AMD's 'Arctic Islands' GPUs On Track For 2016 Release
Despite the declining sales and layoffs, AMD plans to update its entire graphics portfolio next year with the release of the "Arctic Islands" family of GPUs, which will cover everything from mobile and desktop as well be used in AMD's custom chip business. During a recent call with financial analysts, AMD CEO Lisa Su talked about the formation of a vertical business unit within the company called the Radeon Technologies Group, and also confirmed that AMD would update its entire graphics portfolio in 2016 to either 14nm or 16nm FinFET process technology.
Sue did not clarify AMD's foundry partner for the new chips. Globalfoundries, the company formed when AMD spun off its fabrication facilities and the maker of its CPUs, has 14nm FinFET, while TSMC has 16nm.
"We also taped out multiple products in FinFET technologies across both of our foundry partners that are on track to enter production next year," she told the analysts on the call.
AMD's new family of GPUs is codenamed "Arctic Islands" will be the third generation of AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN). The first GPU in the Arctic Islands family is codenamed "Greenland" and will reportedly be a big jump over past generations thanks to core and process advancements, but also because it will use AMD's High Bandwidth Memory technology. Greenland is rumored to have 32GB of HBM with 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth. It will also pack 18 billion transistors into the GPU, making it twice the size of current chips.
AMD could also be the provider of the SoC that will power Nintendo's new console, the Nintendo NX. Nintendo already used the AMD SoC in its Wii U. Su said that the company will have "additional semi-custom revenue ramping in the second half of 2016," and the Nintendo NX is projected for a late 2016 release.