AMD Details RDNA 3 Graphics, Zen 4 Performance and Phoenix Point Laptop Products

Slashdot reader MojoKid writes: AMD unveiled new details of its technology roadmap Thursday at its 2022 Financial Analyst Day. Chief among them were disclosures on the company's next-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture, Zen 4 CPU architecture and Phoenix Point laptop SoC. AMD's new RDNA 3 GPU architecture for Radeon graphic cards and mobile will be a chiplet-based design, much like the company's Ryzen CPU offering. AMD also confirmed that RDNA 3 GPUs would be fabricated on a 5nm process, likely TSMC N5. The company continued to note that an "optimized graphics pipeline" will enable yet higher clock rates, while the GPU's "rearchitected compute unit" will have ray-tracing performance improvements over RDNA 2 as well. AMD says that RDNA 3 GPUs are coming later this year, with RDNA 4 arriving likely in late 2023.

Meanwhile, AMD's Zen 4 is set to be the "world's first 5nm CPU," arriving later this year with an 8 to 10 percent instructrions per clock lift and greater than 15 percent single-threaded performance gain. Zen 4 will also support DDR5, AVX-512 extensions for AI workloads and a massive 125 percent increase in memory bandwidth. AMD is claiming a 35% multithreaded performance lift for Zen 4.

And, its Phoenix Point laptop platform SoC will be both Zen 4 and RNDA 3 infused. This is a first for AMD, since typically its laptop product's integrated graphics trail the company's current-gen GPU architecture by at least a generation. Phoenix point is set to arrive likely in the first half of 2023.

Thunderbolt

[AmiMoJo]

Damn it AMD, where is thunderbolt? You have been promising it for years!

Thunderbolt 3 A.K.A. USB4 coming soon to AMD

[williamyf]

Damn it AMD, where is thunderbolt? You have been promising it for years!

Thunderbolt (3) will arrive to AMD platforms, but it will be named USB4.

You see, Intel gave the USB-IF the spec of TB3 for cheap under FRAND terms to use as the basis for USB-4.

So, as soon as you get USB4 on your AMD Desktop/Laptop, you know you've also got TB3 under the hood, with all the goodness that implies.

Probably, USB5 will be TB4 under the hood, and so on.

PS: What's the difference between TB3 and TB4 you ask? Well, first, many things that were optional in TB3 are mandatory in TB4; also, the certification testing is more stringent in TB4 than TB3. Whats the difference between TB4 and USB4, aside from the differences already cited in TB3, if you want TB4 certification you have to talk to (and probably pay) intel, while, for USB4 certification you talk to (and probably pay) the USB-IF.

Re:

[williamyf]

If USB4 does come to AMD motherboards, I expect them to be available in the high-end models only. I doubt USB4 will be available to the unwashed masses.

Zen4 will support USB4 out of the box, Zen3+ will support USB4 via SW/FW updates.

https://www.techpowerup.com/29... [techpowerup.com]

Re:

[williamyf]

AMD chipset drivers will support USB4. Doesn't mean that motherboard companies will implement USB4 on every model.

Then that's the fault of the mobo manufacturers, not the fault of AMD.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Sure, but where the hell is it? They said it would be available in 2020, then 2021, then for sure with Ryzen 6000 in 2022. Now it doesn't even appear on the roadmap.

Look at this: https://houstonianonline.com/a... [houstonianonline.com]

I'm wondering if they have run into trouble with it and are quietly dropping it. Ryzen 6000 hasn't had the updates to enable USB 4, and they didn't mention it when previewing Ryzen 7000.

Re:

[williamyf]

Sure, but where the hell is it? They said it would be available in 2020, then 2021, then for sure with Ryzen 6000 in 2022. Now it doesn't even appear on the roadmap.

Look at this: https://houstonianonline.com/a... [houstonianonline.com]

I'm wondering if they have run into trouble with it and are quietly dropping it. Ryzen 6000 hasn't had the updates to enable USB 4, and they didn't mention it when previewing Ryzen 7000.

Is it so difficult to use Google. It probably would have tahen less time than the time to write that comment bitching and moaning... Here are two, the rest you google yourself:

https://www.techpowerup.com/29... [techpowerup.com]
https://www.pcworld.com/articl... [pcworld.com]

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Strange, I googled "Ryzen 6000 Thunderbolt" and those didn't come up.

Do they actually work for things like docks and external GPUs though? It seems that AMD has decided to meet the thunderbolt spec but not certify it, so like ECC RAM it might well work but is not officially supported.

I'll do more research.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

So it looks like they have just released a beta BIOS to enable it. Compatibly is not universal but it works.

Now we need other manufacturers to announce that they will offer updates for their machines.

Thanks for the heads up.

RDNA iGPU 2/3 looks amazing

[rsilvergun]

except for the fact they're only putting it on high end laptops with discrete GPUs so far. I get it, it can run Fortnite at 1080p/60/med which is enough for probably 60% of gamers, so they don't want to cannibalize sales of discrete, but it's annoying because, well, I was hoping it would take some of the pressure off :).

My Rx 580 is pushing 5 years, older if you remember it's just a slightly faster 480. But If I want something significantly faster I'm looking at $500-$600. I miss tech getting cheaper.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

They should do a "creator" focused iGPU. Good performance for encoding video and general compute, less focus on 3D.

Slashdot == old news that's slightly for nerds

[chaoskitty]

That was Thursday. This is Sunday.

Did you mean world's first 5nm *X86* CPU?

[SynKKnyS]

Pretty sure the Apple M1/A14 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888/780G, just to name a few, have been released for some time on 5nm?