** The AMD Navi Thread **

[D.P.]

AMD has officially discussed Vega 20. Main obvious change is the addition of 1:2 FP64. That is the summer 2018 release. Navi will be the year after

 

[jigger]

I can't see AMD ordering Navi chips from TSMC early 2018 and holding onto them for 12 months. Never going to happen.

 

[D.P.]

I can't see AMD ordering Navi chips from TSMC early 2018 and holding onto them for 12 months. Never going to happen.

Because AMD won't be making Navi chips next year

 

[jigger]

No GloFlo or TSMC will be. TSMC will be making some of 7nm AMD GPU early next year. Either Vega 2 or Navi.

 

[andybird123]

No GloFlo or TSMC will be. TSMC will be making some of 7nm AMD GPU early next year. Either Vega 2 or Navi.

DP pointed out navi isnt coming in 2018 as vega 20 is due out first, you seem to be back peddling or getting a bit confused.

Iirc glofo volume production of 7nm is due for 2h 2018, not 1h.

 

[WeSbO]

I just hope that they are able to finally scale down the arch and die sizes in order to produce a full range of GPUs from low end to high end, by cutting down the big die, a la Nvidia,
It would really make their driver development so much more efficient and potentially require less financial resources for driver development, and maybe more potential of having good day one drivers , they would have a full range of GPUs with the same software features, that would benefit from the same driver improvements at the same time.
None of this staggered releases of half ranges nonsense with half assed launch drivers. That is NVidia's force and AMD's weakness, they need to stop having so many different GCN iterations on the market at the same time.
Oh and I hope that Navi isn't GCN, but I have a bad feeling about that one.

 

[r7slayer]

Vega 20 is on 14nm + it's just going to be a refresh like polaris. Not sure why people are expecting it to be another year line up. Navi can certainly slot in 2k18 on schedule. Road map shows Vega beginning 2k17 to end of 2k17 and navi beginning 2k18 to end of 2k18.
Vega seems to be held back by glofo and yield rates. Might be why AMD jumped to TSMC for navi.

 

[jigger]

DP pointed out navi isnt coming in 2018 as vega 20 is due out first, you seem to be back peddling or getting a bit confused.

Iirc glofo volume production of 7nm is due for 2h 2018, not 1h.

Yay Angerybird his here to spread his wisdom. DP has pointed exactly nothing but what he thinks could happen, but AMD are ordering 7nm parts from TSMC. BIG contract already signed you see.

Vega 20 is on 14nm + it's just going to be a refresh like polaris. Not sure why people are expecting it to be another year line up. Navi can certainly slot in 2k18 on schedule. Road map shows Vega beginning 2k17 to end of 2k17 and navi beginning 2k18 to end of 2k18.
Vega seems to be held back by glofo and yield rates. Might be why AMD jumped to TSMC for navi.

So respin 14nm plus for Vega at Global. That would segest Navi will very likely be the 7nm TSMC part.

Must be a good reason for the TSMC deal. Has to be either cost, volume or performance.

 

[theforce]

AMD has officially discussed Vega 20. Main obvious change is the addition of 1:2 FP64. That is the summer 2018 release. Navi will be the year after

I had the impression that the 1:2 FP64 will mostly appeal to the pro market rather than gamers. A higher clocked HBM or a 3rd stack wouldn't hurt either.

 

[Rroff]

Yay Angerybird his here to spread his wisdom. DP has pointed exactly nothing but what he thinks could happen, but AMD are ordering 7nm parts from TSMC. BIG contract already signed you see.

So far we have one unconfirmed report (which cites "industry sources") they are using TSMC and points back to the analyst's day comments Lisa Su made which only talks about the flexibility to use other foundries now not that they have definite plans to. But AFAIK they still have to pay GF some money for every wafer they have made elsewhere so its unlikely they would go elsewhere unless absolutely forced to.

Doing a bit of digging it appears the source is probably the same as http://www.expreview.com/43087.html which claimed Ryzen CPUs would be switching from GF to TSMC 16FF+.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Its from the 4th biggest newspaper in Taiwan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Times

From the article:

The industry believes that Glover in recent years, there is no expansion of 14 nanometer production capacity, limited capacity in the case of limited, do not rule out AMD APU and GPU in the second half will still be out of stock situation.

In order to solve the problem of capacity constraints, while speeding up the process of micro-speed, AMD next year 7 nm APU and GPU OEM orders will return to TSMC. According to industry sources, AMD will be introduced next year, several Zen 2 architecture APU processor, and a new generation of Navi architecture GPU chips, etc., will use TSMC 7nm process mass production. If the process is smooth, do not rule out the new generation of 719 nanometer process APU and GPU will also be TSMC won the OEM orders.

http://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20170808000038-260202

Basically,the reason is there stated in the article,they are only going to TSMC due to supply constraints. So they don't think that GF can supply Ryzen CPUs,APUs and AMD GPUs in enough quantity.

AMD is fully committed to GF,as thet have to with WSA,so it looks like they are dual sourcing.

AMD paid a $100 million charge so they could make products outside of GF:

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/10631/WSA5.png

That was in late 2016. However,remember,AMD tends to launch GPUs almost at the end of the year,and Raven Ridge is only launching late this year. So its most likely very late 2018(maybe November to December),as I cannot see AMD replacing Vega and Raven Ridge in under a year.

There are rumours of a "Pascal refresh" - if AMD is pushing to get to 7NM,I certainly expect Nvidia will too. We will need to wait and see.

 

[jigger]

Navi probably isn't a replacement for Vega though.

 

[harney]

here we go again

 

[subbytna]

Any rumours heard that Navi will be multi chip using infinity fabric like Threadripper?

My mate says it's an option he read somewhere, but I'm 99% sure it was the beer talking and he's full of it. I can't find anything online to say it is, or isn't.

 

[Rroff]

Any rumours heard that Navi will be multi chip using infinity fabric like Threadripper?

My mate says it's an option he read somewhere, but I'm 99% sure it was the beer talking and he's full of it. I can't find anything online to say it is, or isn't.

There is reason to suggest AMD is planning on going with MCM type designs in the future with Navi but it probably won't be the first incarnation that we see out the door - the problems with current mGPU techniques like SLI and CF can't be completely solved with something like IF and require some significant architecture changes to allow for high speed, low latency interconnects right into the various parts of the chips and not just between the chips and things like DX12 explicit multi-adapter haven't really taken off yet in any way that would mean such a GPU was a success (and wouldn't really require IF as the intention with it is that the developer utilises it in a way they know will make the most use of the individual GPUs hence the explicit part of the name).

To properly break down a GPU from the current monolithic designs into an architecture that could make use of multiple packages on a substrate requires advances in technology that aren't going to be available in time for the likely range of release dates for the first iteration of Navi.

 

[JediFragger]

I also doubt that Infinity Fabric has the speed or the low enough latency at present, might need an iteration or two before it's fit for that purpose.

 

[silversurfer]

Vega 20 is on 14nm + it's just going to be a refresh like polaris. Not sure why people are expecting it to be another year line up. Navi can certainly slot in 2k18 on schedule. Road map shows Vega beginning 2k17 to end of 2k17 and navi beginning 2k18 to end of 2k18.
Vega seems to be held back by glofo and yield rates. Might be why AMD jumped to TSMC for navi.

Vega 20 had a chance to be 7nm I thought, the 2nd release being significant over the 1st for refinement which I think Vega probably needs.

Navi I think is going to be H1 2019 and so really I expect to be looking for a good 3rd party version early 2020 personally. Similarly I think Volta wont be this year but mostly parallel to Vega 20 but I saw a video saying Volta 2017

 

[Rroff]

I also doubt that Infinity Fabric has the speed or the low enough latency at present, might need an iteration or two before it's fit for that purpose.

Yeah IF currently is a very general purpose interconnect - the stuff nVidia was talking about that would make headless modules workable in an MCM scenario was very dedicated.

 

[JediFragger]

Navi I think is going to be H1 2019

And AMD's definition of H1 at that! We're almost 2 years away from seeing that imo, poss 20 months if lucky.

 

[Pants]

Damn, 2 years of speculation. I need an ignore thread feature.