RDNA (microarchitecture)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

AMD RDNA
Release dateJuly 7, 2019
(4 years ago)
 (2019-07-07)[1]
Fabrication process
History
PredecessorGraphics Core Next
Support status
Supported
A generic block diagram of a GPU

RDNA (

FinFET graphics chips used in the Navi series of AMD Radeon graphics cards.[6]

The second iteration of RDNA was first featured in the PlayStation 5[7][8] and Xbox Series X/S consoles.[9] Both consoles utilize a custom RDNA 2-based graphics solution as the basis for their GPU microarchitecture. On PC, RDNA 2 is featured in the Radeon RX 6000 series of video cards, which first launched in November 2020.[10] RDNA 2 is also featured in Samsung's Exynos 2200 as the graphics architecture.[11]

The third iteration of RDNA was announced on November 3, 2022, and is featured in the Radeon RX 7000 series of consumer desktop and mobile graphics cards.[12]

RDNA 1

AMD RDNA 1
Release dateJuly 7, 2019
(4 years ago)
 (2019-07-07)
CodenameNavi 1x
Fabrication processTSMC N7 (FinFET)
History
PredecessorGraphics Core Next 5
SuccessorRDNA 2
Support status
Supported

RDNA 1 (also RDNA1)[13][14] is the first implementation of the RDNA microarchitecture and is the successor to the Radeon RX Vega series.[15][16] The launch occurred on July 7, 2019.[17]

Architecture

Die shot of the RX 5500 XT's RDNA GPU

The architecture features a new

Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5) to preserve native compatibility with their pre-existing eighth generation game libraries designed for GCN. It features multi-level cache hierarchy and an improved rendering pipeline, with support for GDDR6
memory.

Starting with the architecture itself, one of the biggest changes for RDNA is the width of a wavefront, the fundamental group of work. GCN in all of its iterations was 64 threads wide, meaning 64 threads were bundled together into a single wavefront for execution. RDNA drops this to a native 32 threads wide. At the same time, AMD has expanded the width of their SIMDs from 16 slots to 32 (aka SIMD32), meaning the size of a wavefront now matches the SIMD size.[5]: 2 

RDNA also introduces working

primitive shaders. While the feature was present in the hardware of the Vega architecture, it was difficult to get a real-world performance boost from and thus AMD never enabled it. Primitive shaders in RDNA are compiler-controlled.[5]
: 2 

The display controller in RDNA has been updated to support Display Stream Compression 1.2a, allowing output in 4K@240 Hz, HDR 4K@120 Hz, and HDR 8K@60 Hz.[5]: 2 [18]

Instruction set

AMD's GPUOpen website hosts a PDF document aiming to describe the environment, the organization and the program state of RDNA devices. It details the instruction set and the microcode formats native to this family of processors that are accessible to programmers and compilers.[19]

Differences between GCN and RDNA

There are architectural changes which affect how code is scheduled:

  1. Single cycle instruction issue:
    • GCN issued one instruction per wave once every 4 cycles.
    • RDNA issues instructions every cycle.
  2. Wave32:
    • GCN used a wavefront size of 64 threads (work items).
    • RDNA supports both wavefront sizes of 32 and 64 threads.
  3. Workgroup Processors:
    • GCN grouped the shader hardware into "compute units" (CUs) which contained scalar ALUs and vector ALUs, LDS and memory access. One CU contains 4 SIMD16s which share one path to memory.
    • RDNA introduced the "workgroup processor" ("WGP"). The WGP replaces the compute unit as the basic unit of shader computation hardware/computing. One WGP encompasses 2 CUs. This allows significantly more compute power and memory bandwidth to be directed at a single workgroup.

Chips

discrete GPUs:

  • Navi 10 found on Radeon RX 5600, Radeon RX 5600 XT, Radeon RX 5600M, Radeon RX 5700, Radeon RX 5700M, Radeon RX 5700 XT, Radeon Pro 5700, Radeon Pro 5700 XT, Radeon Pro W5700X, and Radeon Pro W5700 graphics cards
  • Navi 12 found on Radeon Pro V520 branded graphics card, Radeon Pro 5600M branded mobile graphics card and BC-160 mining card for cryptocurrency
  • Navi 14 found on Radeon RX 5300, Radeon RX 5300 XT, Radeon Pro 5300, Radeon Pro W5300, Radeon RX 5500, Radeon RX 5500 XT, Radeon Pro 5500, Radeon Pro 5500 XT, and Radeon Pro W5500, branded graphics cards; Radeon RX 5300M, Radeon Pro 5300M, Radeon Pro W5300M, Radeon RX 5500M, Radeon Pro 5500M, and Radeon Pro W5500M branded mobile graphics cards

RDNA 2

AMD RDNA 2
Release dateNovember 18, 2020
(3 years ago)
 (2020-11-18)
CodenameNavi 2x
Fabrication process
History
PredecessorRDNA 1
SuccessorRDNA 3
Support status
Supported

RDNA 2[20] (also RDNA2)[21] is the successor to the RDNA microarchitecture. It was first publicly announced in early 2020 with a projected release in Q4 2020.[21][22] According to statements from AMD, RDNA 2 would be a "refresh" of the RDNA architecture.[23]

More information about RDNA 2 was made public on AMD's Financial Analyst Day on March 5, 2020.[24][22][25] AMD claimed that it would provide a 50% performance-per-watt improvement over RDNA, with increases in clock speed and instructions-per-clock.[26] Additional features confirmed by AMD include real-time, hardware accelerated ray tracing, "Infinity Cache", mesh shaders, sampler feedback and variable rate shading.[26][10] The company announced that RDNA 2 would be used in next-generation gaming consoles and PC graphics cards[26] code-named "Navi 2X" and also nicknamed as "Big Navi".[26]

AMD unveiled the Radeon RX 6000 series, its next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards at an online event on October 28, 2020.[27][28] The lineup initially consisted of the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT.[29][30] The RX 6800 and 6800 XT launched on November 18, 2020, with the RX 6900 XT being released on December 8, 2020.[10] Further variants including a Radeon RX 6700 (XT) series based on Navi 22, later launched on March 18, 2021.[31][32][33][34]

On May 31, 2021, AMD launched the RX 6000M series of GPUs designed for laptops.[35][36] These include the RX 6600M, RX 6700M, and RX 6800M. These were made available beginning on June 1, 2021.[35]

On June 1, 2021, AMD's CEO Dr. Lisa Su and Tesla, Inc.'s CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the entertainment systems of Tesla's new Model S and Model X are powered by RDNA 2.[37] The same microarchitecture was also announced to be used for an upcoming flagship Samsung Exynos SoC,[38] later introduced in January 2022 as Exynos 2200, utilizing a custom Xclipse 920 GPU with 3 workgroup processors.[39][40]

An RDNA 2 integrated GPU with 2 compute units is included in the I/O die on AMD's Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs.[41][42] According to AMD, the integrated RDNA 2 graphics in Ryzen 7000 are not intended for gaming and is instead intended for diagnostic purposes and offering video encode and decode capabilities.[43]

Chips

discrete GPUs:

  • Navi 21
  • Navi 22
  • Navi 23
  • Navi 24

integrated into APUs/CPUs:

Usage in video game consoles

Custom configurations of the RDNA 2 graphics microarchitecture are used in the PlayStation 5[7][44] from Sony, Xbox Series X and Series S consoles[9] from Microsoft, with proprietary tweaks and different GPU modifications in each system's implementation. Valve announced on July 15, 2021, that their Steam Deck would feature the RDNA 2 architecture. The Steam Deck was released in February 2022.[45]

RDNA 3

AMD RDNA 3
Release dateDecember 13, 2022
(15 months ago)
 (2022-12-13)
CodenameNavi 3x
Fabrication process
History
PredecessorRDNA 2
Support status
Supported

RDNA 3 (also RDNA3) is the successor to the RDNA 2 microarchitecture and was projected for a launch in Q4 2022 per AMD's gaming GPU roadmap.[46][47][48] At an August 29 reveal event for Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, AMD CEO Lisa Su teased RDNA 3 and revealed that it would utilize chiplets built on TSMC's N5 node.[49] On September 19, 2022, Sam Naffziger, the current senior vice president at AMD, stated in a blogpost that improvements made to the RDNA 3 microarchitecture allow for considerable performance gains and efficiency, with an estimated 50% increase in performance-per-watt compared to the RDNA 2 microarchitecture.[50] Additionally, the RDNA 3 architecture features the next generation of Infinity Cache, a modified graphics pipeline, adaptive power management and rearchitected compute units, leading to an overall robust uplift in rasterization and ray-tracing performance over the previous consumer architecture.[51]

On November 3, 2022, AMD unveiled the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards, based on the RDNA 3 microarchitecture. These are the first commercial GPUs to be based on multi-chip module (MCM) design.[52]

Chips

discrete GPUs:

  • Navi 31 found on Radeon RX 7900 GRE, Radeon RX 7900 XT, Radeon RX 7900 XTX, Radeon Pro W7800 and Radeon Pro W7900 branded graphics cards; Radeon RX 7900M branded mobile graphics cards
  • Navi 32 found on Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT branded graphics cards
  • Navi 33 found on Radeon RX 7600, Radeon RX 7600 XT, Radeon Pro W7500 and Radeon Pro W7600 branded graphics cards; Radeon RX 7600S, Radeon RX 7600M, Radeon RX 7600M XT and Radeon RX 7700S branded mobile graphics cards

integrated into APUs/CPUs:

Comparison of RDNA chips

Microarchitecture RDNA 1 RDNA 2 RDNA 3
Chip Navi 10[53] Navi 12[54] Navi 14[55] Navi 21[56] Navi 22[57] Navi 23[58] Navi 24[59] Navi 31[60][61] Navi 32[62] Navi 33[63]
Code name Gaming Fighter Sienna Cichlid Navy Flounder Dimgrey Cavefish Beige Goby Plum Bonito Wheat Nas Hotpink Bonefish
Fab TSMC N7 TSMC N6 TSMC N5 (GCD), TSMC N6 (MCD) TSMC N6
Package Monolithic Multi-chip module (MCM) Monolithic
Die size (mm2) 251 Un­known 158 520 335 237 107 ~531 ~350 204
Graphics compute dies 1
Memory cache dies 6 4
GCD size (mm2) 306 200
MCD size (mm2) 37.5
Transistors (billions) 10.3 Un­known 6.4 26.8 17.2 11.06 5.4 57.7 28.1 13.3
Transistor density
(MTr/mm2)
41.0 Un­known 40.5 51.5 51.3 46.7 50.5 109.2 (MCM)
132.4 (GCD)[64]
81.2 65.2
Shader engines 2 1 4[65] 2[65] 1[65] 6 TBA 2
Shader arrays 4 2 8 4 2 12 TBA 4
Workgroup processors 20 12 40 20 16 8 48 30 16
Compute units 40 24 80 40 32 16 96 60 32
Stream processors 2560 1536 5120 2560 2048 1024 6144 3840 2048
Texture mapping units 160 96 320 160 128 64 384 240 128
Render output units 64 32 128 64 32 192 96[66] 64
RT accelerators 80 40 32 16 96 60 32
AI accelerators 192 120 64
L0 cache (KB) 32 per Workgroup processor (WGP) 64 per WGP
L1 cache (KB) 128 per Shader array (SA) 256 per SA
L2 cache (MB) 8 4 2 4 3 2 1 6 4 2
L3 cache (MB) 128 96 32 16 96 64 32
Memory type GDDR6 HBM2 GDDR6
Memory bus (bits) 256 2048 128 256 192 128 64 384 256 128
Display Core Next 2.0.0 3.0.0 3.0.2 3.0.3 3.2.0 3.2.1
Video Core Next 2.0.0 2.0.2 3.0.0 3.0.16 3.0.33 4.0.0 4.0.4
Launch Jul 2019 Jun 2020 Oct 2019 Nov 2020 Mar 2021 May 2021 Jan 2022 Dec 2022 Sep 2023 Jan 2023
Introduced with Pro 5600M RX 6700 XT RX 6600M

See also

References

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External links