AMD Radeon Navi RDNA Whitepaper Highlights Path To New Levels Of GPU Prowess
With that in mind, AMD plans to unleash an entire army of Navi RDNA graphics products -- and we're not just talking about GPUs that go inside our desktop and laptop systems. To that end, AMD just published a new whitepaper entitled "RDNA Architecture" that discusses everything from the underlying building blocks that make up Navi, to what the company has in store for future products.
"The RDNA family will ultimately grow to include power-constrained smartphone and tablet processors, gaming consoles, cloud gaming services, and a full spectrum of gaming GPUs from low-cost to the highest performance, bringing the benefits of the RDNA architecture to millions of devices and people across the planet," writes AMD in the whitepaper, which was first discovered by PCGamesN.
As we've reported on several occasions, RDNA should proliferate at the lowest level in smartphones. AMD and Samsung first announced a joint development agreement back in early June to put RDNA-based Radeon graphics inside mobile SoCs, powering next-generation Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Early this month, Samsung confirmed that the first shipping products with these AMD Radeon GPUs will arrive by 2021.
"Our partnership with AMD will allow us to bring groundbreaking graphics products and solutions to market for tomorrow’s mobile applications," said Inyup Kang, president of Samsung Electronics’ S.LSI Business at the time. "We look forward to working with AMD to accelerate innovations in mobile graphics technologies that will help take future mobile computing to the next level."
But it doesn't stop there; RDNA will be coursing through the veins of next-generation game consoles from Microsoft and Sony. Both the next-generation Xbox (Project Scarlett) and the PlayStation 5 will use Zen 2-based Radeon 3000 processors (presumably 8-core/16-thread) and Radeon Navi graphics.
As PC enthusiast at our core here at Hot Hardware, however, we’re really dialed-in to what will come beyond the Radeon RX 5700 XT, and even beyond the Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition. At its strongest, the Radeon RX 5700 XT serves as stiff competition for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2060 Super and GeForce RTX 2070. That said, AMD needs something that can competently tackle the likes of the GeForce RTX 2070 Super, GeForce RTX 2080 and GeForce RTX 2080 Super. And let’s not forget about the GeForce RTX 2080 TI -- and there’s rumored to be something even more beastly coming after that.
It seems as though whenever AMD pumps out a new graphics architecture, expectations are high, with the enthusiast community really hoping that the company can compete with NVIDIA from the bottom to the top of the GPU stack. But then when the launch inevitably comes around, performance falls short of existing flagship NVIDIA cards, or NVIDIA just steps on the gas and overloads the product stack with even faster SKUs (a la the RTX Super family) because it has horsepower to spare in the can. We’re hopeful that Navi RDNA, coupled with AMD’s advances in process technology at 7nm, will allow the company to kick some ass at the tippy-top of the GPU stack against NVIDIA, in the same way that it has been needling Intel on the CPU side with Zen 2. Time will tell.
You can check the AMD whitepaper by at the following link [PDF]. AMD Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT cards are in plentiful supply now at retail as well.
