AMD to change its GPU naming scheme?

AMD's 20nm Volcanic Islands GPUs are anticipated to hit the market in Q4 2013, and if a new rumor is to be believed the successor to "Volcanic Islands" may be called "Pirate Islands". This future GPU series may be released in 2014 and reportedly includes chips with codenames such as "Bermuda", "Fiji" and "Treasure Island".

On top of that, TPU also writes that AMD could do away with the Radeon HD xxx model number scheme, replacing it with something that looks like Radeon R# xxxx. This naming change is expected to debut with the "Volcanic Islands" series later this year.

We have two theories on how something like that could be worked out. First, of course, is that "R#" could denote generation, "xxxx" the model number (eg: Radeon R9 1900), a simple replacement of the "HD" moniker; and second is that "R#" could denote market segment, and "xxxx" model number (eg: Radeon R9-170 for "Hawaii XT," R8-170 for "Maui XT," R7-170 for "Tonga XT," and R9-270 for "Bermuda XT," etc.)