AMD: R9xx Speculation

Wow, that was fast one! And the current R800 speculation thread is still lurking around.

 

Meh, 5870 was so last week.

 

Seems not very likely to me.
Next year there will be a shrink from 40nm to 28nm, but a complete new architecture seems kind of wild.
I don't expect this until DX12, maybe start a speculation thread about this as well

 

I don't think ATi spend that much R&D on R800 -- mostly a DX11-upgraded 2*RV770 single ASIC implementation.
Surely something much more grandiose is in the workshop behind the curtain.

 

I suppose it could be possible they are doing a Rv8xx refresh in 6 months and then 6 months later launch a new card. But that seems really fast.

I suppose other possibility is they skip the refresh and launch a new card in 12-15 months, but that's a pretty long gap between cards.

Either way the timing just doesn't seem right...

Then again if Rv870 was delayed due to 40 nm problems and/or deliberately delayed to make the launch line up with Intel's Lynnfield and closer to Win7... Then a roadmap with refresh in 3-6 months (5890?) and then new product 6-9 months after that seems plausible.

Regards,
SB

 

There will be at least one 32/28nm node R800 "try-out" SKU before anything next gen to pop out on a finer manufacturing process, and if the competition environment is heating up that would be full-blown RV890, not just some mainstream puppy, I hope.

 

Bergman said a while ago that they'll have something revolutionary around that time, 2010, so the time line is about right.

I looked around, but the linky seems to have gotten lost somewhere.

 

It believe they will revise the architecture, but it will be still based on the current VLIW architecture, which still has lots to show more and more games get shader intensive.
They will probably greatly increment the ALUs (looking forward a 3x), remove some fixed functions (RBEs and tessellation?) and they have to increment the bw efficiency as well.
The mainstream chips of R9xx will be probably be build for Fusion, so they will use a SOI manufacturing processes, but i have no idea how this can impact over the architecture.
But most important.. 28nm or 32nm? What kind of transistors density can we expect from both? And what about power savings?

 

Why so fast? Do they expect big things from Fermi?

 

I'll stick to an optical die shrunk Cypress to 32nm in Q3 2010...

 

According to nApoleon (still reliable as hell) originally R8XX was supposed to be the brand new (ugh) architecture from daamit. A while ago however that was pushed to R9XX.

But as we can see it didn't really affect their execution abilities though, and they might even be getting better in that segment (although it's easy improving from R600 piss poor )

 

Well if that single rumor is true, there's no way it can be a response to Fermi. You don't design a whole new architechture in half a year.

Regards,
SB

 

R600 was delayed because of a bug in the 90nm design library. Not at all ATi's fault.

 

I wonder at what point (in time) that decision was made? It's known that the R&D process [both for NV & ATi] is virtually an uninterrupted time-line, and the work on each new design begins with a little overlap with the old one being just finnished...

 

You make such decisions long before you know about the chip your competition is going to deliver. And as ATI is executing quite well at the moment, I would not surprised to see them move quickly.

 

That was R520.

 

Doh!

LOL, ok, R600 sucked then

 

Decisions about the design, yes, about leaking the info, not really .