AMD Greenland Vega GPU Details Emerge, 4096 Stream Processors And HBM2
We're all eagerly awaiting AMD's next GPU architecture codenamed Polaris, which is being built on a 14-nanometer FinFET manufacturing process and is due out later this year. But if we look further ahead, there's something even more exciting in store. It's called "Project Greenland," otherwise known as "Vega," details of which were leaked to the web over the weekend.
Yu Zheng, an R&D Manager at AMD Shanghai, listed Project Greenland as part of his work experience on his LinkedIn profile. The listing contained several interesting details that AMD probably didn't authorize Zheng to disclose, and though he's since yanked that portion from his profile, the cat is now out of the bag.
In his listing, Zheng described Project Greenland as "a leading chip of the first graphics IP v9.9 generation." He also stated that it will have 4,096 stream processors as part of a brand new System-on-Chip (SoC) v15 architecture. What all that essentially means is that Vega will be a new flagship GPU for AMD.
The number of stream processors is the same as Fiji. However, the move to a 14nm FinFET process should result in better power efficiency and performance per stream. On top of that, AMD previously disclosed that Vega will use second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2). Combined with better efficiency, Vega could offer a substantial performance boost over Polaris.
Other details about Vega have yet to leak out. Specifically, it will be interesting to see if AMD increases the number of ROPs on Vega. Bumping it up to 128 (the Fury X2 has 64 ROPs) would create even more of a performance separation between Vega and Polaris.
