AMD Arcturus GPU For Next-Gen Radeon Instinct Details Unveiled

AMD'due south Navi GPU compages might be powering their current gaming graphics cards merely the red team might also be working on a separate line of GPUs for AI and HPC markets, i that would be replacing the Vega GPU based Radeon Instinct Lineup in 2020.

AMD Arcturus GPU Listed For Support, Possible Adjacent-Gen Radeon Instinct 'MI100' HPC / AI Accelerator With Launch in 2020

The AMD Arcturus GPU is the 1 we are talking almost and it has shown upward in leaks quite a few times. The Arcturus GPU start appeared back in 2018 through Linux (Phoronix Forums) and was afterwards confirmed past an AMD employee that they will be using designated codenames for the flake itself rather than using family-codenames that might expose the product/marketing proper name. AMD Arcturus GPU volition be the first to autumn in that line simply at the time, other details were not mentioned.

Yesterday, HWiNFO added preliminary back up for AMD Arcturus in its latest v6.thirteen-3945 BETA release. In addition to that, Komachi_Ensaka revealed a serial of fries that are marked under AMD's AI family and Arcturus seems to exist one of them. The AI family also includes other GPUs such as Vega 10, Vega 12 and Vega 20. Judging by the AI name, the list might exist mentioning the AMD Radeon Instinct based GPU accelerators equally all 3 Vega GPUs listed have been featured inside a Radeon Instinct graphics cards for HPC and Bogus Intelligence. Arcturus as well falls in the same listing but looking at how the fries are mentioned in top-down social club, the ones at the bottom for each family unit are also the latest additions to each specific lineup.

LLVM 9.0 also featured support for Arcturus which is rumored to be branded under the GFX9 (GFX908) family which are Vega parts but because this would be a new launch, something needs to exist inverse if AMD isn't planning a simple rebrand of their summit Vega Radeon Instinct accelerator in 2020. The same Linux Patch (LLVM 9.0) also listed down iii SKUs, & did mention GL/XL brandings. So for case, AMD has Vega 10 which are featured on the Radeon RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 graphics cards. They both use the same GPU but different variants with unlike core configs with the Vega 64 featuring the XT and the Vega 56 featuring the Forty variant.

We have only seen little details which are also speculation at best such every bit the GPU cache info that is part of the Virtual CRAT (vCrat) size. The GPU cache correlates with the CU count. In the case of AMD Arcturus GPU, the cache size has been increased and then accept the CU count from 64 to 128. That is twice equally many CUs as Vega ten which would requite us 8192 stream processors if AMD is using 64 stream processors per CU like their current and modern-twenty-four hour period GPU designs. Now AMD already released their Radeon Pro Vega Two workstation series cards only remember, they are aimed at the workstation market and are based on Vega 20, a fleck that is clearly mentioned in the list above. It is not to be related to Arcturus which is a dissever function/chip and aimed at a different market, AI.

Nosotros know that AMD has rDNA ane GPUs planned for the next few quarters before moving to rDNA 2 which is basically Navi 2 if rumors are accurate. Now Navi is from the ground upwards a gaming-oriented architecture first and the deployment in consoles and gaming graphics cards is axiomatic of that. It is why AMD still uses Vega to ability its HPC / AI stuff equally information technology was designed for HPC / AI in mind.

And so if AMD wants to continue with Vega architecture every bit their top design for HPC / AI accelerators, than Arcturus can be a fully custom-designed flake for the Radeon Instinct lineup. Over at his weblog site, Komachi as well posts more than about the AMD Radeon Instinct MI100 which he believes is based on the Arcturus fries. AMD's current flagship Radeon Instinct accelerator is the MI60 which is based on the 7nm Vega twenty GPU. 1 matter that nosotros may see happen is that since Vega saw a refresh from 14nm down to 7nm, Arcturus may bring the 3rd refresh downward to 7nm+ which is something AMD is eyeing for 2020. Some of the new features that have been listed for the new Mi100 Radeon Instinct accelerator include the following:

MI100 Feature.
XDLOPS & New Vector ALU & BF16.
Packed Math Ops -Bladder And Int.
Sq Exectuin Prefetch for shaders.
L2ATMIC.
32/33/34/45 TCC & L2C.
1/2 DPFP.
8SE and CS launch Charge per unit.
Cashe Hierachy Lantency
GDS (GWS / Ordered append).

— 比屋定さんの戯れ言@Komachi (@KOMACHI_ENSAKA) August fourteen, 2019

That'south all as far every bit the details nosotros have got on AMD's Arcturus fleck. When it launches is something we would only know when it'south officially revealed by AMD and given the specs, don't expect it to be introduced as a consumer gaming card as Navi has taken upward that chore.

What do you think the AMD Arcturus GPU would be used for?