Computex 2018 has provided us the hardware that we could not expect before, from dual-screen laptops to first complete gaming smartphone from ASUS and now AMD has unveiled its products for the coming year. AMD is dealing in numbers during the Computex 2018; they already revealed their 32-core Threadripper 2, expect a word on it soon, the reveal from AMD that got the attention of our gaming minds was their new 7nm process GPUs.
According to their roadmap, the GPU will primarily be available for machine learning and AI purposes under the name of INSTINCT VEGA and then for gaming purposes under the name of NAVI.
AMD is the first silicon manufacturer to announce the 7nm process that will further increase the density of the die which will increase the efficiency and area of the chip itself.
The Rivals Nvidia and Intel only have a minimum of 12nm processes making AMD superior among the rivals once again, but how they will make it useful for them is a question that will be answered soon.
AMD is enjoying the head start since they announced the Ryzen APUs, although there were many setbacks because of the GPU mining and less popular AMD processors the Ryzen APUs has set the market for the upcoming AMD silicon more especially their VEGA lineup since the APU was based on VEGA GPU.
AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su announced in their Computex presentation that the GPUs are going to be the part of the AMD gaming lineups but the timeframe she was using was pretty vague, we sensed that this GPU would be revealed during the end of 2019. Although she did not confirm that these GPUs would be the part of their NAVI lineup or the INSTINCT VEGA lineup, their roadmap suggests that it would be NAVI, but we don’t know yet.
If they are going with the same VEGA 64 that they announced earlier, one should expect that the naming convention might have an “X” as they did with the earlier models, because giving the same name to a whole new product is not good regarding business.
The AMD’s partner firm that is working on the 7nm process has only started shipping its prototypes to AMD, it is expected that the process may have its disadvantages being so small or too futuristic when other firms are lurking around 12nm processes that too only for a very high-end device that is Titan V. But they did end up showcasing a brief but working sample of the of their 7nm process.
They tried to showcase the ray tracking feature that would determine the ability of the GPUs to handle the next generation games as they will heavily depend upon the lighting scenarios as Microsoft revealed earlier this year. It handled the process pretty well although, it could have been the very first prototype. You can see the capabilities of the processing power in the video below:
The other reveals that corresponds to the 7nm process was that AMD is working on improving the HBM2 memory they were able to stack up a single bundle of memory as big as 32GB on a single chip, HBM2 memory was slightly expensive than the GDDR5X but as Nvidia is now getting the newer GDDR6 memory that is 20% more costly, it is a better move from AMD to improve the HBM2 stack. The early sample did manage to surprise the larger audience, but we fear that these GPUs are going to be more expensive than the inflated prices of current gen GPUs, but credit should be given when due as AMD’s efforts to minimize the cost is worthy of applaud.