Word is that AMD already has plans to replace the aging Graphics Core Next (GCN) micro-architecture for its current GPUs. However, a more recent rumour goes a step further to suggest that the new architecture won’t come into existence until after the launch of the Navi micro-architecture, which is sometime between 2020 and 2021.
If the reports are to be believed, work on the new GPU micro-architecture began long before the former Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) chief, Raja Koduri, left to take up his new position at Intel. In his place, AMD hired and appointed David Wang and Mike Rayfield as the new heads of RTG. Sadly, there isn’t a whole lot of information to go on beyond this point, and AMD has been pretty tight-lipped on the subject.
Navi will be made using a new 7nm die lithography based on the GCN micro-architecture. It will be the sixth and last iteration of the GCN architecture, and is slated for launch sometime in the year 2019. Additional details from TweakTown also indicate that the first Navi-powered card will be a professional card, and not a gaming-based Radeon series card.
This isn’t the first time that AMD has done this; when AMD announced its Radeon RX Vega series GPUs last year, the first card to be released was the Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition, which was made specifically for the people in the commercial and professional field. Several months later, the consumer-grade Radeon RX Vega 56 and 64 were announced last year at SIGGRAPH 2017.
(Source: TweakTown)
