Sunday, August 6th 2023

AMD Retreating from Enthusiast Graphics Segment with RDNA4?
AMD is rumored to be withdrawing from the enthusiast graphics segment with its next RDNA4 graphics architecture. This means there won't be a successor to its "Navi 31" silicon that competes at the high-end with NVIDIA; but rather one that competes in the performance segment and below. It's possible AMD isn't able to justify the cost of developing high-end GPUs to push enough volumes over the product lifecycle. The company's "Navi 21" GPU benefited from the crypto-currency mining swell, but just like with NVIDIA, the company isn't able to push enough GPUs at the high-end.
With RDNA4, the company will focus on specific segments of the market that sell the most, which would be the x700-series and below. This generation will be essentially similar to the RX 5000 series powered by RDNA1, which did enough to stir things up in NVIDIA's lineup, and trigger the introduction of the RTX 20 SUPER series. The next generation could see RDNA4 square off against NVIDIA's next-generation, and hopefully, Intel's Arc "Battlemage" family.
Source:
VideoCardz
With RDNA4, the company will focus on specific segments of the market that sell the most, which would be the x700-series and below. This generation will be essentially similar to the RX 5000 series powered by RDNA1, which did enough to stir things up in NVIDIA's lineup, and trigger the introduction of the RTX 20 SUPER series. The next generation could see RDNA4 square off against NVIDIA's next-generation, and hopefully, Intel's Arc "Battlemage" family.
363 Comments on AMD Retreating from Enthusiast Graphics Segment with RDNA4?
Market cap can be very volatile and unstable measure of company value. It often goes up and down in waves and cycles, for various reasons. It's more a measure of investor's momentary estimate of a business. If you take a look below, you will see just how volatile market cap of Nvidia has been. AMD's market cap has been less volatile, which suggests more steady valuation, with less of investor hysteria. Similarly for TSMC.
companiesmarketcap.com/nvidia/marketcap/
companiesmarketcap.com/amd/marketcap/
companiesmarketcap.com/tsmc/marketcap/
There is currently more money in server GPUs for AI craze, but we don't know how long this is going to last. Nvidia leads here, which is fine, but that does not mean it would be the same in a few years. Plus, AMD is heavily investing in server GPUs - Instinct MI300 series and they are testing already MI400 in labs. So, nothing to worry about. They are fine and healthy. Steady strategy, no hysteria. This does not make sense, as both CPU and GPU divisions actually closely work together. The result - extremely promising MI300 Instinct and other APUs. It's only going to get better as they slowly muscle their way into AI market. Steady. Tell that to Apple and Nvidia. They don't have problems, do they? There are always Intel and Samsung around for chips that do not need to be on cutting edge node.
Plus, you might have been around to read news that several new megafabs are being built in the US and Europe by TSMC, Intel and Samsung. No. GloFo explicitly decided to focus on DUV litography as they do not have interest and capacity to pursue EUV era of chip making.
Only five companies have enough resources and expertise for EUV era - Intel, Samsung, TSMC, Micron and SK Hynix. Exactly. Xilinx was a strategic move, as AMD acquired a lot of IP and device designs for server and AI era, such as FPGAs, DPUs, media encoders, embedded solutions, etc. This division has skyrocketed in revenues in last finantial report for Q2 2023. Great asset.
Modern consoles are/use APUs as well. And i wouldn’t be surprised that there are plenty of deployed use cases outside of gaming for APUs that many of us aren’t aware of.
The number of people in this thread who know how to run multi billion tech companies is really amazing. What a great tech site.
In that case, you might want to get informed more about the company's graphics divisions and how they work together.
Graphics division has several client and server oriented teams that work on multiple architectures. They design IP for consoles, client APUs, discrete GPUs and server GPUs/APUs. Each team has their own responsibility, but they often collaborate on shared aspects of graphics, such as chiplets and compute elements for CDNA and RDNA architectures.
You might also want to learn more about server and AI products, what ships, what is sampled to customers and what would launch this year. Did you see already famous presentation for AI and data center? It's below. A lot of informative content that answer some of your questions.
AMD Data Center & AI Technology Premiere
Wider context.
In 2025, cutting-edge high-NA EUV machines from ASML will start to ship to Intel, TSMC and Samsung. Those machines will produce chips of maximum size around ~400 mm2 and be suitable for 2nm and more advanced nodes. Due to chip size restrictions, all high compute designs on top tier client and server products will need to be designed as chiplets to be able to benefit from those future machines.
Intel, AMD and Nvidia are already designing server chiplets for 2025-2026 etching process on those machines. Those are post-RDNA4, post-Hopper and post-Ponte Vecchio designs. So, the companies need to experiment already now with those designs. Navi 41 might be just early bird in this direction, one of many designs that is tested and developed.
It makes sense, because we are seeing that all HPC chip design companies are moving their complex chips into chiplet domain because their foundaries notified them of the nature of future EUV machines. Of course, monolithic dies will remain available on current machines with lower volume throughput, but it remains to be seen which nodes will be assigned to which machines in future.
That being said, I never disagreed that chiplet won't be beneficial in the future, or even needed.
The reason why each chip has ~400mm² surface is because high-NA 0.55 EUV scanner prints on half of the field in comparison to current high-NA 0.33 scanners that can print 835mm² chips. The new process increases the throughput per hour to ~185 wph (from ~160 wph), which brings ~220,000 more wafers each year. This is essential to keep prices of chips down as current machines are slower. Improved versions in 2026-2027 should print more than 220 wafers per hour.
Text by an engineer from ASML explaining the optics of high-NA EUV 0.55 and why it is economically viable and necessary.
spie.org/news/6259-improving-the-resolution-of-extreme-uv-lithography-scanners?SSO=1
Here, all explained by optical science as to why the chip area must be 16.5mm x 26mm, which gives chips up to ~400mm²
Currently, 4080 GPU is on ~380mm² chip, so it's not difficult to imagine high-tier consumer GPU on 2nm node and 400mm² die in 2026.
(*because things can change or improve)
What they can improve is throughput per hour, but not the chip size, which I also mentioned and which is on a roadmap already, so ASML must already have an experimental scanner for 220 wafers per hour
Better return to it with "chiplets" of whatever size they want, make multi-GPU cards like the Radeon HD 7990, and call it a day.
It is a beautiful concept that was made possible and actually worked!