Details of the next generation AMD GPU architecture

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This information is from the Fusion summit:

http://translate.googleusercontent.c...ucH95MrDlb4Dfg

http://www.pcper.com/news/Editorial/...2011-Live-Blog

[kalniel]

Slides: http://www.hardware.fr/news/11656/af...r-gpu-amd.html

Looks like they've gone heavily into compute, not unlike nVidia did last time around. Hope graphics performance hasn't suffered as a consequence.

[scaryjim]

From what I can read on the slides this is part of the move towards using the FP clusters in the GPU to push x86 FP work onto the GPU - the next phase towards true Fusion? Although it sounds like the same tech will go into the discreet cards? If that would work with an AMD GPU + any CPU thta'd be pretty impressive...

[kalniel]

More details from Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4455/a...ts-for-compute

Kinda looks a bit like it's heading towards larrabee. I need to go back and look at the fermi articles, but I don't know how AMD will manage this large a switch at the same time as a new fab process - I think my hopes of a 2011 new graphics release at the upper end won't be fulfilled by AMD.

[scaryjim]

... I think my hopes of a 2011 new graphics release at the upper end won't be fulfilled by AMD.

No, I suspect this winter's launches will be tweaked and optimized VLIW4 cards: don't forget that they've only gone VLIW4 on one sub-family of cards so far. I'd anticipate a full range of VLIW4 cards - presumably with the top end cramming in even more shaders than currently available -towards the end of this year beginning of next, and then the rumours to start flying about new architecture cards this time next year. When they'll get it into production, however, is anyones guess. ]

I strongly suspect that - as the article suggests - we'll see a split line-up at some point with top end and professional cards based on the new architecture, and mid- to low-range consumer graphics cards remaining based on VLIW4 (which is, after all, still good for the vast majority of graphics tasks....)

[Zak33]

can you imagine the marketing dept's worknig on TWO new sets of confusing model numbers for us...they'll be in overdrive coffee fuelled heaven!

one new set to relaunch what we have now, a small evo of the current architechture.. but new boxes...... and with new numbers...

and another load of number/letter combos for the new range...

I can virtually SMELL the woodsmoke....