AMD Polaris Refresh? AMD "North Star" this year?

[Taf the Ghost]

Well, this is a little surprising.

 

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3035266/amd-polaris-30-12nm-gpus-could-arrive-at-the-end-of-2018

 

Quote

AMD'S NEXT-GEN GPU architecture dubbed Polaris 30, is set to make its debut at the end of 2018, according to WJM47196, a user on Chinese site ChipHell.

The post notes that Polaris 30 will be manufactured using the 12-nanometre finFET process and will offer a 20 per cent boost in performance over the Polaris 20-based high-end GPUs that debuted in 2017.

But WJM47196 wasn't done with setting the rumour mill spinning on Polaris, as they also noted that Navi architecture-based GPUs, aimed at mid-range graphics cards, will make their debut before higher-end pixel-pushing powerhouses set to use high-bandwidth memory 2 (HBM2).

 

There's actually a few separate rumors bundled into one, so here's what the rumors seem to be.

 

1. 12nm-based Polaris is happening.
2. No 12nm Vega, however
3. Q4/Christmas release in 2018
4. GDDR6-based Navi products will be out before the HBM2 versions next year

 

Within the actual post at Chiphell, it appears there is something with 16 Gb of HBM2 releasing in Q1 2019. I assume that's the 7nm Vega in some Pro Card variety. (If someone can read the Chinese, is AMD going to release the 7nm Vega into the high-end Gaming market?)

 

Thoughts:

 

There's a lot going on here. If this is true, it tells us a lot about the current state of the 7nm Fabs. Navi is going to be fabbed at GloFo, and we can probably expect it in Summer 2019. The Polaris refresh, maybe called "North Star" (Pcper is the only place I've seen the name), isn't the most shocking development. AMD will be releasing an updated Mobile/APU chip early in 2019 on the 12nm process. That means the Polaris/Vega tech has all been shrunk to that node shift, so the late development of this "slight more than a refresh" Refresh might have been a late decision by AMD.

 

This probably means, from both camps, that 7nm GPUs are going to be pretty late next year. It also points to AMD actually expanding their product range once Navi is fully released. The RX 680 won't be their mid-range, but their upper mainstream GPUs, with Navi and Big Navi filling Midrange & High-end. (At least, that makes the most sense to me, given the current information.)

 

The RX 600 series is also likely to be some version of the Vega M that showed up with the Intel NUCs. AMD's GPU IP is a little bit Frankenstein'd at the moment, so it's going to be interesting what updates they've put into North Star. If they can find ~15% improvement from the 580 to the 680, that would put the RX 680 as faster than the entire Fury line, the 1060 6 Gb and around 10% slower than the 1070. (Going off Computerbase.de's numbers.) 

[leadeater]

 

10 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

AMD will be releasing an updated Mobile/APU chip early in 2019 on the 12nm process. That means the Polaris/Vega tech has all been shrunk to that node shift

I thought Vega wasn't going 12nm?

[NelizMastr]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

 

I thought Vega wasn't going 12nm?

Indeed. Pretty sure they wanted 7nm for Vega.

[GoldenLag]

Im snagging one at launch while it is still at MSRP!

 

Hopefully the release another silver reference design. 

[Stefan Payne]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I thought Vega wasn't going 12nm?

Vega 20 should either be 12nm or 7nm

And also offer 4 Stacks of HBM2.

[suicidalfranco]

NANI?

 

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Im snagging one at launch while it is still at MSRP!

Dreams are also at MSRP too 

[Froody129]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Dreams are also at MSRP too 

Priceless? Sounds about right

[AskTJ]

Man, I just want a 1060 6GB.

[Taf the Ghost]

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

I thought Vega wasn't going 12nm?

The Kaby Lake-G with Vega M graphics are functionally Polaris+ GPUs, and Ryzen Mobile/APUs will have "vega" graphics in 2019. So, "Vega" is going to 12nm, but the 64 CU Vega design is not. That was canceled at some point late 2017, it would seem.

 

The RX 400 series, which the RX 580 series was just improved binning of, launched in 2016. I'm sure AMD has found tweaks & other things to improve. Much of those went into the Vega design. I expect some were backported for the Intel project. We really might be getting the Vega M GPU with 36 CUs as the "North Star" series.

[Peskanova]

well msrp is the price that they come when they launch? , so all gpu's are at msrp when it launches or im wrong?

[Taf the Ghost]

14 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Im snagging one at launch while it is still at MSRP!

 

Hopefully the release another silver reference design. 

Actually, you might be able to get it cheaper than a RX 580 when this launches, lol. Curious if this will be GDDR6, or just GDDR5X. Or maybe both going down, so the 660 would have GDDR5 while the 670 has 5X and the 680 has 6.

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The Kaby Lake-G with Vega M graphics are functionally Polaris+ GPUs, and Ryzen Mobile/APUs will have "vega" graphics in 2019. So, "Vega" is going to 12nm, but the 64 CU Vega design is not. That was canceled at some point late 2017, it would seem.

I'm pretty sure Vega M in that is still 14nm though.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, Peskanova said:

well msrp is the price that they come when they launch? , so all gpu's are at msrp when it launches or im wrong?

Somewhat. You never know what launch supply is, so you could have MSRP launch. And there's 1000 world wide at that price. See: RX Vega launch.

[Peskanova]

Well i was one of the smartboys that reserved and purchased a rx 480 8gb at 260 euros (eu msrp) , 4 months later people offered me 300 euros used (even more)

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

I'm pretty sure Vega M in that is still 14nm though.

Current one, yes, but I'm talking about the APU/Mobile design that was previously "Gray Hawk" and now "Picasso". 

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-apu-gray-hawk-2019-navi-starship/

 

Back in the day, it was supposed to have Navi graphics. (Maybe it still will.) So AMD is already verifying a 12nm design with their graphics IP. 

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Current one, yes, but I'm talking about the APU/Mobile design that was previously "Gray Hawk" and now "Picasso". 

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-apu-gray-hawk-2019-navi-starship/

 

Back in the day, it was supposed to have Navi graphics. (Maybe it still will.) So AMD is already verifying a 12nm design with their graphics IP. 

Those are talking about 7nm as well. Since they are different dies they don't have to be on the same process and I'm not sure AMD would bother working on a 12nm Vega when they are 100% working on a 7nm, would be cheaper to just use that with the CU count you need.

[Yoshmaista]

I have it on pretty good authority that 7nm Vega is tentatively set to come out for gamers in October.  Vega 20 is the codename currently.  So don't expect Navi to be the next gaming chip.

Haven't heard anything about Polaris recently, but that wouldn't touch the source that I'm talking to.

[Stefan Payne]

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Well, this is a little surprising.

Not really, if you follow the storys about Ryzen, you know that you can easily switch from 14nm to 12nm without much to do.

So its very probable that everything on 14nm will switch to 12nm and the 14nm lines will switch to 12nm.

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

There's actually a few separate rumors bundled into one, so here's what the rumors seem to be.

 

1. 12nm-based Polaris is happening.
2. No 12nm Vega, however
3. Q4/Christmas release in 2018
4. GDDR6-based Navi products will be out before the HBM2 versions next year

1. Yeah, but that was obvious and that means that Navi will be above Polaris.

2. True, they will switch to 7nm it seems. Nothing new there

3. Nothing new here either

4. Is it certain that Navi will use GDDR6??

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Within the actual post at Chiphell, it appears there is something with 16 Gb of HBM2 releasing in Q1 2019. I assume that's the 7nm Vega in some Pro Card variety. (If someone can read the Chinese, is AMD going to release the 7nm Vega into the high-end Gaming market?)

1. 16Gb is already out and you kan find that on a Package with Intel CPUs.

16GB however is also out, just look at Radeon PRO or how that thing was named. Nothing new here either.

But its said that VEGA 20 will have 4 Stacks of HBM2 Memory, so 16GiB is the logical conclusion with 4 hi stacks.

That would mean 32GiB with 8hi Stacks.

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

There's a lot going on here. If this is true, it tells us a lot about the current state of the 7nm Fabs.

7nm is alrady taped out at TSMC and is scheduled for end of 2018.

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Navi is going to be fabbed at GloFo, and we can probably expect it in Summer 2019.

No, not much is known about Navi and neither that it will be made by GF.

It seems that AMD is switching more to TSMC, if possible and it makes Sense.

Also the guys at GF are pretty pessimistic about the manufacturing.

So the only thing that is ceratain about Navi is that it will be made in 7nm. But not where.

Its said that there is a 7nm Ryzen/EPYC Tapeout happening at TSMC as well.

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The Polaris refresh, maybe called "North Star" (Pcper is the only place I've seen the name), isn't the most shocking development. AMD will be releasing an updated Mobile/APU chip early in 2019 on the 12nm process. That means the Polaris/Vega tech has all been shrunk to that node shift, so the late development of this "slight more than a refresh" Refresh might have been a late decision by AMD.

No, it means that they switched to 12nm. That isn't really a shrink. Just look at what AMD is saying about Ryzen+. They also say that the die wasn't any smaller than the 14nm one. So I'd not expect a redesign or something like that but a simple switch.

 

That means the upcoming Polaris 30 will either clock ~20% higher or so or be more energy efficient while the Die Size remains the same.

 

You can also expect the same from every other chip made in the 14nm node -> switch to 12nm. Same Die Size but either clocked higher or lower energy consumption.

 

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

This probably means, from both camps, that 7nm GPUs are going to be pretty late next year. It also points to AMD actually expanding their product range once Navi is fully released. The RX 680 won't be their mid-range, but their upper mainstream GPUs, with Navi and Big Navi filling Midrange & High-end. (At least, that makes the most sense to me, given the current information.)

What we know so far is that Polaris 30 at 12nm will come and be clocked a bit higher than Polaris 20. Besides that, not so much.

 

Its unknown if VEGA 20 will arrive in the Consumer Market or be professional only. And even if it arrives in the Consumer Market its unknown when it will happen, if it happens.

Because the changes don't seem to make sense for consumers much. Stuff like 1/2 64bit performance as well as other things.

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The RX 600 series is also likely to be some version of the Vega M that showed up with the Intel NUCs.

No, because "Vega" M is not a VEGA GPU, its Polaris with HBM as most of the VEGA Stuff is missing from it.

 

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

AMD's GPU IP is a little bit Frankenstein'd at the moment,

Isn't that always the case since the beginning of GCN?!

You have different tech levels, different Display Engines and so on.

Its more like an incremental development than doin some revolutionary new stuff. 

 

Navi is said to be new, but don't expect new CUs because they are (more or less) fine as Everyone else also adopts the "GCN CUs" or the Way GCN does stuff. The Problem lies before the CUs and probably also after the CUs -> Front End and Memory Controller/Caching and also compression mechanisms. That's where AMD does have to work. Especially in regards to improve the memory efficiency.

19 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

so it's going to be interesting what updates they've put into North Star. If they can find ~15% improvement from the 580 to the 680, that would put the RX 680 as faster than the entire Fury line,

You might expect up to 20% higher Core Clocks -> ~1700MHz (up to).

But that's still far from VEGA because lack of Bandwith.

And the fastest Memory there is right now, is 9Gbps stuff from Samsung. 

You can maybe eventually get 10 if you wanted to. 

But that's only a minor improvement as they already have 8Gbps memory and its unknown if the Memory Controller of Polaris is able to control more than 8Gbps...

 

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Those are talking about 7nm as well. Since they are different dies they don't have to be on the same process and I'm not sure AMD would bother working on a 12nm Vega when they are 100% working on a 7nm, would be cheaper to just use that with the CU count you need.

I don't disagree, we're just talking past each other. The Polaris Refresh is a likely a 36 CU design with updates along the line of the "Vega M" that Intel bought. We know that IP has already been set for 12nm because of the CPU+iGPU that is coming in 2019, thus AMD releasing a Polaris Refresh on 12nm isn't out of the blue.

 

AMD's design IP is a mess right now.

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I don't disagree, we're just talking past each other. The Polaris Refresh is a likely a 36 CU design with updates along the line of the "Vega M" that Intel bought. We know that IP has already been set for 12nm because of the CPU+iGPU that is coming in 2019, thus AMD releasing a Polaris Refresh on 12nm isn't out of the blue.

 

AMD's design IP is a mess right now.

Yea I just mean Vega going 12nm, just though it was odd you mentioned that in that way when in your summary you listed Vega as not going 12nm.

 

Wonder how current Vega M stacks up to 12nm Polaris in APUs.

[Taf the Ghost]

7 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Isn't that always the case since the beginning of GCN?!

You have different tech levels, different Display Engines and so on.

Its more like an incremental development than doin some revolutionary new stuff. 

Yeah, AMD takes a bit after Intel in the GPU department. All of these different iterations of their IP all over the place. By the time Polaris is EoL, there's going to have been something like 10 design versions of it.

 

As for memory on North Star, AMD has had 2 full years to bring improvements to Polaris. Even the small team that'd have been working on it could have improved the memory controller. Considering AMD GPUs tend to be memory starved, it seems like that would have been an easy place to find some performance improvements. Especially if they went with GDDR6.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yea I just mean Vega going 12nm, just though it was odd you mentioned that in that way when in your summary you listed Vega as not going 12nm.

 

Wonder how current Vega M stacks up to 12nm Polaris in APUs.

"Vega M" (Okay, this is getting messy) is a 20 CU Polaris design. No clue if Intel went rummaging through the AMD IP bin like Sony & MS do, though.

 

My assumption is that AMD is using North Star as something of a Semi-Custom "refresh" IP & GloFo Wafer filler. We've also been seeing rumors that we're not getting a GTX 1160 for a while, so AMD might, oddly, have space to attack Nvidia in the Mainstream for a while.

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

"Vega M" (Okay, this is getting messy) is a 20 CU Polaris design. No clue if Intel went rummaging through the AMD IP bin like Sony & MS do, though.

More wondering which is now better at the same CU count, performance and power wise. I actually think Intel and AMD jumped too soon on the partnership design, see I think the recent Hardware Unboxed video. With the 6 core parts coming so soon using Kaby Lake is very limiting now, maybe if they waited and made it Coffee Lake based they could of also had this new Polaris 30 in it.

 

Edit:

I should also add I don't think Intel will refresh those APUs any time soon which is why I think it's such a problem it wasn't on Coffee Lake.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

More wondering which is now better at the same CU count, performance and power wise. I actually think Intel and AMD jumped too soon on the partnership design, see I think the recent Hardware Unboxed video. With the 6 core parts coming so soon using Kaby Lake is very limiting now, maybe if they waited and made it Coffee Lake based they could of also had this new Polaris 30 in it.

The Kaby Lake-G design seems to have mostly been for Apple, but they stuffed it in some NUCs and it'll show up in some laptops. Fairly great for 2-in-1s.

 

The interesting question is if Intel will be releasing a Coffee Lake-G next year with the same GPU, as it's pretty likely Intel contracted those GPUs before Ryzen was known to be so good. Which is the only real reason we got those 6c designs.