While Nvidia's Pascal has held the spotlight in the news recently, it is not the only new GPU architecture debuting this year. AMD will soon be bringing its Polaris-based graphics cards to market for notebooks and mainstream desktop users. While several different code names have been thrown around for these new chips, they are consistently in general terms referred to as Polaris 10 and Polaris 11. AMD's Raja Kudori stated in an interview with PC Perspective that the numbers used in the naming scheme hold no special significance, but eventually Polaris will be used across the entire performance lineup (low end to high end graphics).
Naturally, there are going to be many rumors and leaks as the launch gets closer. In fact, Tech Power Up recently came into a number of interesting details about AMD's plans for Polaris-based graphics in 2016 including specifications and which areas of the market each chip is going to be aimed at.
Citing the usual "industry sources" familiar with the matter (take that for what it's worth, but the specifications do not seem out of the realm of possibility), Tech Power Up revealed that there are two lines of Polaris-based GPUs that will be made available this year. Polaris 10 will allegedly occupy the mid-range (mainstream) graphics option in desktops as well as being the basis for high end gaming notebook graphics chips. On the other hand, Polaris 11 will reportedly be a smaller chip aimed at thin-and-light notebooks and mainstream laptops.
Now, for the juicy bits of the leak: the rumored specifications!
AMD's "Polaris 10" GPU will feature 32 compute units (CUs) which TPU estimates – based on the assumption that each CU still contains 64 shaders on Polaris – works out to 2,048 shaders. The GPU further features a 256-bit memory interface along with a memory controller supporting GDDR5 and GDDR5X (though not at the same time heh). This would leave room for cheaper Polaris 10 derived products with less than 32 CUs and/or cheaper GDDR5 memory. Graphics cards would have as much as 8GB of memory initially clocked at 7 Gbps. Reportedly, the full 32 CU GPU is rated at 5.5 TFLOPS of single precision compute power and runs at a TDP of no more than 150 watts.
Compared to the existing Hawaii-based R9 390X, the upcoming R9 400 Polaris 10 series GPU has fewer shaders and less memory bandwidth. The memory is clocked 1 GHz higher, but the GDDR5X memory bus is half that of the 390X's 512-bit GDDR5 bus which results in 224 GB/s memory bandwidth for Polaris 10 versus 384 GB/s on Hawaii. The R9 390X has a slight edge in compute performance at 5.9 TFLOPS versus Polaris 10's 5.5 TFLOPS however the Polaris 10 GPU is using much less power and easily wins at performance per watt! It almost reaches the same level of single precision compute performance at nearly half the power which is impressive if it holds true!
| R9 390X | R9 390 | R9 380 | R9 400-Series "Polaris 10" | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Code name | Grenada (Hawaii) | Grenada (Hawaii) | Antigua (Tonga) | Polaris 10 |
| GPU Cores | 2816 | 2560 | 1792 | 2048 |
| Rated Clock | 1050 MHz | 1000 MHz | 970 MHz | ~1343 MHz |
| Texture Units | 176 | 160 | 112 | ? |
| ROP Units | 64 | 64 | 32 | ? |
| Memory | 8GB | 8GB | 4GB | 8GB |
| Memory Clock | 6000 MHz | 6000 MHz | 5700 MHz | 7000 MHz |
| Memory Interface | 512-bit | 512-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 384 GB/s | 384 GB/s | 182.4 GB/s | 224 GB/s |
| TDP | 275 watts | 275 watts | 190 watts | 150 watts (or less) |
| Peak Compute | 5.9 TFLOPS | 5.1 TFLOPS | 3.48 TFLOPS | 5.5 TFLOPS |
| MSRP (current) | ~$400 | ~$310 | ~$199 | $ unknown |
Note: Polaris GPU clocks esitmated using assumption of 5.5 TFLOPS being peak compute and accurate number of shaders. (Thanks Scott.)
Another comparison that can be made is to the Radeon R9 380 which is a Tonga-based GPU with similar TDP. In this matchup, the Polaris 10 based chip will – at a slightly lower TDP – pack in more shaders, twice the amount of faster clocked memory with 23% more bandwidth, and provide a 58% increase in single precision compute horsepower. Not too shabby!
Likely, a good portion of these increases are made possible by the move to a smaller process node and utilizing FinFET "tri-gate" like transistors on the Samsung/Globalfoundries 14LPP FinFET manufacturing process, though AMD has also made some architecture tweaks and hardware additions to the GCN 4.0 based processors. A brief high level introduction is said to be made today in a webinar for their partners (though AMD has come out and said preemptively that no technical nitty-gritty details will be divulged yet). (Update: Tech Altar summarized the partner webinar. Unfortunately there was no major reveals other than that AMD will not be limiting AIB partners from pushing for the highest factory overclocks they can get).
Moving on from Polaris 10 for a bit, Polaris 11 is rumored to be a smaller GCN 4.0 chip that will top out at 14 CUs (estimated 896 shaders/stream processors) and 2.5 TFLOPS of single precision compute power. These chips aimed at mainstream and thin-and-light laptops will have 50W TDPs and will be paired with up to 4GB of GDDR5 memory. There is apparently no GDDR5X option for these, which makes sense at this price point and performance level. The 128-bit bus is a bit limiting, but this is a low end mobile chip we are talking about here...
| R7 370 | R7 400 Series "Polaris 11" | |
|---|---|---|
| GPU Code name | Trinidad (Pitcairn) | Polaris 11 |
| GPU Cores | 1024 | 896 |
| Rated Clock |
925 MHz base (975 MHz boost) |
~1395 MHz |
| Texture Units | 64 | ? |
| ROP Units | 32 | ? |
| Memory | 2 or 4GB | 4GB |
| Memory Clock | 5600 MHz | ? MHz |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 179.2 GB/s | ? GB/s |
| TDP | 110 watts | 50 watts |
| Peak Compute | 1.89 TFLOPS | 2.5 TFLOPS |
| MSRP (current) | ~$140 (less after rebates and sales) | $? |
Note: Polaris GPU clocks esitmated using assumption of 2.5 TFLOPS being peak compute and accurate number of shaders. (Thanks Scott.)
Fewer details were unveiled concerning Polaris 11, as you can see from the chart above. From what we know so far, it should be a promising successor to the R7 370 series even with the memory bus limitation and lower shader count as the GPU should be clocked higher, (it also might have more shaders in M series mobile variants versus of the 370 and lower mobile series) and a much lower TDP for at least equivalent if not a decent increase in performance. The lower power usage in particular will be hugely welcomed in mobile devices as it will result in longer battery life under the same workloads, ideally. I picked the R7 370 as the comparison as it has 4 gigabytes of memory and not that many more shaders and being a desktop chip readers may be more widely familiar with it. It also appears to sit between the R7 360 and R7 370 in terms of shader count and other features but is allegedly going to be faster than both of them while using at least (on paper) less than half the power.
Of course these are still rumors until AMD makes Polaris officially, well, official with a product launch. The claimed specifications appear reasonable though, and based on that there are a few important takeaways and thoughts I have.
The first thing on my mind is that AMD is taking an interesting direction here. While NVIDIA has chosen to start out its new generation at the top by announcing "big Pascal" GP100 and actually launching the GP104 GTX 1080 (one of its highest end consumer chips/cards) yesterday and then over the course of the year introducing lower end products AMD has opted for the opposite approach. AMD will be starting closer to the lower end with a mainstream notebook chip and high end notebook/mainstream desktop GPU (Polaris 11 and 10 respectively) and then over a year fleshing out its product stack (remember Raja Kudori stated Polaris and GCN 4 would be used across the entire product stack) and building up with bigger and higher end GPUs over time finally topping off with its highest end consumer (and professional) GPUs based on "Vega" in 2017.
This means, and I'm not sure if this was planned by either Nvidia or AMD or just how it happened to work out based on them following their own GPU philosophies (but I'm thinking the latter), that for some time after both architectures are launched AMD and NVIDIA's newest architectures and GPUs will not be directly competing with each other. Eventually they should meet in the middle (maybe late this year?) with a mid-range desktop graphics card and it will be interesting to see how they stack up at similar price points and hardware levels. Then, of course once "Vega" based GPUs hit (sadly probably in time for NV's big Pascal to launch heh. I'm not sure if Vega is Fury X replacement only or even beyond that to 1080Ti or even GP100 competitor) we should see GCN 4 on the new smaller process node square up against NVIDIA and it's 16nm Pascal products across the board (entire lineup). Which will have the better performance, which will win out in power usage and performance/watt and performance/$? All questions I wish I knew the answers to, but sadly do not!!
Speaking of price and performance/$... Polaris is actually looking pretty good so far at hitting much lower TDPs and power usage targets while delivering at least similar performance if not a good bit more. Both AMD and NVIDIA appear to be bringing out GPUs better than I expected to see as far as technological improvements in performance and power usage (these die shrinks have really helped even though from here on out that trend isn't really going to continue...). I hope that AMD can at least match NV in these areas at the mid range even if they do not have a high end GPU coming out soon (not until sometime after these cards launch and not really until Vega, the high end GCN GPU successor). At least on paper based on the leaked information the GPUs so far look good. My only worry is going to be pricing which I think is going to make or break these cards. AMD will need to price them competitively and aggressively to ensure their adoption and success.
I hope that doing the rollout this way (starting with lower end chips) helps AMD to iron out the new smaller process node and that they are able to get good yields so that they can be aggressive with pricing here and eventually at the hgh end!
I am looking forward to more information on AMD's Polaris architecture and the graphics cards based on it!
Also read:
- AMD Capsaicin GDC Live Stream and Live Blog TODAY!!
- AMD GPU Roadmap: Capsaicin Names Upcoming Architectures
- AMD's Raja Koduri talks moving past CrossFire, smaller GPU dies, HBM2 and more.
- AMD High-End Polaris Expected for 2016
- CES 2016: AMD Shows Polaris Architecture and HDMI FreeSync Displays
I will admit that I am not 100% up on all the rumors and I apologize for that. With that said, I would love to hear what your thoughts are on AMD's upcoming GPUs and what you think about these latest rumors!
Are we going to get a Polaris
Are we going to get a Polaris based design with HBM1? In the PCPer interview with Raja Kudori a while back, it sounded like they might be making another HBM1 product before moving on to HBM2. If Vega is for 2017, then there isn’t much time to sell such a product though.
Hmm I do not know if we will
Hmm I do not know if we will end up seeing that part, especially if the rumor about them moving up the launch of Vega to October is true..
Hmmm… Starting an article
Hmmm… Starting an article about AMD by talking about Nvidia. When will he biased behaviour end?
TechPowerUp as source? That’s
TechPowerUp as source? That’s a nice way to write down “UNRELIABLE”…
Benchmark entries have disproven most of their speculations over the past weeks. The gaps in the mobile lineup also draw a pretty clear image of Polaris 11 and 10.
Please don’t use the
Please don’t use the “trigate” or “3D” terminology. Trigate could refer to multigate and 3D implies stacked dies. Blame Intel and Samsung for trying to market something “new”.
What are you suggesting as
What are you suggesting as replacement?
You can’t only use the “14 nm” expression to define this marketing scam!
If Global Foundries call it “14 nm 3D FinFET”, the most relevant part is “3D FinFET” since “14 nm” isn’t a real measure of the transistor gate.
I’m afraid you can’t prevent people from using the terms “trigate” or “3D” to identify what is commercially available under these names.
Blame AMD for trying to scam people with lies…
It should be called more into
It should be called more into the 3D than planar FINFET, because nothing can exist in 2 dimensions! And FINFET was invented and the term coined by From wikipedia:
“The term FinFET (Fin Field Effect Transistor) was coined by University of California, Berkeley researchers (Profs. Chenming Hu, Tsu-Jae King-Liu and Jeffrey Bokor) to describe a nonplanar, double-gate transistor built on an SOI substrate,[8] based on the earlier DELTA (single-gate) transistor design.[9] The distinguishing characteristic of the FinFET is that the conducting channel is wrapped by a thin silicon “fin”, which forms the body of the device. The thickness of the fin (measured in the direction from source to drain) determines the effective channel length of the device. The Wrap-around gate structure provides a better electrical control over the channel and thus helps in reducing the leakage current and overcoming other short-channel effects.
In current usage the term FinFET has a less precise definition. Among microprocessor manufacturers, AMD, IBM, and Freescale describe their double-gate development efforts as FinFET[10] development whereas Intel avoids using the term to describe their closely related tri-gate architecture.[11] In the technical literature, FinFET is used somewhat generically to describe any fin-based, multigate transistor architecture regardless of number of gates.” (1)
Also You say: “since “14 nm” isn’t a real measure of the transistor gate.” When the process node(Any size process node) 14nm/whatever is named after the actual gate size, and has nothing to do with the circuit pitch(distance between circuits), GO do some reading! A 14nm gate size is a 14nm gate size, and the different processes from different fab companies have different circuit pitches, but the gate size is what gives the benefits and not the circuit pitch, so go figure on that one! Intel has a smaller circuit pitch so it can cram more 14nm gates into the same unit area, but Samsung’s 14nm gates are 14nm also, and that gate size/gate geometry is what matters most. Also “tri-gate” is an Intel marketing term for Intel’s FinFet designs!
(1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multigate_device
Actually there is no
Actually there is no correlation between the 14 nm size and physical dimensions of transistors. The pitch between the source and the drain from a 14 nm FinFET transistor is 42 nm.
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/pdf/foundry/mark-bohr-2014-idf-presentation.pdf
That’s for Intel’s process,
That’s for Intel’s process, and other processes have different pitches, but still the 14nm gate size is what is used to name the process 14nm, so Samsung’s and others who have 14nm gates may have different pitch sizes. Intel’s process can cram more transistors into a unit area than the other processes can, but that 14nm gate advantage is still available from the other chip fab processes. Intel’s process is still more mature, but Intel is still trying to get its CISC x86 designs performing at the same total SOC low power using metrics at 14nm than some of the the custom ARM designs that are/where at 28nm! That ARM RISC micro-architecture has a simpler ISA that takes less overall transistors to implement, and the custom ARM SOCs at 14nm will have more room and low power using metrics than any x86 CISC designs that take more transistors to implement! Some of the RISC custom ARM designs have even more room to implement mobile integrated GPUs/graphics that outperforms Intel’s graphics on the price/performance front!
Intel’s x86 ISA ATOMs Bombed in the mobile market, and wait until AMD rolls out its custom ARM K12 ARMv8A ISA running designs, even Apple will have problems competing against AMD’s K12 APUs with AMD’s Polaris graphics! Intel will still be trying to shoehorn the x86 ISA designs into the same low power using metrics as the ARMv8A ISA running designs, that now are at 14, and 16nm, and an ARM holdings reference design was just demonstrated at 10nm(TSMC process). Also since ARM CPUs are used in the low power markets there is nothing stopping AMD from using its High density design libraries to get 30% more planar space savings on its custom K12 ARM core’s layout design, in addition to any 14nm node planar space savings for even more APU die space available for more ACE units on any custom K12 ARM CPU core’s layout.
Intel is not going to make much headway into the mobile devices market dominated by both Custom ARMv8 ISA running designs, and the ARM holdings’ reference designs. Apple’s A10/A11 and AMD’s K12 custom designs will be the ones to watch, and AMD’s Polaris/newer will be going head to head with the PowerVR GPU designs a some future time so that comparison will be interesting to observe. AMD’s first K12 ARM based SKUs are going for the server SKUs, but there will be Tablet SKUs in there also from AMD.
For sure the Mobile Devices market OEM’s will not be making the same Intel dominated PC/laptop CPU/SOC supply market mistakes with their Licensed IP ARM ISA based designs that give the mobile device makers much more competitive control over their SOC parts supply chains! There will also be The OpenPower Power8/power9 server/HPC market licensees with the same CPU parts supply chain freedoms, ARM holdings licensed IP business model style, from the OpenPower server/HPC markets OEMs. AMD is at least currently a Two ISA based company, and maybe AMD could pick up a third ISA with OpenPower, and profit from that market also, Nvidia sure is going to be making the mad money with the OpenPower market! Google is getting some power9s, so the x86 only market is not going to be as profitable going forward!
Blah blah blah…
Anyway your
Blah blah blah…
Anyway your verbose speech won’t reverse the downtrend on your AMD stocks. :o)
All of the above is why
All of the above is why jouralists should stay away from terms like 3D or trigate. As you said. Planar is also 3D so it’s not a good term to differentiate. Trigate is a margeting term by Intel and shouldn’t be used across the board. I also dislike that term because they aren’t used as if they have 3 separate gates. Finfet is common industry term that i find to be the most accurate.
The rx480 or 480x , how much
The rx480 or 480x , how much faster would it be if AMD used 5x ram , not the standard , the clock speeds would be interesting to see the bump . and is a card down the road that we dont know about or AIB partners may install later .. anyone hear any rumors ..