AMD Navi builds on Graphics Core Next reveals Linux drivers

Ahead of the official unveiling of AMD’s next-generation graphics architecture Navi, there has been speculation as to whether it should build on the company’s existing instruction set Graphics Core Next (GCN), or something completely new. Code lines in drivers for Linux now show that GCN is the basis for Navi.

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Diligent Linux source Phoronix reports that new source code repositories for AMD’s open graphics drivers include the code line “EF_AMDGPU_MACH_AMDGCN_GFX1010”. Here it can be read that it is about the tenth generation graphics card from AMD, which after the ninth generation Vega logically becomes Navi.

The second that can be read is the abbreviation GCN, the underlying set of instructions that has been used as a basis for AMD’s graphics cards since the introduction of the Radeon HD 7000 series. Early negative reactions have interpreted this as meaning that the architecture of the Navi generation will be the same as in the previous generations, which does not necessarily have to be the case.

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GCN is partly an underlying set of instructions, and partly an architecture built on this set of instructions. The first generations of graphics cards based on GCN differed very little. GCN 4.0 introduced with Polaris added major differences to the underlying set of instructions.

AMD Vega continues to build on GCN, but brought about big enough differences to have its own architectural name NCU.

Then came Vega, which introduced GCN 5.0, such a major update that it also goes by the name Next-Generation Compute Unit (NCU). The fact that Navi is once again building on GCN does not necessarily mean that the architecture will be identical to previous generations.

Signs that indicate a more comprehensive update of GCN in Navi are the need for computing capacity for ray tracing which has arisen in recent years. Sony’s confirmed details about the next generation Playstation included a Navi-based graphics circuit supported ray tracing, which suggests that the Navi architecture has been updated to better support this.

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AMD will tell you more about the Navi generation’s graphics card during Computex 2019, then possibly with more details about the underlying architecture.