Question Speculation: RDNA3 + CDNA2 Architectures Thread

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uzzi38

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biostud

Lifer
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Because it is not ready yet and no one told that it had to be ready before Q2/Q3? N32 would address quite a small part of the market anyway (large and expensive gaming laptops). N33 is the mainstream part, and the one which would sell more anyway.
Huh, I would think the $500-700 desktop market was quite large, but I guess +$800 is where the market is heading?
 

Kronos1996

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Dec 28, 2022
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An N7/N6 wafer is a lot more than 6 grand. It's closer to like 10-11.

Because of the wafer price hikes, N33 is likely more expensive than N23 was when it launched.
I used the best estimate I could find. Industry sources in the know have disputed the claims of 7nm wafers costing $10K as being way too high. Maybe in the early days but its been three years and 6nm is even cheaper to make.
 
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Stuka87

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Only one problem. It is nowhere to be bought, and I don't think it is because AMD has a ton of N21 cards in stock, they want to get rid of first....

So when do you think it will be available, and will it be soon enough so that the buyers haven't given up and bought nVidia instead?

🤷‍♂️

Historically the release date of the 9 and 8 series parts are all over the place. Sometimes they are together, sometimes they are spread apart. We will just have to wait and see. It would be really odd for them to just not have mid range cards though.
 

blckgrffn

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www.teamjuchems.com
Huh, I would think the $500-700 desktop market was quite large, but I guess +$800 is where the market is heading?

For gaming PCs? It seems like for years most of what you see from either the gaming OEMs or the Legion/Alienware&XPS/Omen desktops started at around $1K and went up from there. I don't think the cheap PC with dedicated GPUs that require more than ~150W market has been that much of a thing.

That's been the domain of 1650 and 1660 and RX 5500/6500 type cards for quite a while.

This has been a reason why I've been able to build PCs using used parts and sell them for basically at cost in the $400-$600 price rang for years, IMO. It's a hobby, not a great time investment ;)
 

biostud

Lifer
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🤷‍♂️

Historically the release date of the 9 and 8 series parts are all over the place. Sometimes they are together, sometimes they are spread apart. We will just have to wait and see. It would be really odd for them to just not have mid range cards though.
On one hans you can speculate that everything is fine, but it seems pretty weird not to have a product for a large part of your market segment. I do not think they planned not to have N32 ready Q1 ‘23.
 

Kaluan

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Jan 4, 2022
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So why didn't they announce any mobile SKUs then?
Well, mobie N33 will be out in the wild in a matter of weeks (refreshed 2022 chasis, drop-in upgrade compatible with mobile N23 AFAIK, so Rembrandt-R or various Intel laptops). Where as N32 is still many months away (allegedly). Which means not exactly something AMD would like to announce so far in advance.

There's other tech expos/shows in the meanwhile where they can announce it.

Or hell, still hoping there's a part 2 to "together we advance_gaming" 😅

Edit: Not exactly N32, but review for this laptop are what I'm most looking forward to (7940HS & 7700S @ up to 120W(!) )

 
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leoneazzurro

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Huh, I would think the $500-700 desktop market was quite large, but I guess +$800 is where the market is heading?

I meant for laptops, mobile N32 is aimed at very expensive systems (just look at the announced prices for the new XMG line starting in preorder on Feb 1st). N33 is where most of the money is, in terms of units to be sold. N32 has its market on desktop, but AMD is way more focused on mobile for a while.
 
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Zepp

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May 18, 2019
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Intel and AMD have tried this concept before already. Kaby Lake-G was an APU with 1060 max-q level performance and launched in early 2018, with both NUCs and laptops, it's still technically the fastest IGP today. Neither party (especially AMD) pursued this concept any further, most likely for good reason.
I never considered that the same thing as an 'APU' since it was 2 entirely separate chips from intel and amd talking together on an EMIB or whatever it was called with dedicated memory. It was more like a new design idea for laptop discrete GPU's than an iGPU.

Its all well and good saying that a big gaming-focused APU is great for consumers when ultimately, not enough of said consumers purchase said big gaming-focused APU at pricing which would makes sense for AMD/Intel to develop such a product.
Yes, this has always been the problem of APU's that AMD understood despite a vocal minority in the communities. Every few months on reddit there would be a "Hey, why doesn't AMD make an APU with HBM attached or dedicated GDDR? man what a home run that would be!!" ....:rolleyes: it's more of a novalty fascination with people than a compelling alternative to buying a PC with separate CPU & GPU. An APU locks your cpu/gpu choice together and requires the fastest system RAM possible to get the best performance which will still fall short of mid range dGPUs?
 

Stuka87

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I never considered that the same thing as an 'APU' since it was 2 entirely separate chips from intel and amd talking together on an EMIB or whatever it was called with dedicated memory. It was more like a new design idea for laptop discrete GPU's than an iGPU.


Yes, this has always been the problem of APU's that AMD understood despite a vocal minority in the communities. Every few months on reddit there would be a "Hey, why doesn't AMD make an APU with HBM attached or dedicated GDDR? man what a home run that would be!!" ....:rolleyes: it's more of a novalty fascination with people than a compelling alternative to buying a PC with separate CPU & GPU. An APU locks your cpu/gpu choice together and requires the fastest system RAM possible to get the best performance which will still fall short of mid range dGPUs?

Its more like an SoC than an APU. If you look at say, an Apple M1, it has the CPU, GPU, and unified memory. No external memory at all for CPU or GPU. This makes it super fast, but also unupgradable. The performance would be there, and it would be great for laptops. But a non-starter for desktops. And well, Windows would need a lot of work to properly handle unified memory.
 

Heartbreaker

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Its more like an SoC than an APU. If you look at say, an Apple M1, it has the CPU, GPU, and unified memory. No external memory at all for CPU or GPU. This makes it super fast, but also unupgradable. The performance would be there, and it would be great for laptops. But a non-starter for desktops. And well, Windows would need a lot of work to properly handle unified memory.

Effectively SoC = APU. These are essentially equivalent, monolithic complete solutions.

Kaby Lake G. Is really just a CPU and discrete GPU (with it's own independent VRAM). There is very little different between this and other laptops with discrete GPUs. The only real technology difference is the memory connection.
 

Stuka87

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Effectively SoC = APU. These are essentially equivalent, monolithic complete solutions.

Kaby Lake G. Is really just a CPU and discrete GPU (with it's own independent VRAM). There is very little different between this and other laptops with discrete GPUs. The only real technology difference is the memory connection.

Kind of. APU's don't have onboard memory. They go outside the package to access RAM. An SoC has any required RAM onboard the package.
 

Heartbreaker

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Kind of. APU's don't have onboard memory. They go outside the package to access RAM. An SoC has any required RAM onboard the package.

Completely Disagree.

Putting devices on their own small PCB and connecting that to a larger PCB is no real difference than just mounting them to larger PCB in the first place. It's just a VERY minor packaging difference.

Thus Kaby-G is no difference than just having a separated CPU with it's own memory, and PCIe connected dGPU with it's own memory. Because that is exactly what both are.

Likewise. An APU/SoC on MB, with one shared memory pool with LPPDDR soldered next to on the motherboard is really no different than an APU/SoC on it's own tiny PCB, with one shared memory pool with LPPDDR soldered next to it, is no different.

Kaby-G is Nothing like an APU/SoC, and completely like normal laptop CPU and PCIe connected dGPU combo.
 
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Glo.

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Completely Disagree.

Putting devices on their own small PCB and connecting that to a larger PCB is no real difference than just mounting them to larger PCB in the first place. It's just a VERY minor packaging difference.

Thus Kaby-G is no difference than just having a separated CPU with it's own memory, and PCIe connected dGPU with it's own memory. Because that is exactly what both are.

Likewise. An APU/SoC on MB, with one shared memory pool with LPPDDR soldered next to on the motherboard is really no different than an APU/SoC on it's own tiny PCB, with one shared memory pool with LPPDDR soldered next to it, is no different.

Kaby-G is Nothing like an APU/SoC, and completely like normal laptop CPU and PCIe connected dGPU combo.
It was 100% separate CPU and dGPU that was on single package. It never was an APU. Its still MCM connection. Its NOT an APU, its seperate CPU and GPU.
 

Glo.

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Yes, so AMD should overbuild all their APUs with overkill iGPUs that the majority of its customers do not need or want...in case Intel makes an overbuilt tiled product with an overkill iGPU that the majority of its customers do not need or want. Great business strategy.

The last time Intel and AMD made an APU with a ton of hardware dedicated for iGPU was Kaby Lake-G. Notice that neither AMD nor Intel have been anxious to produce spiritual successors to that product, for good reason.
Kaby Lake-G was always an MCM product. CPU + dGPU on single package. NEVER an APU.

The whole point of an APU is to combine CPU and GPU to be unified memory architecture. Kaby Lake - G wasn't one.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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The whole point of an APU is to combine CPU and GPU to be unified memory architecture. Kaby Lake - G wasn't one.

The problem is where you:

A.) Get the memory bandwidth
B.) Have enough of a cost reduction to make it worthwhile over just including some skimpy IGP and having an external dGPU

Fully knowing that the OEMs will mostly want the skimpy IGP.
 
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eek2121

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The Steam Deck 2 would be a prime candidate for an 8 core CPU/24 CU GPU (responding to comments I read about it the past few pages, have not had much free time).

When unplugged, the GPU can simply run at lower clocks to save power. When plugged in, clocks can boost to allow higher resolutions and refresh rates. One of the few complaints about the Steam Deck was that it doesn’t scale performance when plugged in.

Just a thought.

I used the best estimate I could find. Industry sources in the know have disputed the claims of 7nm wafers costing $10K as being way too high. Maybe in the early days but its been three years and 6nm is even cheaper to make.

You are overpricing by several thousand dollars. N6 was significantly cheaper than N5 as of 6 months ago. A customer like AMD would pay somewhere around $8,000-$9,000 for N7 (note this was $7,000-$8,000 in 2019) based on the numbers I have seen. TSMC made N6 cheaper because of less machine time involved which leads to higher volume. The early numbers I heard for N6 were around $4,000-$5,000, but that was before supply chains blew up. The real (post supply chain issues) number is likely somewhere between $5,000-$7,000. TSMC really wants everyone to transition from N7 to N6 because they can output more wafers per month, which leads to more revenue.

With the economy struggling, those prices will possibly even drop a bit.

Note that most of the numbers I have referenced above came from various leaks in 2018/2019 and a few from last year. I don’t have access to a price sheet or anything, but the sources that provided the numbers were reliable ones.
 
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Glo.

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The problem is where you:

A.) Get the memory bandwidth
B.) Have enough of a cost reduction to make it worthwhile over just including some skimpy IGP and having an external dGPU

Fully knowing that the OEMs will mostly want the skimpy IGP.
OEMs want: lowest possible manufacturing costs, simplest possible engineering costs.

That is the brutal truth. OEMs will happily take powerful iGPU if it will make them not have to include dGPU. They will take APU over CPU+dGPU combo in a hearthbeat if the manufacturing costs, design costs, engineering costs will be lower than just buying CPU+dGPU combo.

2) To get high enough memory bandwidth you have few choices.

You integrate system level caches, you increase memory bandwidth by using GDDR6 memory, or you widen the memory controller bus, and go from 128 to 192 or 256 bit bus, or you use faster memory.
 
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jpiniero

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You integrate system level caches, you increase memory bandwidth by using GDDR6 memory, or you widen the memory controller bus, and go from 128 to 192 or 256 bit bus, or you use faster memory.

But that would drive up the cost for the majority of sales that wouldn't need that. Maybe AMD could get to a point where they could split out the memory controllers into their own chiplet, like they do with Navi 31... but that feels like some ways off. Would also need a bigger package too.
 

Glo.

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But that would drive up the cost for the majority of sales that wouldn't need that. Maybe AMD could get to a point where they could split out the memory controllers into their own chiplet, like they do with Navi 31... but that feels like some ways off. Would also need a bigger package too.
If integration of SLC into the die will not cost the die space too much, you can manage.

Which is why, if the rumors of big.Little are true, I think AMD decided to go for 8P/4E combo with 24 CUs and 32 MB L4 cache.
 

insertcarehere

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Kaby Lake-G was always an MCM product. CPU + dGPU on single package. NEVER an APU.

The whole point of an APU is to combine CPU and GPU to be unified memory architecture. Kaby Lake - G wasn't one.

You're missing the point here, AMD in particular could have made a spiritual successor to Kaby Lake-G that WAS an APU (or more APU-like) any time within the last couple years (i.e big iGPU with special sauce to meet increased bandwidth requirements), they didn't, and one must assume they have a good reason.

OEMs want: lowest possible manufacturing costs, simplest possible engineering costs.

That is the brutal truth. OEMs will happily take powerful iGPU if it will make them not have to include dGPU. They will take APU over CPU+dGPU combo in a hearthbeat if the manufacturing costs, design costs, engineering costs will be lower than just buying CPU+dGPU combo.

2) To get high enough memory bandwidth you have few choices.

You integrate system level caches, you increase memory bandwidth by using GDDR6 memory, or you widen the memory controller bus, and go from 128 to 192 or 256 bit bus, or you use faster memory.

Also missing the point, the choice isn't between powerful iGPU and CPU + dGPU, its between powerful iGPU and skimpy iGPU. A powerful iGPU on die is functionally useless for a lot of laptops so OEMs will not pay more for a chip that essentially costs more to manufacture.

Widening memory controller buses and/or adding dedicated on-chip caches (neither of which scale well with die shrinks by the way) for performance which may not be valued by buyers is stupid. Law Firms and Consultants are not. going. to. pay. more. for the next Thinkpad Carbon just because the chip has a big iGPU + 64MB SLC to feed said GPU.
 

Heartbreaker

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OEMs want: lowest possible manufacturing costs, simplest possible engineering costs.

That is the brutal truth. OEMs will happily take powerful iGPU if it will make them not have to include dGPU. They will take APU over CPU+dGPU combo in a hearthbeat if the manufacturing costs, design costs, engineering costs will be lower than just buying CPU+dGPU combo.

AMD want: lowest possible cost APU that is competitive with Intel.

That is the brutal truth.

If any OEM, or group of OEMs want a giant GPU APU, they can commission it.

AMD will build a custom APU for anyone that wants it. They do it for Sony/MS consoles. They do it for Steamdeck. They did it for Subor Z+ console.

Thus far, it appears no OEM is asking for this in the PC market.
 
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