Published in Graphics

AMD Polaris slide leaked

by on31 December 2015


Heading for the Radeon 400 series

Korean tech site HardwareBattle has leaked an AMD presentation slide which refers to Polaris as the fourth generation of GCN.

If this is the case then it will be the microarchitecture present in the Radeon 400 Series including the 'Greenland' GPUs.It confirms AMD plans for major technological upgrade next year. Graphics Core Next, a name that accompanied each GPU since 2011, will soon be replaced by Polaris.

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VideoCardz had a look at the rumour  and reasoned that it will be a new generation of Graphics Core Next, a GPU microarchitecture series which AMD started in 2011.  This would set Polaris as a replacement for GCN.

The slide reads "Introducing the Polaris Architecture. Our guiding lights is to power every pixel on every device efficiently. Stars are the most efficient photon generators of our universe. Their efficiency is the inspiration for every pixel we generate."

Raja Koduri has already hinted about the upcoming Polaris-based GPU performance saying that Polaris was "2.5 times brighter" than back in the heyday of the ancient Greeks. This might be code for the performance/efficiency hike on offer from the Polaris microarchitecture GPUs like 'Greenland', produced on the new 14nm FinFET LPP process.Howver Koduri was actually just repeating a fact from recent research led by Scott Engle of Villanova University in Pennsylvania.  He said that Polaris may be 2.5 times brighter today than when the astronomer Ptolemy observed the star.  (For the record Ptolemy was a Roman living in Egypt in the Second century so hardly an Ancient Greek.)

Of course the Ptolemymight have seen a dimmer Polaris but he would not have had lots of competition from light pollution and smog. AMDs Polaris will also be facing a lot more competition.

 

Last modified on 31 December 2015
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