AMD’s next-gen GPU has been spotted in Linux drivers

With AMD's RX Vega now out and about, it is time to start looking towards the future. We've known for some time that Vega will be followed up by ‘Navi' at some point between 2018 and 2020. Now, we know that progress is being made as AMD's next-gen GPU has appeared in a new driver.

In drivers leading up to Vega, the GPU was codenamed GFX9. The latest Linux driver from AMD contains a reference to the upcoming GFX10 chip: “new_chip.gfx10.mmSUPER_SECRET.enable [0: 0]”. While we already know that Navi is set to be AMD's next gen architecture, GFX10 is labeled as ‘super secret' so the company appears to be keeping things under wraps to avoid raising expectations about a release date. According to Videocardz, Navi may not appear until late 2018, the official roadmap leaves a two year gap, so there is going to be a fairly long wait ahead.

So what do we actually know about Navi so far? We know it will be AMD's first graphics chip based on the 7nm architecture. We also know that it will support ‘next-gen memory', which is likely going to be either HBM3 or GDDR6. We know that GDDR6 is set to start popping up in GPUs in 2018, though HBM3 could be a bit further off.

KitGuru Says: AMD is hard at work on its next generation GPU architecture, though it could be a long time before we see it in action. Nvidia has already kicked off its Volta roll out with the Titan V, so perhaps by the end of next year, we'll get to see the red and green teams face off again. That said, given the leap to 7nm, I wouldn't be surprised if Navi slipped into 2019. 

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