AMD Navi will be another monolithic GPU, no plans for MCM yet

We haven't heard a whole lot about AMD's Navi GPU yet, but based on some details from a couple of years ago, some were hoping that this would be the first multi-chip module (MCM) design from AMD. Basically, the idea here is that big monolothic GPUs are getting harder and harder to make, and that it's starting to make more sense to "glue" two or more dies together. This creates different challenges, but at least in theory, it has numerous advantages.

In an interview with PCGamesN, David Wang, the new SVP of engineering for AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), dashes any hope that we're going to see MCM gaming GPUs anytime soon. He confirmed AMD looked at the approach, but so far the company isn't convinced it's suitable for the traditional gaming graphics type of application.

It’s definitely something AMD’s engineering teams are investigating, but it still looks a long way from being workable for gaming GPUs, and definitely not in time for the AMD Navi release next year. “We are looking at the MCM type of approach,” says Wang, “but we’ve yet to conclude that this is something that can be used for traditional gaming graphics type of application.”

Wang identified the non-existent software infrastructure as one of the major hurdling blocks. Unless AMD can make the MCM invisible to the software, it's basically going to be CrossFire on a single package. Basically, the challenge would be to make the MCM addressable as a single GPU, so game developers don't need to to expensive recoding.

Interestingly, this limitation doesn't exist outside the gaming world. For professional workloads, and stuff like blockchain applications, there's no resistance against multi-GPU solutions. Wang doesn't rule out that in the near-future, we may see a divergence between GPU architectures for professional and consumer workloads.

Navi is expected to ship next year. Based on the latest rumors, it looks like this will be a successor to Polaris, and not something that guns for NVIDIA's high-end lineup.