AMD Vega 10, Vega 11, Vega 12 and Vega 20 Rumors and Discussion

Since AMD is a big proponent of HSA I suppose that could make sense. The downside to iGPU's is the way they become wasted silicon once you add in a dedicated GPU. With a Vega ISA onboard you guarantee a compute focused resource which can also do some light graphics work as an iGPU. Suddenly it's not a waste, which sounds great in theory. But wouldn't it require more every-day use cases to become a valid sales argument? I.e. some tangible speedup in users everyday lives? Especially since iGPU's are historically aimed towards systembuilders uninterested in dedicated solutions. The rest have compute resources on hand through dedicated GPU's.

I don't work in the field though. Maybe Windows or MacOS already use compute resources for OS functions?

 

Has AMD come up with actually new chip, or does their new investor slide deck have a mistake in it?


The last known Excavator-based architectures were Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge and they have GCN3, not Vega/GCN5

 

My first thought was that this had to be a typo, but the A6 and A4 logo do make me wonder whether this might be some new low-end offering. I can't say that I really see the point of an Excavator-based APU over a dual-core Ryzen, however.

 

Shoehorning Vega into A-series might be cheaper than keeping support up for < GCN4? Maybe? At some level it's either a typo or someone at AMD figured the ROI is worth it over Ryzen. Though I'd be very curious to look at that calculation.

 

do you remember this ?

 

There is a rumour, that the upcoming Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 would come with 15'' and Ryzen 3000 APUs, https://winfuture.de/news,111154.html (german)

 

That would be a major win for AMD, they've never really had a big design win in this market.

 

Thanks, I ment Surface Laptop 3.

 

Perf per watt per dollar?

 

Considering other similar notebook's price, I think that they could have a decent margin even if they put in a pure gold heatsink.

 

What have the unit sales been like for Surface?

edit:

hm... how does the iGPU performance compare?

Anyways, it's a business procurement deal, so it has to come down to only so many variables regardless if they can afford to take a hit on the margin.

 

Cheers. I hadn't been able to catch up the last while.

 

It may just be Microsoft getting ready for an AMD product further down the road and this is just them putting out a product to gauge longer term viability of AMD CPUs in the Surface lineup. It's also possible that there are custom alterations in the xx50 lineup to suit Microsoft's needs. Perhaps it'll support LPDDR4 allowing for greater battery life.

I also wonder if this might be their first step in working closer with AMD for a future APU/SOC with higher GPU performance in order to replace using a discrete NV GPU in some of their other models, notably the Surface Book line.

There's also the possibility of Microsoft getting some kind of kick back for the Project Scarlett APU by using AMD APUs in their Surface line. Basically AMD saying we'll throw in a little something extra in the Project Scarlett SOC if you use our Ryzen APUs in your Surface line.

This does make one wonder if the Ryzen APUs will co-exist with Intel CPUs in the same Surface Lines or if a new Surface Lineup will be created for the AMD APUs or if the AMD APUs will be replacing Intel CPUs?

Regards,
SB