Discussion RDNA 5 / UDNA (CDNA Next) speculation

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CakeMonster

Golden Member
Nov 22, 2012
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Yes, the upcoming exploding demand for VRAM/RAM to load NN models is one of the main reasons AMD is going with smartphone memory for their lower end GPUs. And it's driven by developers (e.g. their close relationship with Sony).
Some models, whether its for dialogue or upscaling or something new that will be invented in 2-5 years will most probably be part of future games. That's why I'm a tad nervous about next gen consoles if they cheap out on VRAM (say 16 or 24GB), after all the expected lifetime of those will be to 2034+ which is a long time...
 

marees

Golden Member
Apr 28, 2024
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Some models, whether its for dialogue or upscaling or something new that will be invented in 2-5 years will most probably be part of future games. That's why I'm a tad nervous about next gen consoles if they cheap out on VRAM (say 16 or 24GB), after all the expected lifetime of those will be to 2034+ which is a long time...
Xbox could cheap out on vram because they can easily replace with RDNA 7 in 4 years time

PlayStation needs large vram — both for console & handheld
 

ToTTenTranz

Senior member
Feb 4, 2021
686
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You need to stop smoking MLID. It'll rot your mind :eek:


Did the people at Ubisoft, Nvidia and InWorld AI also smoked MLID a couple years ago when they built a team to prototype game experiences with LLM-enhanced NPCs, which they demoed at GTC 2024?



Was Nvidia high on MLID when they created a full set of tools exactly for that?


Was this developer high on this week's MLID rumors when they started making a game all about LLM-enhanced NPCs, due out this year?


Was Microsoft high on MLID in 2023 when they announced DirectML for DirectX 12 GPUs to run Llama 2 7B?



If so, then yes I guess I am high on MLID. 🤷‍♂️
 

dangerman1337

Senior member
Sep 16, 2010
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Some models, whether its for dialogue or upscaling or something new that will be invented in 2-5 years will most probably be part of future games. That's why I'm a tad nervous about next gen consoles if they cheap out on VRAM (say 16 or 24GB), after all the expected lifetime of those will be to 2034+ which is a long time...
Pretty much and hell Canis and Orion will be lasting beyond the PS7's launch (IMV 2035 on a A5 Node) because next-next-gen won't be cheap and if Canis becomes the "entry level baseline" for AAA gaming 2035-2040 for example with LLMs being part of games then it needs a lot of RAM not to be a big concern.

I wouldn't be suprised if it's 2042, 15 years after PS6 comes out and we still see AAA games on the PS6. I mean MWIV next year will be the first CoD dropping last-gen support which is 6 years after this gen came out (Vs IW being the first PS4/XBO only CoD after 3 years) so It wouldn't surprise me.
 

adroc_thurston

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2023
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Agentic AI using smallish 1.5-2B language and text-to-speech models are 100% going into videogames next gen for NPC dialogues, world stage integration, environment adaptability, etc.
lmao no, these are so catastrophically unreliable any sort of gamedesign vision would be gone in an instant.
 

adroc_thurston

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2023
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A custom made small model thats trained on dialog the dev wants and not just the entire knowledge of the internet would do a lot better than any distill you can download today.
It's still gonna be horribly unreliable via the very nature of language models.
 

ToTTenTranz

Senior member
Feb 4, 2021
686
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lmao no, these are so catastrophically unreliable any sort of gamedesign vision would be gone in an instant.
Companies are developing agentic AIs to promote their products/services and go as further as close deals, multimodal solutions are being deployed for medical triages in private hospitals, but god forbid a videogame developer could implement a similar system for game character dialogues, lest a NPC do something as dangerous as say stupid lines.
 
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branch_suggestion

Senior member
Aug 4, 2023
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Believing AMD slideware verbatim this far from launch has backfired before.
Their opsec have played games with leakers before, some quite hilariously.
Some leaked things were even indeed real, but were internal targets that were missed.
 

soresu

Diamond Member
Dec 19, 2014
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Oh and also the doubling of CU size.
More like they yeeted the RDNA1-4 WGP nomenclature and just started calling them CUs instead.

Whether that is because they simply thought WGP was redundant and/or confusing on top of CU language for consumers, or because WGP -> RDNA5 CU nomenclature indicates some greater interconnection between the dual 'lobes' of ALUs beyond just a clump of cache who knows.

Maybe both.
 

soresu

Diamond Member
Dec 19, 2014
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AT0 154CUs?
That was just a binning of a larger 192/96 CU die according to MLID's rumor.

Personally it sounds weird to me.

80/40 -> 192/96 is an insane shift of 2.4x for the top 2 SKU dies.

Massively more than the 60 -> 96 (1.6x) of the RDNA3 gen and even significantly beyond the 40 -> 80 (2x) of RDNA2 gen.
 
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adroc_thurston

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2023
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That was just a binning of a larger 192/96 CU die according to MLID's rumor.

Personally it sounds weird to me.

80/40 -> 192/96 is an insane shift of 2.4x for the top 2 SKU dies.

Massively more than the 60 -> 96 (1.6x) of the RDNA3 gen and even significantly beyond the 40 -> 80 (2x) of RDNA2 gen.
Shader delta only looks big because AT1 got scrapped.
 
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soresu

Diamond Member
Dec 19, 2014
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Kilobuck GPUs aren't a real market per se.
Too expensive to be mainstream-ish yet not big enough to be noteworthy on any review charts.
That's the problem tho.

If Kepler's take is correct then the uptick in raw ALUs from N48 to AT2 is only 25% for raster, and I don't expect the clock increase to be that good.

That means it's either going to be a lackluster generational increase for the 9070 XT upgrade, or a very expensive 1090 XT unless they have actually finally gone for chiplets.
 
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branch_suggestion

Senior member
Aug 4, 2023
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More like they yeeted the RDNA1-4 WGP nomenclature and just started calling them CUs instead.

Whether that is because they simply thought WGP was redundant and/or confusing on top of CU language for consumers, or because WGP -> RDNA5 CU nomenclature indicates some greater interconnection between the dual 'lobes' of ALUs beyond just a clump of cache who knows.

Maybe both.
Well the conjecture is that the WGP is dead, for starters unifying L0 and LDS already makes the WGP pretty redundant.
Then removing WGP mode/Wave64 makes it completely dead. This makes the DCU behave like a 2x sized single CU without any other changes beyond that (though there should be).
Therefore you can call what was the WGP now a single CU.
To add my personal conjecture, some RDNA4 stuff like the dynamic register alloc only works in CU mode/Wave32, so I think they will lean that way especially if CDNA is doing the same.
Unless perhaps they are just keeping a midway AT1 design for a die shrink.
He's dead, Jim.
AMD used to make parts like AT1, they all failed to move the needle.
Simple fact is there is no market between the halo and the enlightened midrange and their market analysts and product steering group finally figured this out.
Every ATx part has reuse outside of being a client dGPU (okay I don't expect AT0 to do that much in the pro market but it is their best part there in over a decade), so no need to try to fill in every hole in the market when you can sell millions of them in mobile/semicustom APU form.
If Kepler's take is correct then the uptick in raw ALUs from N48 to AT2 is only 25% for raster, and I don't expect the clock increase to be that good.
Look at the clock uplift ARM guys have gotten from N4P to N3P parts, it is a nice node bump.
That means it's either going to be a lackluster generational increase for the 9070 XT upgrade, or a very expensive 1090 XT unless they have actually finally gone for chiplets.
Not sure what uplift you're expecting but it should be good enough to make Ada/RDNA3 owners interested.
AT0 is too small to bother with chiplets when a big mono die works fine.
 
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