New AMD roadmap shows Vega and Navi Architectures
While the Polaris GPU architecture is to be released this year, two new architecture (or product series) code-names have surfaced in a roadmap shown in an AMD presentation, Vega and Navi.
It seems that after Polaris in 2017 VEGA will make an appearance, the name is tagged with HBM2 meaning that HBM2 likely will not make it onto Polaris. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, the fifth brightest star in the night sky and the second brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus. Next in line in the 2018 timeframe we see Navi with the two keywords being scalability and Nextgen memory.
The slide is plotted in years/time against perf per watt, so you will notice that the perf/watt ratio almost makes a 2x step every new release. It will be interesting to see how ling AMD stays at 15nm, 7nm is obviously the next step in fabbing, that technology is due for release in 2019/2020.
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Why not GDDR5X like Nvidia are using?
If HBM1 still has limitations of 4GB why not just go for GDDR5X for the extra bandwidth?
Its reported to still perform around 2-3x of current GDDR5 so GDDR5 basically matches HBM1 for performance since that only reach 1Gbps and HBM2 is rumoured to be around the 2Gbps range as it uses larger denser memory stacks.
Well imho GDDR5X isn't bad. It's overclockable, cheaper than HBM, and gives enough performance. I just thought they were able to stick two of those 4GB modules on a PCB and connect them both to the GPU, but maybe I imagined that to be too easy.
Polaris not even release and already "showcasing" the two future generations?
Something's not right. I had(have?) high hopes for Polaris but this seems a bit discouraging.
Why so? They just try to bring back confidence and trust in their release schedules I think

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If they use GDDR5X with Polaris it will be fine. HBM2 would be better but 5X will do the trick for middle to high end cards. Vega then with HBM2 would be the "big pascal" equivalent.
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Will GDDR5X even be available in time and in volume?
EDIT: was referring to Polaris
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Very little chance of GDDR5X. It's HBM, hopefully v2 HBM, double capacity.
OR...
it's GDDR5, which is not that far fetched considering perf/W numbers.
2.5x perf/Watt of R9 285(GCN1.2, Sep.2014) means 40-50% better than GTX 980, which is not particularly high target considering 28nm->14nm,
but is line with that another roadmap perf/W jump in 2017 with HBM2, ie. Vega.
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Polaris not even release and already "showcasing" the two future generations?
Something's not right. I had(have?) high hopes for Polaris but this seems a bit discouraging.