AMD recently shared their FY 2016 results - which beat expectations and showed a company poised for either a big return to form (or a monumental backflip) solely on the success or failure of its two upcoming products for the CPU and graphics space, Ryzen and Vega.

Share value is based on both tangible and intangible characteristics of the company it's based upon, and in this case, AMD seems to have garnered even more attention after its solid FY 2016 execution, building confidence and expectation on its upcoming product launches. As we speak, AMD's shares have increased by 16.3% up to $12.06 a share, increasing its market cap up to $10.93B.

According to WCCFTech, AMD's next-generation Vega architecture of graphics cards will see its launch on consumer graphics solutions by May 2017. The website claims AMD will have Vega GPUs available in several SKUs, based on at least two different chips: Vega 10, the high-end part with apparently stupendous performance, and a lower-performance part, Vega 11, which is expected to succeed Polaris 10 in AMD's product-stack, offering slightly higher performance at vastly better performance/Watt. WCCFTech also point out that AMD may also show a dual-chip Vega 10×2 based card at the event, though they say it may only be available at a later date.

After spending almost 4 years developing and perfecting (as much as can be perfected in such an amount of time) it's ZEN CPU architecture, AMD is looking to extract some mileage out of it. Mark Papermaster, AMD's chief technology officer, confirmed the four-year lifespan in a conversation with PC World at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, though he declined to discuss specifics. When asked how long ZEN would last (especially comparing to Intel's now-failing two-year tick-tock cadence, Papermaster confirmed the four-year lifespan: "We're not going tick-tock," he said. "ZEN is going to be tock, tock, tock."

At CES 2017, AMD set-up a demo room in which it showcased a PC powered by a Ryzen CPU and a Vega GPU playing Star Wars Battlefront at 60 FPS, reportedly at Ultra HD, with confirmed Ultra quality settings. Some sources do report that the frame rate at 4K Ultra settings occasionally dropped to 57 or 58 fps, but it still remains a strong showing from the company's upcoming Vega graphics architecture, as well as the prowess of its Ryzen CPUs.

AMD VEGA Cube (working name), is an unannounced product by the company, which could see the light of the day as a Radeon Instinct deep-learning GPGPU solution. This [grande] coffee mug-sized contraption is four GPU subunit boards making up four sides of a cube (well, cuboid), with two sides making up the air channel, likely with space for a compound heatsink or liquid-cooling block, drawing heat from the GPUs lining the inner walls of the cube. The combined compute power of the VEGA Cube, hence, is 100 TFLOP/s (FP16), or 50 TFLOP/s (FP32, single-precision).

Each GPU board is similar in function to NVIDIA's Tesla P100 NVLink board. It has the GPU, VRM, and a high-speed interconnect. The GPUs here in question could be VEGA 10, a multi-chip module with a 25 TFLOP/s (FP16, 12.5 TFLOP/s FP32) GPU die, and 8 GB of HBM2 memory. There are four such GPU boards facing each other. AMD could deploy its much talked about NVLink-alternative, the GMI Coherent Data Fabric, which enables a 100 GB/s data path between neighboring GPUs. It remains to be seen if AMD makes an actual Radeon Instinct product out of this, or of it will remain a really groovy proof of concept.

AMD's next-generation high-end graphics card, based on the "Vega" architecture, was showcased at an event in Sonoma CA, earlier this week. While the architecture is being debuted with the Radeon Instinct MI25 deep-learning accelerator, a prototype graphics card based on the silicon was exhibited by the company, showing Vulkan API gaming.

AMD was pretty tight-lipped about the specifications of this prototype, but two details appear to have slipped out. Apparently, the chip has a floating point performance of 25 TFLOP/s (FP16), and 12.5 TFLOP/s (FP32, single-precision). On paper, this is higher than the 11 TFLOP/s (FP32) of NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal. The other important specification that emerged is that the card features 8 GB of HBM2 memory, with a memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. This, too, is higher than the 480 GB/s of the TITAN X Pascal. It remains to be seen which market-segment AMD targets with this card.

This article was updated on Dec 15 to accommodate AMD's request to remove all info regarding the demo system, the shown game and its performance, which has been put under NDA retroactively.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today unveiled its strategy to accelerate the machine intelligence era in server computing through a new suite of hardware
and open-source software offerings designed to dramatically increase performance, efficiency, and ease of implementation of deep learning workloads. New Radeon Instinct accelerators will offer organizations powerful GPU-based solutions for deep learning inference and training. Along with the new hardware offerings, AMD announced MIOpen, a free, open-source library for GPU accelerators intended to enable high-performance machine intelligence implementations, and new, optimized deep learning frameworks on AMD's ROCm software to build the foundation of the next evolution of machine intelligence workloads.

Inexpensive high-capacity storage, an abundance of sensor driven data, and the exponential growth of user-generated content are driving exabytes of data globally. Recent advances in machine intelligence algorithms mapped to high-performance GPUs are enabling orders of magnitude acceleration of the processing and understanding of that data, producing insights in near real time. Radeon Instinct is a blueprint for an open software ecosystem for machine intelligence, helping to speed inference insights and algorithm training.

The team at Videocardz has published a story with some interesting slides regarding AMD's push towards the highly-lucrative deep learning market with their INSTINCT line-up of graphics cards - and VEGA being announced as a full-fledged solution means we are perhaps (hopefully) closer to seeing a solution based on it for the consumer market as well.

Alongside the VEGA-based MI25, AMD also announced the MI6 (5.7 TFLOPS in FP32 operations, with 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth and <150 W of board power), looking suspiciously like a Polaris 10 card in disguise; and the MI8 (which appropriately delivers 8.2 TFLOPS in FP32 computations, as well as 512 GB/s memory bandwidth and <175 W typical board power), with the memory bandwidth numbers being the most telling, and putting the MI8 closely along a Fiji architecture-based solution.

A spectacular rumor doing rounds has AMD sign 2016 off with a new high-end graphics card launch. The company could launch the Radeon RX 490 by the end of the year, according to an Guru3D report. This SKU could either be based on the larger Vega 10 silicon, or be a dual-GPU on a stick graphics card based on a pair of Polaris 10 "Ellesmere" chips. The former seems more likely as multi-GPU support among recent AAA game launches is dwindling. Earlier this year, AMD inadvertently leaked the SKU name Radeon RX 490 on its website.

If the Radeon RX 490 is based on the Vega 10, then it could feature 4,096 stream processors based on the "Vega" architecture, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 4096-bit HBM2 memory interface, holding 8 GB or 16 GB of memory, with a memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. If instead it is a dual-GPU card based on Polaris 10, then you could be looking at 2x 2,304 stream processors, and 16 GB of GDDR5 memory across two 256-bit wide memory interfaces.

GIGABYTE is planning to expand its subsidiary AORUS into motherboards and graphics cards. The company currently sells gaming notebooks and gaming peripherals, including keyboards and mice, under the AORUS brand. This could be GIGABYTE's third attempt at establishing a premium motherboard/VGA brand that rivals ASUS Republic of Gamers and MSI Gaming Series; besides its G1.Gaming and Xtreme Gaming extensions under its main brand. AORUS is a brand unto itself, with products lacking any prominent GIGABYTE markings.

The first AORUS branded motherboards will be socket LGA1151, based on Intel's upcoming 200-series chipset, with out of the box support for 7th generation Core "Kaby Lake" processors. The motherboards will hit the shelves in January 2017. The first AORUS-branded graphics cards will launch when AMD and NVIDIA launch their next high-end GPUs (think NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and AMD "Vega"). Last we heard, the GTX 1080 Ti is headed for a January 2017 launch.

AMD CTO, speaking at an investors event organized by Deutsche Bank, recently announced that the company's next-generation "Vega" GPUs, its first high-end parts in close to two years, will be launched in the first half of 2017. AMD is said to have made significant performance/Watt refinements with Vega, over its current "Polaris" architecture. VideoCardz posted probable specs of three parts based on the architecture.

AMD will begin the "Vega" architecture lineup with the Vega 10, an upper-performance segment part designed to disrupt NVIDIA's high-end lineup, with a performance positioning somewhere between the GP104 and GP102. This chip is expected to be endowed with 4,096 stream processors, with up to 24 TFLOP/s 16-bit (half-precision) floating point performance. It will feature 8-16 GB of HBM2 memory with up to 512 GB/s memory bandwidth. AMD is looking at typical board power (TBP) ratings around 225W.

In a leaked presentation meant for its investors, AMD states that it expects to launch the "Vega" GPU architecture no sooner than 2017. The company plans to get it out within the first half of 2017. What makes this decision significant is that the company isn't planning on making bigger GPUs on its existing "Polaris" architecture, and its biggest product is the $249 Radeon RX 480. This leaves the company's discrete GPU lineup virtually untended at key price-points above, against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070, GTX 1080, and TITAN X Pascal, at least for the next five months.

In the mean time, AMD could launch additional mobile SKUs based on the Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 chips. The reasons behind this slow-crawl could be many - AMD could be turning its chip-design resources to the various semi-custom SoCs it's working on, for Microsoft and Sony, with their next-generation game consoles; AMD Vega development could also be running in-sync with market availability of HBM2 memory. 2017 promises to be a hectic year for AMD, with launch of not just Vega, but also its "ZEN" CPU architecture, the "Summit Ridge" processor, and APUs based on the CPU micro-architecture.

An AMD Polaris 10 "Ellesmere" based graphics card (RX 470 or RX 480) was taken apart down to its die, for science. Close up die-shots of the silicon reveal that 36 GCN compute units is all that the silicon has, and that the RX 480 indeed maxes out this stream processor count, with 2,304 stream processors at its disposal.

The die is fabbed by GlobalFoundries, on its swanky new 14 nm FinFET process. Redditors good at pattern-recognition could make out 36 "structures" spread across four quadrants, deducing them to be the GCN compute units. Each of these CUs feature 64 stream processors. Roadmaps reveal that the next high-end GPUs by AMD could be based on its newer "Vega" architecture.

AMD confirmed specifications of its second and third "Polaris" architecture graphics cards in a leaked presentation, the Radeon RX 470, and the Radeon RX 460. The RX 470 will be AMD's attempt at a graphics card that plays everything at 1080p resolution, under $150. The Radeon RX 460, on the other hand, is based on the new 14 nm Polaris11 "Baffin" silicon, and could be ideal for MOBA games with light GPU requirements.

The Radeon RX 470 is carved out from the Polaris10 "Ellesmere" silicon that the RX 480 is based on, it features 2,048 stream processors across 32 GCN compute units, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. The Radeon RX 460, on the other hand, features 896 stream processors across 14 compute units, 2 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide memory interface, and relies on the PCI-Express slot entirely for power. The reference RX 460 board looks quite similar to the Radeon R9 Nano, but features a simpler spiral heatsink under the fan. Despite rumors to the contrary, it looks like Vega is on-course for a 2017 launch after all.

AMD Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) chief Raja Koduri was in Shanghai last week to meet with one of the design teams of the "Polaris10" and the upcoming "Vega10." He tweeted that development of "Vega10" had just crossed a milestone, although it's a long way to go before you can see it. The 5th generation Graphics CoreNext architecture, and successor to the upcoming "Polaris" architecture, "Vega" promises a higher performance/Watt than "Polaris," which in turn boasts of a large energy efficiency leap over its predecessor.

One of the most notable derivatives of "Vega" is the "Vega10," poised to be a performance-segment GPU, which will make it to the market alongside "Vega11," a larger enthusiast-segment chip. The Vega10 is rumored to feature 4,096 stream processors spread across 64 compute units, and is expected to be a competitor to NVIDIA's GP104 silicon. The larger Vega11 could compete with larger chips based on the "Pascal" architecture, such as the GP102.

In the wake of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards, which if live up to their launch marketing, could render AMD's high-end lineup woefully outperformed, AMD reportedly decided to pull the launch of its next big silicon, Vega10, from its scheduled early-2017 launch, to October 2016. Vega10 is a successor to "Grenada," and will be built on the 5th generation Graphics CoreNext architecture (codenamed "Vega").

Vega10 will be a multi-chip module, and feature HBM2 memory. The 14 nm architecture will feature higher performance/Watt than even the upcoming "Polaris" architecture. "Vega10" isn't a successor to "Fiji," though. That honor is reserved for "Vega11." It is speculated that Vega10 will feature 4096 stream processors, and will power graphics cards that compete with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. Vega11, on the other hand, is expected to feature 6144 stream processors, and could take on the bigger GP100-based SKUs. Both Vega10 and Vega11 will feature 4096-bit HBM2 memory interfaces, but could differ in standard memory sizes (think 8 GB vs. 16 GB).

At a presser in Taiwan for its Radeon Pro Duo launch, AMD talked extensively about its upcoming "Polaris" and "Vega" family of GPUs. The company appears to be betting heavily on two SKUs it plans to launch this June, Polaris 10 and Polaris 11. Polaris 10 is an internal designation to Radeon R9 490(X), based on the 14 nm "Ellesmere" silicon. It may be the biggest chip AMD builds on the "Polaris" architecture, but it won't exactly be a "big chip," in that it doesn't succeed "Fiji." That honor is reserved for "Vega," which debuts in early-2017.

The "Ellesmere" silicon is more of AMD's competitor to NVIDIA's GP104. It is rumored that the R9 490(X), based on this silicon, will offer consumers performance rivaling the GeForce GTX 980 Ti (ergo faster than the Radeon R9 Fury X), at a USD $300-ish price point. "Ellesmere" will be a lean-machine, physically featuring up to 2,560 4th generation GCN stream processors (2,304 enabled on Polaris 10), a possible 256-bit GDDR5X memory interface, and a deep sub-200W typical board power rating.

AMD's upcoming GPUs based on the "Polaris" and "Vega" architectures appear to be taking advantage of performance/Watt gains to keep stream processor counts low, and chips small, according to a VideoCardz analysis of curious-looking CompuBench entries. Assuming that a Graphics CoreNext (GCN) compute unit (CU) of the "Polaris" architecture, like the three versions of GCN before it, consists of 64 stream processors, AMD's Polaris 11 silicon, codenamed "Baffin," could feature over 1,024 stream processors, across 16 CUs; Polaris 10, codenamed "Ellesmere," could feature over 2,304 stream processors spread across over 36 CUs; and Vega 10 featuring 4,096 stream processors, spread across 64 CUs.

The "Baffin" silicon succeeds current generation "Curacao" silicon, driving mid-range graphics cards. It is expected to feature a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. The "Ellesmere" silicon succeeds current-generation "Tonga" silicon, driving performance-segment SKUs. It could feature up to 8 GB of GDDR5(X) memory. These two chips could see the light of the day by mid-2016. The third chip out of AMD's stable, Vega 10, could succeed "Fiji," overcoming its biggest marketing shortcoming - 4 GB memory. Taking advantage of HBM2 interface, it could feature 16 GB of memory. It could launch some time in early-2017. AMD is claiming a massive 2.5X performance-per-Watt increase for "Polaris" over the current GCN 1.2 architecture, which drives the "Tonga" and "Fiji" chips, and so these stream processor counts could look deceptively insufficient.

The LinkedIn profile of an R&D manager at AMD discloses key details of the company's upcoming "Greenland" graphics processor, which is also codenamed Vega10. Slated for an early-2017 launch, according to AMD's GPU architecture roadmap, "Greenland" will be built on AMD's "Vega" GPU architecture, which succeeds even the "Polaris" architecture, which is slated for later this year.

The LinkedIn profile of Yu Zheng, an R&D manager at AMD (now redacted), screencaptured by 3DCenter.org, reveals the "shader processor" (stream processor) count of Vega10 to be 4,096. This may look identical to the SP count of "Fiji," but one must take into account "Greenland" being two generations of Graphics CoreNext tech ahead of "Fiji," and that the roadmap slide hints at HBM2 memory, which could be faster. One must take into account AMD's claims of a 2.5X leap in performance-per-Watt over the current architecture with Polaris, so Vega could only be even faster.

Alongside its big Radeon Pro Duo flagship graphics card launch, AMD unveiled its GPU architecture roadmap that looks as far into the future as early-2018. By then, AMD will have launched as many as three new GPU architectures. It begins with the launch of its 4th generation Graphics CoreNext architecture, codenamed "Polaris," in mid-2016. Built on the 14 nm FinFET process, "Polaris" is expected to offer a whopping 2.5x increase in performance-per-Watt for AMD, compared to its current GCN 1.2 architecture on 28 nm.

Hot on Polaris' heels, in early-2017, AMD plans to launch the "Vega" GPU architecture. While this appears to offer a 50% increase in performance-per-Watt over Polaris, its highlight is HBM2 memory. Does this mean that AMD plans to skip HBM2 on Polaris, and stick to GDDR5X? Could AMD be opting for a similar approach to NVIDIA, by launching its performance-segment GPU first as an enthusiast product, giving it a free run on the markets till early-2017, and then launching a Vega-based big-chip with HBM2 memory, taking over as the enthusiast-segment product? Some time in early-2018, AMD will launch the "Navi" architecture, which appears to offer a 2.5x performance-per-Watt lead over Polaris, taking advantage of an even newer memory standard.