AMD Navi to be its first 7nm GPU, with late 2018 or early 2019 launch?

Posted on Friday, September 23 2016 @ 12:39 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
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Earlier this week I covered some fresh rumors about AMD's Vega and Navi lineup, that news originated from VideoCardz and parts of it were confirmed by FUD Zilla. The latter now offers a couple of updates about Vega20 and Navi -- and some of the information is in conflict with what VideoCardz wrote earlier this week.

Vega10, Vega11 and Vega20 all slated for 2017?
First up, FUD Zilla writes the Vega10, Vega11 and Vega20 are all scheduled for a 2017 release. Vega10 is planned for the first half of 2017 and will be AMD's first GPU with HBM2. This is the new high-end card from AMD and its launch will be followed by Vega 11, which will be used for the mainstream segment that's currently occupied by Polaris.

The weird thing is Vega20 is expected to follow six to nine months after the launch of Vega10, the site describes it as an "updated version" but it's unclear what kind of innovation you can expect. Based on earlier rumors, it may be that Vega20 is a part that will compete against NVIDIA's flagship Titan and Tesla products. It's expected to feature double the memory and memory bandwidth as Vega10, as well as good compute characteristics.

Vega20 is believed to be a 150W+ product and may arrive with PCI Express 4.0 support. FUD Zilla claims Vega20 will be made on a 14nm FinFET process which conflicts with the VideoCardz rumor about Vega20 being a 7nm product. FUD Zilla claims Vega20 is planned for late 2017, which will likely become early 2018 after some delays, whereas VideoCardz claims Vega20 is planned for the second half of 2018.

Either way, it seems AMD's 2017/2018 roadmap will consists primarily of Vega derivatives.

Navi to be 7nm part with late 2018 or early 2019 arrival?
The second story deals with Navi. FUD Zilla claims Navi will be the first AMD GPU to be made on a 7nm process by GlobalFoundries and that this part is expected by late 2018 or early 2019. Previous AMD roadmaps indicate Navi will use an unnamed next-gen memory technology.

As always, take this information with a grain of salt.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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