AMD’s code-named “Arctic Islands” family of products will include three brand-new chips – “Greenland”, “Baffin” and “Ellesmere” – a source with knowledge of AMD plans said. The “Greenland” will be the new flagship offering for performance enthusiasts, whereas the “Baffin” and “Ellesmere” will target other market segments, such as high-end and mainstream. It is unclear whether the “Arctic Islands” family will take in any existing products, but it is possible that AMD may address certain markets with previous-gen products.
The “Greenland” graphics processor will rely on the second-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM), so expect ultra-high-end graphics cards and professional solutions with up to 32GB of DRAM onboard with bandwidth of up to 1TB/s. Consumer-class “Greenland”-based products will likely come with 8GB – 16GB of memory. Due to usage of HBM, expect the “Greenland” chip and upcoming graphics cards on its base to resemble the currently available AMD Radeon R9 Fury-series adapters.
The number of transistors inside the “Greenland” as well as its die size are unknown. Since 14nm/16nm FinFET manufacturing technologies have considerably (up to 90 per cent) higher transistor density than contemporary TSMC’s 28nm fabrication process, it is logical to expect that the new flagship product will feature 15 – 18 billion of elements if it retains around 600mm² die size from the “Fiji”.
It is believed that AMD has already taped-out its “Greenland” graphics processing unit and is about to get the first silicon in the coming weeks.
None of it is really news. I mean, we all knew that AMD was working on new cards (when would they not be?)
What I would be really interested in is dates.
Would be funny of AMD gets first dibs to HBM2.
All the new cards really need is DX12 compatibility and maybe increased on-GPU cache. That is Maxwell's secret sawce, since it greatly mitigates the need for higher amounts of bandwidth, and with it, reduces board power consumption.
I some times wonder if HBM1 was a poisoned chalice for AMD.
It would be if they did all that and got no advantage out of it compared to NV, ie. if they let NV have it easy, free, at the same time, etc.
But if they do get first dibs, then its an advantage next-gen.
I'm just going to take this post like I do the ones over in the CPU section. Again, at this point AMD should be ruling the world with their PR statements.
It's been a long time since they've actually validated their own claims.
Of course, but gambling with the current line up.
It would be nice to see AMD release a GDDR5 type fury card, a 970 killer, capitalising on the poor release of the 970.
One of AMD's metas seems to be anticipating the market...at the expense of the current generation.
They might not bother with refreshing the low end cards since I'm sure APUs are killing that market anyway.
AMD had a 970 killer as soon as the Tri-X 290 hit $250 and less
They have first priority on HBM2, though obviously not exclusive since Nvidia will have it on their cards as well.
No. But you'll be smattered with tons of allusions and hints that AMD will have it first.... until they don't, or Nvidia has it at the same time (which is the likely scenario. Nvidia will be purchasing a whole lot more HBM2 than AMD will be, so Hynix will likely see the bigger dollar amounts from sheer volume as a "Let's take care of them first" point of view. What business wouldn't..? Maybe another company will get dibs over the both of them. Who knows.Do we have a source on AMD having "first priority" on HBM2?