Doubt articles: Northern Islands, South Islands?

Doubt articles: Northern Islands, South Islands? There is no doubt that with the gradual rollout of NVIDIA's low-end products, AMD's new generation of DX11 "Radeon HD 6000" series is also coming. Due to various restrictions, it is not convenient for specific information to be disclosed too much, but at least we can look at the question of code names: the Northern Islands/NI and the Southern Islands/SI that have continued to spread in the past six months. What exactly does each represent?

Previously we have always believed that the Southern Islands are the Radeon HD 6000 series that will be released. The architecture is slightly enhanced compared to the existing products and continues to be manufactured using TSMC's 40m process. The Northern Islands are a new architecture in the future and the manufacturing process is also upgraded to 28nm. Catalyst 10.8 gave us an "unexpected surprise", in which a large number of new codes also corresponded to an abbreviation "NI", which is obviously the Northern Islands.

This chaotic situation if you have to criticize who, then TSMC, the early 40nm process to AMD, NVIDIA suffered a lot of TSMC, cancel the 32nm process and went straight to the 28nm TSMC.

AMD's initial planning was for the Northern Islands, which was preparing to use TSMC's 32nm process. The specific core codenames were Cozmuel, Kauai, and Ibiza, which we disclosed a year ago. Unfortunately, just one month before the tapestrip in the Northern Islands, TSMC suddenly announced the cancellation of the 32nm, and went straight to 28nm. This hit AMD by surprise.

As a last resort, AMD has formulated Plan B, while waiting for a new process, while developing a new generation of transitional products on the existing basis. The replacements were not code-named and were later called "NI-40", representing the 40nm process version of the Northern Islands. They were later called the Northern Islands. The new core codes of Antilles, Cayman, Barts, Turks, and Caicos were also successively determined and became new members of the Northern Islands family after the face-lift.

The name of the southern islands also emerged during this period, but because the source has been vague, so that everyone thinks it is the backup plan B. If you are too lazy to sort out the complexities involved, you only need to know that the Radeon HD 6000 series code to be released will actually be the Northern Islands. Let's talk about the next generation.

Let's take a closer look at the architecture of the Northern Islands. It is said that AMD's transitional product is only an expedient measure, and there is no substantive change. Actually, it is still a drastic change to the existing Evergreen architecture. Since DX10 R600, AMD's graphics architecture has adopted four small and large stream processing unit systems, which are theoretically excellent. However, it is difficult to actually use them. It is not easy to use all the power. Now, the Northern Islands have finally abandoned it and changed it into four medium-sized stream processor units. The overall theoretical performance is weakened, but the overall implementation efficiency will be higher and the software programming will be simpler, so the actual performance, especially the complex operation The performance should be much better. After all, the GPU is more important than throughput.

Of course, the actual game situation remains to be seen, after all, the theory is only theoretical. NVIDIA has always been promoting the true DX11 architecture, emphasizing better surface subdivision performance, but it can only be seen in theoretical tests such as Unigine Heaven. This is not a decisive factor in the game.

There are also many changes in the non-core parts, at least significant improvement in the implementation efficiency, but the specific situation is still unknown. It is reported that AMD enhanced the surface subdivision unit to meet the needs of NVIDIA's promotion and future games.

Changes in the architecture of stream processing units have a great impact on the GPU core area. On the one hand, the number of each group has been reduced from five to four, but on the other hand, the size of each unit has increased, and the new core The overall number of units has also increased a lot. As a result, the core area of ​​the Northern Islands will be expanded by 10-15%, which is estimated to be 380-400 square millimeters, which is larger than the RV870 Cypress but still far smaller than the Fermi GF100.

When is the Radeon HD 6000 Series released? Previously it was October 12, but in fact there was only one related meeting that day, and the actual release date was until the end of the month, around the 25th. First off is the performance-grade Radeon HD 6700 series, targeting the 175-250 dollar price range, followed by the high-end Radeon HD 6800 series and the flagship dual-core Radeon HD 6900 series. The lower-end mainstream and entry-level series will follow in early 2011. Into.

AMD's non-stop round robin bombardment obviously will make NVIDIA overeat. After all, its GeForce 400 series have not yet been fully rolled out. On the one hand, it has to face the Radeon HD 5000 series that has established its market position and its price is always strong, and on the other hand, it has to face a strong trend. Keep up with the Radeon HD 6000 series.

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