon RX 6x50XT graphics card refresh series, and benchmarks are starting to appear. Today, we received a 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark of the AMD Radeon RX 6950XT GPU and compared it to existing solutions. More notably, we compared it to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and came to a surprise. The Radeon RX 6950XT GPU scored 22209 points in the 3DMark TimeSpy test and looking at Graphics score, while the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU scored 20855 points in the same test. Of course, we have to account that 3DMark TimeSpy is a synthetic benchmark and tends to perform very well on AMD RDNA2 hardware, so we have to wait and see for official independent testing like TechPowerUp's reviews.

AMD Radeon RX 6950XT card was tested with Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU paired with DDR4-3600 memory and pre-released 22.10-220411n drivers on Windows 10. We could experience higher graphics scores with final drivers and see better performance of the upcoming refreshed SKUs.

AMD today introduced Radeon Super Resolution (RSR), a new performance enhancement feature that's designed to improve frame-rates of thousands of games, whether or not they feature support for it. Put simply, RSR is a high-quality upscaling algorithm derived from FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0, which is located on the driver-side, rather than game-side. In games that support FSR, the 3D scene rendered at a lower resolution is put through the FSR upscaler algorithm before post-processing and HUD are applied to its result. RSR doesn't require game-level integration, because it requires the game to simply run at a lower resolution than the display's native resolution; so it could act like a high-quality image upscaling algorithm.

This means that thousands of games can benefit from RSR, as the feature is agnostic to what it's upscaling. There are a couple of wrinkles, though. First, you'll need a Radeon RX 5000 or RX 6000 series GPU, based on the RDNA or RDNA2 graphics architectures. The older "Vega" or "Polaris" architectures don't support it. "Vega" is still a current architecture, given that Ryzen 5000 series processors with Radeon Graphics, use a "Vega" based iGPU. The feature should, however, work with the RDNA2-based iGPU of the Ryzen 6000 "Rembrandt" processor. The second big catch is that since RSR comes later down the rendering pipeline than even HUD application, you may notice low-quality HUDs in some games—especially RTS or RPGs with large cluttered HUDs and inventory icons. RSR is being released through the AMD Software 22.3.1 update today.

We explored RSR in greater technical detail, and tested its performance and image quality for you in our Radeon Super Resolution article.

The recent NVIDIA data-leak springs up information on various upcoming graphics parts. Besides "Ada Lovelace," "Hopper," we come across a new codename, "Blackwell." It turns out that NVIDIA is splitting the the graphics and compute architecture naming with the next generation, not unlike what AMD did, with its RDNA and CDNA series. The current "Ampere" architecture is being used both for compute and graphics, with the streaming multiprocessor for the two being slightly different—the compute "Ampere" has more FP64 and Tensor components, while the graphics "Ampere" does away with these in favor of RT cores and graphics-relevant components.

The graphics architecture to succeed GeForce "Ampere" will be GeForce "Ada Lovelace." GPUs in this series are identified in the leaked code as "AD102," "AD103," "AD104," "AD106," "AD107," and "AD10B," succeeding a similar numbering for parts with the "A" (GeForce Ampere) series. The compute architecture succeeding "Ampere" will be codenamed "Hopper." with parts in the series being codenamed "GH100" and "GH202." Another compute or datacenter architecture is "Blackwell," with parts being codenamed "GB100" and "GB102." From all accounts, NVIDIA is planning to launch the GeForce 40-series "Ada" graphics card lineup in the second half of 2022. The company is in need of a similar refresh for its compute product lineup, and could debut "Hopper" either toward the end of 2022 or next year. "Blackwell" could follow "Hopper."

Intel is designing a "Halo" SKU of a future generation of mobile processors with a goal to match Apple's in-house silicon of the time. Slated for tape-out some time in 2023, with mass-production expected in 2024, the 15th Generation Core "Arrow Lake-P Halo" processor is being designed specifically to compete with Apple's "premium 14-inch laptop" (presumably the MacBook Pro) that the company could have around 2024, based on an in-house Apple silicon. This is to essentially tell its notebook partners that they will have an SoC capable of making their devices in the class truly competitive. Apple relies on a highly scaled out Arm-based SoC based on in-house IP blocks, with a software that's closely optimized for it. Intel's effort appears to chase down its performance and efficiency.

The Core "Arrow Lake" microarchitecture succeeds the 14th Gen "Meteor Lake." It is a multi-chip module (MCM) of three distinct dies built on different fabrication nodes, in line with the company's IDM 2.0 strategy. These nodes are Intel 4 (comparable to TSMC N7 or N6), Intel 20A (comparable to TSMC N5), and an "external" 3 nm-class node that's just the TSMC N3. The compute tile, or the die which houses the CPU cores, combines a hybrid CPU setup of 6 P-cores, and 8 E-cores. The performance cores are likely successors of the "Redwood Cove" P-cores powering the "Meteor Lake" compute tiles. Intel appears to be using one kind of E-cores across two generations (eg: Gracemont across Alder Lake and Raptor Lake). If this is any indication, Arrow Lake could continue to use "Crestmont" E-cores. Things get interesting with the Graphics tile.

Mesh shader is a relatively new concept of a programmable geometric shading pipeline, which promises to simplify the whole graphics rendering pipeline organization. NVIDIA introduced this concept with Turing back in 2018, and AMD joined with RDNA2. Today, thanks to the finds of Phoronix, we have gathered information that Intel's DG2 GPU will carry support for mesh shaders and bring it under Vulkan API. For starters, the difference between mesh/task and traditional graphics rendering pipeline is that the mesh edition is much simpler and offers higher scalability, bandwidth reduction, and greater flexibility in the design of mesh topology and graphics work. In Vulkan, the current mesh shader state is NVIDIA's contribution called the VK_NV_mesh_shader extension. The below docs explain it in greater detail:

Vulkan API documentationThis extension provides a new mechanism allowing applications to generate collections of geometric primitives via programmable mesh shading. It is an alternative to the existing programmable primitive shading pipeline, which relied on generating input primitives by a fixed function assembler as well as fixed function vertex fetch.

There are new programmable shader types—the task and mesh shader—to generate these collections to be processed by fixed-function primitive assembly and rasterization logic. When task and mesh shaders are dispatched, they replace the core pre-rasterization stages, including vertex array attribute fetching, vertex shader processing, tessellation, and geometry shader processing.

Valve's highly anticipated handheld gaming console, Steam Deck, officially arrives on February 25th. According to the newest information from Valve, the company plans to start sending our Steam Deck units to customers who first pre-ordered their units on February 25th, and the arrival time should be three days. That means that on February 28th, customers will have Steam Deck in their hands. Regarding press units for reviewers, the company has already started shipping review units to select media partners. The review embargo for Steam Deck is also set to February 25th, so that marks the date when we can see the full potential of AMD's custom Van Gogh SoC.

As a general reminder, the Van Gogh SoC features four Zen 2 cores with eight threads, running at a 3.5 GHz frequency. The graphics side is powered by eight RDNA2 CUs clocked at 1.6 GHz, meaning that the chip can support some decent handheld gaming. The base model starts at $399, while the top-end configuration costs up to $649, carrying more extensive memory/storage options.

The image upscaling wars keep grassing, with AMD and NVIDIA claiming as many integrations as possible for their respective FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) and DLSS (Deep-Learning Super Sampling) technologies in a bid to achieve maximum market share for their respective technologies. While the entire world was now focusing on Intel's own addition to the image upscaling wars with its XeSS (XE SuperSampling) tech, AMD is apparently looking to introduce a new upscaling tech as early as January 2022. Enter Radeon Super Resolution (RSR).

Right off the bat, do not expect RSR to be AMD's answer to the perceived image quality advantage of NVIDIA's deep-learning-powered DLSS compared to AMD's more open (and cross-hardware compatible) FSR. Instead, AMD seems to be targeting RSR as a game-agnostic upscaling solution that's based on FSR, but which can be enabled at the Radeon driver level for any game that supports exclusive full-screen rendering. AMD is seemingly moving its image upscaling technique further up in the graphics pipeline, which should impact upscaling quality (as there's less information for the image upscaler to work with). What this does enable, however, is an agnostic solution that can be deployed in any game - provided you're rocking one of the two rumored architectures that will support RSR (RDNA and RDNA2, in the form of AMD's RX-5000 and RX-6000 series). Considering the expected release of RSR, it's likely that AMD will have an official announcement around CES 2022, despite the fact that the company won't be physically present due to COVID-19 and logistics concerns.

XFX started selling the AMD BC-160 cryptocurrency mining card based on the AMD "Navi 12" silicon. The card is available on AliExpress for $2,000. The "Navi 12," if you recall, is an MCM mobile GPU that AMD developed exclusively for the 2019 MacBook Pro. It combined an RDNA-based GPU die with up to 16 GB of HBM2 across a 2048-bit wide interface. Built on the 7 nm node, the GPU die of "Navi 12" on the BC-160 is configured with 36 compute units (2,304 stream processors), and 8 GB of HBM2 across the full 2048-bit memory bus.

The card uses a blower-type cooling solution, and is rated with 150 W of typical board power, with a claimed 69.5 Mh/s (ETH). Drivers are provided for Linux, and mining software supported include Team Red Miner and Phoenix Miner. The card features a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 interface, its driver supports systems with up to 12 of these installed. A marketing slide sheds light on the nomenclature AMD is using for its mining cards. The "BC" in BC-160 represents "blockchain compute," the "1" stands for generation, in this case, first generation; and "60" represents hashrate-class with ETH.

Sapphire, along with various other AIB partners from AMD, has been making graphics cards exclusively for cryptocurrency mining. With the arrival of AMD's RDNA2 generation, this has continued as well. However, the company has been doing it more quietly to avoid backslash from its customers already furious about the poor availability of graphics cards in general. Fortunately, El Chapuzas Informatico managed to get ahold of two datasheets from Sapphire that highlight features and use cases of its GPRO X080 and GPRO X060 mining graphics cards, primarily targeting Ethereum coin mining.

According to the source, the company has readied two models based on RDNA2 chipsets. That is GPRO X080 SKU based on Navi 22 with 2304 Streaming Processors, running at 2132 MHz frequency. Paired with Navi 22 GPU, 10 GB of GDDR6 memory runs at 16 Gbps speed on a 160-bit bus. This model has no display outputs, and the only connector is a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot that connects the GPU to the motherboard. Running at the default 165 Watt TGP, the card produces a 38.0 MH/s hash rate, while the optimized form of 41.6 MH/s reduces TGP to just 93 Watts.

As we await the update of AMD's highly anticipated 6000 series Rembrandt APUs based on Zen 3 cores and RDNA2 graphics, we are in for a surprise with information about the next generation, more than a year away, of Ryzen 7000 series mobile processors based on Zen 4 architecture. Codenamed Raphael-H, it co-exists with the upcoming lineup of Phoenix APUs, which come after the 6000 series Rembrandt APU lineup. This mobile variant of the forthcoming desktop Raphael processors features as many as 16 cores based on Zen 4 architecture. What is so special about the Raphael-H is that it represents a mobile adaptation of desktop processors, and we are not sure how it will be different from the Phoenix APUs. However, we assume that Phoenix is going to feature a more powerful graphics solution.

The confusing thing is the timeline of these processors. First comes the Rembrandt APUs (6000 series) and then both the Raphael-H and Phoenix mobile processors. AMD could disable iGPU on mobile Raphael-H designs. However, that is just a guess. We have to wait to find out more in the upcoming months.

AMD is slowly preparing to launch its next-generation of graphics cards based on the RDNA3 architecture, and it could bring some new connectivity options as well. Currently, the graphics cards we are using today use DisplayPort 1.4 connector for their DP output. However, the more advanced DisplayPort 2.0 could land in RDNA3 GPUs, bringing much-needed improvements to the video output system. What DP 2.0 brings to the table is an upgrade to an Ultra High Bit Rate individual lane speed of 20 GB/s, totaling 80 GB/s with four of those. The DP 2.0 capable system would be able to output a 10K uncompressed resolution at 60 Hz, or two 4K 144 Hz monitors at the same time. With compression, that would be extended much further. We have to wait and see what AMD does and if the next-generation RDNA3 brings this new DisplayPort standard to the masses.

AMD today announced availability of the new AMD Radeon PRO W6000X series GPUs for Mac Pro. The new GPU product line delivers exceptional performance and incredible visual fidelity to power a wide variety of demanding professional applications and workloads, including 3D rendering, 8K video compositing, color correction and more.

Built on groundbreaking AMD RDNA 2 architecture, AMD Infinity Cache and other advanced technologies, the new workstation graphics line-up includes the AMD Radeon PRO W6900X and AMD Radeon PRO W6800X GPUs. Mac Pro users also have the option of choosing the AMD Radeon PRO W6800X Duo graphics card, a dual-GPU configuration that leverages high-speed AMD Infinity Fabric interconnect technology to deliver outstanding levels of compute performance.

MSI, a world-leading gaming brand, announces the all-new AMD-powered gaming laptop, Delta 15 and the revamped Alpha 15/17, equipped with the AMD Ryzen 5000 H Series Mobile Processors and the up to latest AMD Radeon RX6700M Series Mobile Graphics. MSI continues to fulfill the diverse demand of gaming and leverage the strength in the AMD product line.

Delta 15 and Alpha 15/17 all come with the latest Radeon RX6000M Series Mobile Graphics, 1.5x faster performance compared to previous generations AMD graphics. * Powered by the AMD Radeon RX 6700M, Delta 15 provides ultra-high frame rates, while the Alpha 15/17, equipped with the AMD Radeon RX 6600M, delivers 1080p gaming at max settings.

Previously, we have assumed that AMD 4700S desktop kit is based on Xbox Series X APU. Today, according to the findings of Bodnara, who managed to access one of these units, and we got some interesting discoveries. The chip powering the system is actually the PlayStation 5 SoC, which features AMD Zen 2 based system architecture, with 8 cores and 16 threads that can boost up to 3.2 GHz. The board that was tested features SK Hynix GDDR6 memory running at 14 Gbps, placed on the backside of the board. The APU is attached to AMD A77E Fusion Controller Hub (FCH), which was the one powering Xbox One "Durango" SoC, leading us to previously believe that the AMD 4700S is derived from an Xbox Series X system.

The graphics of this APU are disabled, however, it was the same variant of RDNA 2 GPU used by the PlayStation 5. Right out of the box, the system is equipped with a discrete GPU coming in a form of the Radeon 550, and this configuration was tested by the Bodnara team. You can find the images of the system and some performance results below.Performance:

HP introduced its latest gaming hardware and software designed for today's gamers with the powerful OMEN 16 and OMEN 17, bright and customizable OMEN 25i Gaming Monitor, and community gaming with OMEN OASIS Beta feature in OMEN Gaming Hub. The company also debuted Victus by HP, its next-generation mainstream-level gaming PC portfolio, with a 16-inch laptop.

Gaming continues to be an outlet for entertainment and connecting with friends. Two out of three people are spending more time watching videos and gaming than they did prior to the pandemic, with one in four gaming three to four hours more and almost one in five gaming six to ten hours more a week6. HP's next-generation gaming portfolio is designed for both veteran gamers and enthusiast explorers to be entertained, connected, and empowered to progress in their favorite games.

British competition regulator Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Monday, launched an enquiry into the ramifications of AMD's buy-out of FPGA maker Xilinx. The agency is soliciting opinions from the public on whether the $35 billion all-stock purchase will make goods and services less competitive for the UK. Unlike NVIDIA's Arm buyout the Xilinx acquisition is seeing no opposition from tech-giants. The Register notes that AMD could combine Xilinx's FPGAs with its x86 CPU and RDNA SIMD to create highly customizable HPC accelerators. AMD president Dr Lisa Su said "By combining our world-class engineering team and deep domain expertise, we will create an industry leader with the vision, talent and scale to define the future of high performance computing."

The current supply of graphics cards has been very tight all over the world. Starting with the launch of the latest Radeon RX 6000 series of GPUs based on RDNA 2 architecture, AMD has found itself in big trouble when it comes to supply of the silicon, compared to the demand that exists for these new GPUs. We have discussed that many times in the past and saw that it represents a problem spanning everyone involved in getting the silicon chips to the hands of consumers. On Tuesday, April 27th, AMD held its Q1 2021 earnings call and webcast, where the company executives talked about the company's future, underlying problems, and ways of addressing them.

Among many topics covered in the call, AMD's President and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, has talked about the GPU supply. According to Dr. Su, the company is ramping the production of its Radeon graphics cards, adding that the mobile Radeon GPU lineup is lurking. Here is a full quote from the earnings call.

Dr. Lisa Su—AMD Q1 2021 Earning CallAnd we're well-positioned for further growth as we have tripled our commercial notebook design wins with the largest OEMs this year. In graphics, revenue increased by a strong double-digit percentage year over year and sequentially, led by channel sales growth as revenue from our high-end Radeon 6000 GPUs more than doubled from the prior quarter. We introduced our Radeon 6700 XT desktop GPU with leadership 1440p gaming performance in March and are on track for the first notebooks featuring our leading-edge mobile RDNA 2 architecture to launch later this quarter. We expect Radeon 6000 Series GPU sales to grow significantly over the coming quarters as we ramp production.

Recently, Apple has updated its macOS operating system to support the next generation of GPUs for Mac devices, coming from AMD. The upcoming RDNA 2 GPU lineup in Macs will bring all the enhancements AMD made to the architecture, and pack it inside Apple's signature designs. Today, we have received information that Apple could refresh its Mac Pro lineup with AMD's Radeon Pro GPU based on RDNA 2 architecture. On Geekbench 5, there was a test run that was conducted on Apple Mac Pro "7.1" revision, that features not only Intel Cascade Lake-X processor but AMD's unreleased Radeon Pro W6900X graphics card designed for professional users.

While we don't know much about the exact specifications, we know that it features a Navi 21 GPU SKU. Judging by the naming scheme, the Radeon Pro W6900X is representing an Apple-exclusive GPU variant designed only for Mac Pro devices. A Chiphell leak has given us a sneak peek at the alleged card look, which you can see below. When it comes to performance, the Geekbench result measures Metal API performance and the Radeon Pro W6900X has managed to score 171448 points, which is even higher than the Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU, which tops out at 164294 points. Of course, this is representing a professional SKU, so there could be some tuning present as well.

Graphics cards have been developed over the years so that they feature multi-level cache hierarchies. These levels of cache have been engineered to fill in the gap between memory and compute, a growing problem that cripples the performance of GPUs in many applications. Different GPU vendors, like AMD and NVIDIA, have different sizes of register files, L1, and L2 caches, depending on the architecture. For example, the amount of L2 cache on NVIDIA's A100 GPU is 40 MB, which is seven times larger compared to the previous generation V100. That just shows how much new applications require bigger cache sizes, which is ever-increasing to satisfy the needs.

Today, we have an interesting report coming from Chips and Cheese. The website has decided to measure GPU memory latency of the latest generation of cards - AMD's RDNA 2 and NVIDIA's Ampere. By using simple pointer chasing tests in OpenCL, we get interesting results. RDNA 2 cache is fast and massive. Compared to Ampere, cache latency is much lower, while the VRAM latency is about the same. NVIDIA uses a two-level cache system consisting out of L1 and L2, which seems to be a rather slow solution. Data coming from Ampere's SM, which holds L1 cache, to the outside L2 is taking over 100 ns of latency.

When AMD introduced RDNA 2 architecture and higher-end Navi 21 GPU SKUs, it was only a matter of time before the company launches these GPUs inside professional-grade graphics cards. Today, thanks to the Chiphell forums, we have pictures and some specifications of AMD's upcoming Radeon Pro workstation graphics card. Pictured below is a new RDNA 2 based design that features AMD's Navi 21 GLXL GPU SKU. The new GLXL GPU SKU is supposed to be rather similar to the Navi 21 XL GPU found inside AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card, judging by the number and arrangement of capacitors on the back of the card.

When it comes to memory, the upcoming Radeon Pro workstation card is featuring 16 GB of VRAM, likely a variant of GDDR6 found on gaming-oriented graphics cards from RDNA 2 generation. When it comes to cooler design, the Radeon Pro graphics card has a blower-type cooler helping tame the Navi 21 GLXL GPU. Given that blower-type coolers are suitable for situations with less airflow, the TDP of this card could be around or under 250 Watts. You can take a look at the card below, however, do note that it is an engineering sample and the final product can look a bit different.

AMD has revealed the Infinity Cache size for the upcoming Navi 23 GPU, as well as its absence in the next-generation Van Gogh APU, which features Zen 2 cores and an RDNA GPU. The reveal comes via a new patch done by AMD to the AMKFD, a Linux kernel HSA driver for AMD APUs. The patch file doesn't list Infinity Cache per se, but does clarify the last-level cache for AMD's GPUs - L3, which is essentially the same.

The patch reveals L3 size for Sienna Cichlid (Navi 21), Navy Flounder (Navi 22), and Dimgrey Cavefish (Navi 23). Navi 21 features 128*1024 (128 MB) of Infinity Cache, the just-released Navi 22 has 96 MB, as we know, and according to the file, Navi 23 is bound to feature 32 MB of it. Considering that Van Gogh lacks an infinity Cache, it would seem that it's making use of previous-gen Navi graphics, and won't leverage RDNA2, of which the Infinity Cache is a big part of. It remains to be seen if Van Gogh will materialize in an APU product lineup or if it's a specific part for a customer. It also remains to be seen which RX product will Navi 23 power - if an AMD RX 66000 series, or 6500 series.

AMD is slowly preparing to launch its next-generation client-oriented accelerated processing unit (APU), which is AMD's way of denoting a CPU+GPU combination. The future design is codenamed after Van Gogh, showing AMD's continuous use of historic names for their products. The APU is believed to be a design similar to the one found in the SoC of the latest PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. That means that there are Zen 2 cores present along with the latest RDNA 2 graphics, side by side in the same processor. Today, one of AMD's engineers posted a boot log of the quad-core Van Gogh APU engineering sample, showing some very interesting information.

The boot log contains information about the memory type used in the APU. In the logs, we see a part that says "[drm] RAM width 256bits DDR5", which means that the APU has an interface for the DDR5 memory and it is 256-bit wide, which represents a quad-channel memory configuration. Such a wide memory bus is typically used for applications that need lots of bandwidth. Given that Van Gogh uses RDNA 2 graphics, the company needs a sufficient memory bandwidth to keep the GPU from starving for data. While we don't have much more information about it, we can expect to hear greater details soon.

Back in February, NVIDIA has announced its GPU SKUs dedicated to the cryptocurrency mining task, without any graphics outputs present on the chips. Today, we are getting information that AMD is rumored to introduce its own lineup of graphics cards dedicated to cryptocurrency mining. In the latest patch for AMD Direct Rendering Manager (DRM), a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs, we see the appearance of the Navi 12. This GPU SKU was not used for anything except Apple's Mac devices in a form of Radeon Pro 5600M GPU. However, it seems like the Navi 12 could join forces with Navi 10 GPU SKU and become a part of special "blockchain" GPUs.

Way back in November, popular hardware leaker, KOMACHI, has noted that AMD is preparing three additional Radeon SKUs called Radeon RX 5700XTB, RX 5700B, and RX 5500XTB. The "B" added to the end of each name is denoting the blockchain revision, made specifically for crypto-mining. When it comes to specifications of the upcoming mining-specific AMD GPUs, we know that both use first-generation RDNA architecture and have 2560 Stream Processors (40 Compute Units). Memory configuration for these cards remains unknown, as AMD surely won't be putting HBM2 stacks for mining like it did with Navi 12 GPU. All that remains is to wait and see what AMD announces in the coming months.

AMD has just announced its Navi 22 RDNA 2 devices, spanning the middle-end gaming sector. The Radeon RX 6700 XT, which is the latest addition to the 6000 series of Radeon graphics cards, is carrying the Navi 22 chip inside it. However, AMD GPUs need to satisfy another sector in addition to the desktop market and that is the laptop/mobile market. With the past 5000 series of laptop GPUs, AMD has made a bit of a disappointing launch. Given the availability of the first-generation RDNA GPUs in mobile devices, many gamers were unable to find 5000 series Radeon GPUs in laptops, as it was rarely a choice. MSI and Dell have carried a few models with the Radeon RX 5500M and RX 5600M, and the highest-end Radeon RX 5700M availability was limited to Dell Alienware Area-51m R2 laptop.

During the announcement of Radeon RX 6700 XT, Scott Herkleman (CVP & GM AMD Radeon) has announced that AMD is preparing the launch of the next-generation RDNA 2 based RX 6000 series of graphics cards for mobile/laptop devices. While there should be a range of models based on Navi 22, Navi 23, and Navi 24, the availability is unknown for now. The only information we have so far is that it is "coming soon". The exact configurations of these chips remain a mystery until the launch happens, so we have to wait to find out more.

When AMD and Sony collaborated on making the next generation console chip, AMD has internally codenamed it Flute, while Sony codenamed it Oberon or Ariel. This PlayStation 5 SoC die has today been pictured thanks to the Fritzchens Fritz and we get to see a closer look at the die internals. Featuring eight of AMD's Zen2 cores that can reach frequencies of up to 3.5 GHz, the CPU is paired with 36 CU GPU based on the RDNA 2 technology. The GPU is capable of running at speed of up to 2.23 GHz. The SoC has been made to accommodate all of that hardware, and bring IO to connect it all.

When tearing down the console, the heatsink and the SoC are connected by liquid metal, which is used to achieve the best possible heat transfer between two surfaces. Surrounding the die there is a small amount of material used to prevent liquid metal (a conductive material) from possibly spilling and shorting some components. Using a special short wave infrared light (SWIR) microscope, we can take a look at what is happening under the hood without destroying the chip. And really, there are a few distinct areas that are highlighted by the Twitter user @Locuza. As you can see, the die has special sectors with the CPU complex and a GPU matrix with plenty of workgroups and additional components for raytracing.