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.

We have recently seen an influx of rumors about an upcoming "SteamPal" portable gaming computer under development by Valve. The first indication that this new device is real was a recently uncovered "SteamPal" device name referenced under the unreleased "Neptune" controller in the latest Steam Client Beta. This SteamPal device name reportedly refers to an upcoming portable gaming computer with a similar controller design to the Nintendo Switch albeit unremovable featuring a standard set of gamepad buttons and triggers, dual joysticks, at least one thumb-sized touchpad, and a 7"-8" touchscreen display. The SteamPal is still in the prototype stage so final hardware configurations are not confirmed and are subject to change.

There is good reason to believe these rumors are true after a recent cryptic comment from Gabe Newell about bringing Valve games to consoles with him stating that we will have a "better idea by the end of this year" which is in line with rumors stating that Valve is targeting a Q4 2021 announcement for the SteamPal. The device will reportedly feature a quad-core Van Gogh APU from AMD with 8 RDNA2 compute units which would allow gamers to run their entire Steam library on the portable device. Valve is reportedly targeting a 399 USD price for the device however as with all these rumors take it with a healthy dose of skepticism.

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.

A May 2020 report put together with info from multiple sources pointed towards AMD's client-segment product roadmap going as far into the future as 2022. The roadmap was partial, with a few missing bits. VideoCardz attempted to reconstruct the roadmap based on new information from one of the primary sources of the May leak, @MeibuW. According to the roadmap, 2020 will see AMD debut its 4th Gen Ryzen "Vermeer" desktop processors featuring "Zen 3" CPU cores, built on TSMC N7e or N7P silicon fabrication process, and offering PCIe Gen 4. The "Renoir" APU silicon combining up to 8 "Zen 2" CPU cores with a 512-SP "Vega" iGPU debuted on the mobile platform, and recently launched on the desktop platform as an OEM-exclusive. It remains to be seen if AMD launches this in the DIY retail channel.

2021 is when three new codenames from AMD get some air-time. "Warhol" is codename for the 5th Gen Ryzen part that succeeds "Vermeer." Interestingly, it too is shown as a combination of "Zen 3" CPU cores, PCIe Gen 4, and 7 nm. Perhaps AMD could innovate in areas such as DRAM (switch to PC DDR5), and maybe increase core counts. DDR5 could herald a new socket, after 4 years of AM4. The second silicon bound for 2021 is "Van Gogh," an APU that combines "Zen 2" CPU cores with an RDNA2 iGPU. Interestingly, "Cezanne," bound for the same year, has the opposite CPU+iGPU combination - a newer gen "Zen 3" CPU component, and an older gen "Vega" iGPU. The two chips could target different markets, looking at their I/O, with "Van Gogh" supporting LPDDR5 memory.

The earliest reports on AMD's next-generation "Cezanne" APU silicon pointed at the possibility of the chip combining "Zen 3" CPU cores with a next-generation iGPU solution based on RDNA2 ("Navi 2#"). AMD plans to launch "Cezanne" in 2021, which makes it the immediate successor to "Renoir." A report by Igor's Lab has fresh details on "Cezanne." Apparently the chip sticks with the "Vega" graphics architecture on its iGPU. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same exact iGPU as the 8 CU version on "Renoir."

On the other hand, the "Van Gogh" silicon slated for 2021 is expected to receive RDNA2 graphics. It's important to note here that "Van Gogh" and "Cezanne" sit in the same product stack, and "Van Gogh" does not succeed "Cezanne." Rather, it's the codename for an entry-level APU, succeeding "Dali" (Athlon 3000G), which also means the RDNA2-based iGPU will be a lot slimmer than the "Vega" based one on "Cezanne." It's only by 2022 that AMD will have a performance-segment APU with RDNA2-based iGPU, with "Rembrandt." Find our older article getting into AMD's roadmaps here.