Navi Linux driver code confirms GCN design, but does that matter?

[WYP]

Will Navi just be another GCN architecture?



Read more about Navi's Linux baseline confirming the architecture's GCN origins.

 

[grec]

Let's not forget that modern Intel processors can trace their architecture's heritage back to the 1995 i686/Pentium Pro, which was slightly iterated upon to form the basis of Intel's Core architecture in 06(After a long and eventually painful affair with NetBurst), with the Pentium M processors keeping the architecture on life support in between, and has evolved in steps from there ever since.

There has to be serious problems with an architecture before it's worth scrapping decades of development and billions of dollars worth of R&D. You never really get ground up redesigns nowadays.

 

[WYP]

Let's not forget that modern Intel processors can trace their architecture's heritage back to the 1995 i686/Pentium Pro, which was slightly iterated upon to form the basis of Intel's Core architecture in 06(After a long and eventually painful affair with NetBurst), with the Pentium M processors keeping the architecture on life support in between, and has evolved in steps from there ever since.

There has to be serious problems with an architecture before it's worth scrapping decades of development and billions of dollars worth of R&D. You never really get ground up redesigns nowadays.

Exactly. Just because Navi is GCN doesn't mean that it can't be good. A lot can change over time without a full redesign.

Naysayers who are commenting that Navi is DOA because of GCN are missing the point entirely. It's like saying that Turing is DOA becouse it can be traced back to Fermi...

I'm not saying that Navi is guaranteed to be amazing, just that the articles and poster who are dismissing the whole thing because of GCN driver references are a little deluded.

 

[grec]

Yep and somewhat ironic when many of the changes that were made to Turing vs Pascal were to give it a more GCN style core/cache layout & feature set. GCN was a very forward looking architecture that has arguably laid the foundation for every modern GPU arch, including Intel upcoming ones by the looks of it. To scrap it just as the fruits of those long term bets pay off would be insane, whatever they call the successor to Navi(And no, they won't call it Arcturus) it will bring many of GCNs concepts forwards.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Ultimately, it's the final product that matters. Pascal was called Maxwell on steroids and I remember people being excited for it like it was a breakthrough.

 

[WYP]

Yep and somewhat ironic when many of the changes that were made to Turing vs Pascal were to give it a more GCN style core/cache layout & feature set. GCN was a very forward looking architecture that has arguably laid the foundation for every modern GPU arch, including Intel upcoming ones by the looks of it. To scrap it just as the fruits of those long term bets pay off would be insane, whatever they call the successor to Navi(And no, they won't call it Arcturus) it will bring many of GCNs concepts forwards.

TBH I find it strange that GCN has such a bad name in some circles. TBH Nvidia did well saying nothing about their GPU instruction set, that way they have none of these complaints.

GCN is a great architecture, but ultimately it is hard for AMD to take on Nvidia after the lead they gained with Maxwell. The older GCN cards have aged very well, especially the R9 290 series. You are right when you say that Turing is Nvidia with an AMD-like twist.

Ultimately, it's the final product that matters. Pascal was called Maxwell on steroids and I remember people being excited for it like it was a breakthrough.

Exactly, TBH what AMD needs is a Maxwell moment, an architecture shift that reduced power consumption and enabled a huge increase in clocks.

While Nvidia ultimately failed in the mobile SoC game, aside from the eventual design win with the Nintendo Switch, the focus on mobile and power efficiency really helped them get the most perf/watt in the desktop space. Features like their tile-based rasteriser also helped them with memory bandwidth, which means that they didn't need to go HBM like AMD did with GPUs like the GTX 980 Ti.

I really hope that Navi is AMD's Maxwell moment, as that would change the game for both PC graphics and next-gen consoles. It would make for a very exciting future for gaming.

There was those features with Vega that never quite panned out like the Primitive shaders, which could be a big deal if they are working in Navi. Who knows. It's not like AMD is talking much these days about architectural features.