AMD's graphics circuit "Tonga" has HSA support and 384-bit memory bus

The sales start of the Radeon R9 285 received a lukewarm reception, as the graphics card is in many ways reminiscent of the previous Radeon R9 280 in terms of both performance and power consumption. At the same time, the graphics circuit Tonga used used raised many eyebrows, as the memory bus went down to 256 bits, while the circuit area and the number of transistors increased towards Tahiti, which houses the R9 280 and R9 280X.

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1 Specifications: – AMD “Tonga XT”

2 The Tonga XT can be included in the Radeon 300 series

3 Related posts:

Specifications: – AMD “Tonga XT”

	–	R9 285	R9 280X	R9 280
GPU	Tonga XT	Tonga Pro	Tahiti XT	Tahiti Pro
Technical	TSMC 28 nm	TSMC 28 nm	TSMC 28 nm	TSMC 28 nm
Circuit area	359 mm²	359 mm²	352 mm²	352 mm²
Transistors	5,0 md	5,0 md	4,3 md	4,3 md
Architecture	GCN 1.1	GCN 1.1	GCN 1.0	GCN 1.0
Streamprocessorer	2 048 st.	1 792 st.	2 048 st.	1 792 st.
GPU frequency	–	918 MHz	1 000 MHz	933 MHz
Texture units	160 st.	128 st.	160 st.	128 st.
Raster units	–	32 st.	32 st.	32 st.
Memory bus	384-bit	256-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Memory amount	–	2 GB	3 GB	3 GB
Minnestyp	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory frequency	–	5 500 MHz	6 000 MHz	5 000 MHz
Memory bandwidth	–	176 GB/s	288 GB/s	240 GB/s

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During an AMD event in India, it is clear what can explain why the company developed Tonga. PC Watch (Japanese) reports that AMD has confirmed not only 2,048 stream processors for the full-scale circuit, but also a 384-bit memory bus – something that differs from previous reports that all spoke for 256 bits also for the Tonga XT.

Block diagram for AMD Tonga XT.

Perhaps more striking is that Tonga is the company’s first graphics circuit that is fully HSA compliant, which was previously exclusive to the Kaveri processor. This means, among other things, that the CPU and GPU have easier access to each other’s system memory, which makes it easier to perform general calculations with a graphics processor.

This means that the Tonga graphics circuit was primarily developed for the professional market, but it does not necessarily exclude a future consumer launch for the Tonga XT.

The Tonga XT can be included in the Radeon 300 series

Rumors have long circulated about a Radeon R9 285X, which will not completely unexpectedly house full-scale Tonga. A short cut on Twitter from AMD, however, argues that “only R9 285 will be launched”, while company representatives claim to SweClockers that no R9 285X is included in the planning.

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Although the Radeon R9 285X may not get rid of, it can not be ruled out that AMD will release the graphics circuit in its perfect form later in the year. One possibility is that it will enter the consumer market in connection with the Radeon 300 series, which may appear at the end of the year or in 2015.