![Generic block diagram of a GPU](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Generic_block_diagram_of_a_GPU.svg)
RDNA (
Radeon
Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Tech ...
DNA) is a
graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
(GPU)
microarchitecture
In computer engineering, microarchitecture, also called computer organization and sometimes abbreviated as µarch or uarch, is the way a given instruction set architecture (ISA) is implemented in a particular processor. A given ISA may be impl ...
and accompanying
instruction set architecture
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
developed by
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It is the successor to their
Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture/instruction set. The first product lineup featuring RDNA was the
Radeon RX 5000 series of video cards, launched on July 7, 2019.
[AMD press release: ] The architecture is also used in mobile products.
It is manufactured and
fabricated with
TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semicon ...
's
N7 FinFET
A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, f ...
graphics chips used in the
Navi series of AMD Radeon graphics cards.
The second iteration of RDNA was first featured in the
PlayStation 5
The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North Ame ...
and
Xbox Series X and Series S consoles.
Both consoles utilize a custom RDNA 2-based graphics solution as the basis for their GPU microarchitecture. On PC, RDNA 2 is featured in the
Radeon RX 6000 series of video cards, which first launched in November 2020.
RDNA 2 is also featured in
Samsung's Exynos 2200 as the graphics architecture.
The third iteration of RDNA was announced on November 3, 2022, and is set to be featured in the
Radeon RX 7000 series
The Radeon RX 7000 series is a series of graphics processing units developed by AMD, based on their RDNA 3 architecture. It was announced on November 3, 2022 and is the successor to the Radeon RX 6000 series. Currently AMD has announced two gra ...
of consumer desktop and mobile graphics cards.
RDNA 1
RDNA 1 (also ''RDNA1'')
is the first implementation of the RDNA microarchitecture and is the successor to the
Radeon RX Vega series
The Radeon RX Vega series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These GPUs use the Graphics Core Next (GCN) 5th generation architecture, codenamed Vega, and are manufactured on 14 nm FinFET technology, developed by Samsung Ele ...
. The launch occurred on July 7, 2019.
Architecture
The architecture features a new
processor
Processor may refer to:
Computing Hardware
* Processor (computing)
**Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program
*** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...
design, although the first details released at AMD's Computex keynote hints at aspects from the previous
Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture being present for backwards compatibility purposes, which is especially important for its use (in the form of RDNA 2) in the major ninth generation game consoles (the
Xbox Series X/S
The Xbox Series X/S are home video game consoles developed by Microsoft. They were both released on November 10, 2020, as the fourth generation Xbox, succeeding the Xbox One. Along with Sony's PlayStation 5, also released in November 2020, t ...
and
PlayStation 5
The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North Ame ...
) to preserve native compatibility with their pre-existing
eighth generation
Eighth is ordinal form of the number eight.
Eighth may refer to:
* One eighth, or ⅛, a fraction, one of eight equal parts of a whole
* Eighth note (quaver), a musical note played for half the value of a quarter note (crotchet)
* Octave, an inte ...
game libraries designed for GCN. It features
multi-level cache hierarchy and an improved
rendering pipeline
In computer graphics, a computer graphics pipeline, rendering pipeline or simply graphics pipeline, is a conceptual model that describes what steps a graphics system needs to perform to render a 3D scene to a 2D screen. Once ...
, with support for
GDDR6
Graphics Double Data Rate 6 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (GDDR6 SDRAM) is a type of synchronous graphics random-access memory (SGRAM) with a high bandwidth, "double data rate" interface, designed for use in graphics cards, game conso ...
memory.
Starting with the architecture itself, one of the biggest changes for RDNA is the width of a wavefront, the fundamental group of work. GCN in all of its iterations was 64 threads wide, meaning 64 threads were bundled together into a single wavefront for execution. RDNA drops this to a native 32 threads wide. At the same time, AMD has expanded the width of their SIMDs from 16 slots to 32 (aka SIMD32), meaning the size of a wavefront now matches the SIMD size.
RDNA also introduces working
primitive shaders. While the feature was present in the hardware of the Vega architecture, it was difficult to get a real-world performance boost from and thus AMD never enabled it. Primitive shaders in RDNA are
compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...
-controlled.
The display controller in RDNA has been updated to support
Display Stream Compression 1.2a, allowing output in 4K@240 Hz, HDR 4K@120 Hz, and HDR 8K@60 Hz.
Instruction set
AMD's
GPUOpen website hosts a PDF document aiming to describe the environment, the organization and the program state of AMD “RDNA” Generation devices. It details the instruction set and the microcode formats native to this family of processors that are accessible to programmers and compilers.
Differences between GCN and RDNA
There are architectural changes which affect how code is scheduled:
#Single cycle instruction issue:
#*GCN issued one instruction per wave once every 4 cycles.
#*RDNA issues instructions every cycle.
#Wave32:
#*GCN used a wavefront size of 64 threads (work items).
#*RDNA supports both wavefront sizes of 32 and 64 threads.
#Workgroup Processors:
#*GCN grouped the shader hardware into "compute units" (CUs) which contained scalar ALUs and vector ALUs, LDS and memory access. One CU contains 4 SIMD16s which share one path to memory.
#*RDNA introduced the "workgroup processor" ("WGP"). The WGP replaces the compute unit as the basic unit of shader computation hardware/computing. One WGP encompasses 2 CUs. This allows significantly more compute power and memory bandwidth to be directed at a single workgroup. In RDNA, 1 CU is one half of a WGP.
Chips
discrete GPUs:
* Navi 10 found on "Radeon RX 5700 XT", "Radeon RX 5700", "Radeon RX 5600 XT", "Radeon RX 5600", "Radeon RX 5700M", "Radeon RX 5600M", "Radeon Pro 5700 XT", "Radeon Pro 5700", "Radeon Pro W5700X" and "Radeon Pro W5700" graphics cards
* Navi 12 found on "Radeon Pro V520" branded graphics card, "Radeon Pro 5600M" branded mobile graphics card and "BC-160" mining card for cryptocurrency
* Navi 14 found on "Radeon RX 5500 XT", "Radeon RX 5500", "Radeon Pro 5500 XT", "Radeon Pro 5500", "Radeon Pro W5500", "Radeon RX 5300 XT", "Radeon RX 5300", "Radeon Pro 5300" and "Radeon Pro W5300" branded graphics cards; "Radeon RX 5500M", "Radeon Pro 5500M", "Radeon Pro W5500M", "Radeon RX 5300M", "Radeon Pro 5300M" and "Radeon Pro W5300M" branded mobile graphics cards
RDNA 2
RDNA 2
(also ''RDNA2'')
is the successor to the RDNA microarchitecture. It was first publicly announced in early 2020 with a projected release in Q4 2020.
According to statements from AMD, RDNA 2 would be a "''refresh''" of the RDNA architecture.
More information about RDNA 2 was made public on AMD's Financial Analyst Day on March 5, 2020.
AMD claimed that it would provide a 50%
performance-per-watt improvement over RDNA, with increases in
clock speed and
instructions-per-clock.
Additional features confirmed by AMD include real-time, hardware accelerated
ray tracing, "Infinity Cache", mesh shaders, sampler feedback and variable rate shading.
The company announced that RDNA 2 would be used in next-generation
gaming consoles
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a t ...
and PC graphics cards
code-named "Navi 2X" and also nicknamed as "Big Navi".
AMD unveiled the
Radeon RX 6000 series, its next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards at an online event on October 28, 2020. The lineup initially consisted of the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT. The RX 6800 and 6800 XT launched on November 18, 2020, with the RX 6900 XT being released on December 8, 2020.
Further variants including a Radeon RX 6700 (XT) series based on Navi 22, later launched on March 18, 2021.
On May 31, 2021, AMD launched the RX 6000M series of GPUs designed for laptops.
These include the RX 6600M, RX 6700M, and RX 6800M. These were made available beginning on June 1, 2021.
On June 1, 2021, AMD's CEO Dr.
Lisa Su and
Tesla, Inc.
Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and trucks), battery energy storage from home to grid- ...
's CEO
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
confirmed that the entertainment systems of Tesla's new
Model S and
Model X are powered by RDNA 2. The same microarchitecture was also announced to be used for an upcoming flagship Samsung
Exynos SoC, later introduced in January 2022 as Exynos 2200, utilizing a custom Xclipse 920 GPU with 3 compute units.
An RDNA 2 integrated GPU with 2 compute units is included in the I/O die on AMD's
Zen 4
Zen 4 is the codename for a CPU microarchitecture by AMD, released on September 27, 2022. It is the successor to Zen 3 and uses TSMC's N5 process for CCDs. Zen 4 powers Ryzen 7000 mainstream desktop processors (codenamed "Raphael") and will b ...
-based Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs. According to AMD, the integrated RDNA 2 graphics in Ryzen 7000 are not intended for gaming and is instead intended for diagnostic purposes and offering video encode and decode capabilities.
Chips
* Navi 21
* Navi 22
* Navi 23
* Navi 24
integrated into APUs:
* Rembrandt (as "Radeon 660M" and "Radeon 680M" models found on
Ryzen 6000 series mobile APUs)
* Raphael (as iGPU found on
Ryzen 7000 series CPUs)
Usage in video game consoles
Custom configurations of the RDNA 2 graphics microarchitecture are used in the
PlayStation 5
The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North Ame ...
from
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
,
Xbox Series X and Series S consoles
from
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
, with proprietary tweaks and different GPU modifications in each system's implementation.
Valve
A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings ...
announced on July 15, 2021 that their
Steam Deck would feature the RDNA 2 architecture. The Steam Deck was released in February 2022.
RDNA 3
RDNA 3 (also ''RDNA3'') is the successor to the RDNA 2 microarchitecture and is scheduled for a 2022 release per AMD's gaming GPU roadmap. At an August 29 reveal event for Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, AMD CEO
Lisa Su teased RDNA 3 and revealed that it would utilize
chiplets
A chiplet is a tiny integrated circuit (IC) that contains a well-defined subset of functionality. It is designed to be combined with other chiplets on an interposer in a single electronic packaging, package. A set of chiplets can be implemented in ...
built on
TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semicon ...
's
N5 node. On September 19, 2022, Sam Naffziger, the current senior vice president at AMD, stated in a blogpost that improvements made to the RDNA 3 microarchitecture will allow for considerable performance gains and efficiency, with an estimated 50% increase in performance-per-watt compared to the RDNA 2 microarchitecture. Additionally, the RDNA 3 architecture features the next generation of Infinity Cache, a modified graphics pipeline, adaptive power management and rearchitected compute units, leading to an overall robust uplift in rasterization and ray-tracing performance over the previous consumer architecture.
On November 3, 2022, AMD unveiled the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards, based on the RDNA 3 microarchitecture. The graphics card are the first commercial GPUs to be based on
Multi-Chip-Module design.
Chips
* Navi 31
Comparison of RDNA chips
See also
*
List of AMD graphics processing units
The following is a list that contains general information about GPUs and video cards by AMD, including those by ATI Technologies before 2006, based on official specifications in table-form.
Field explanations
The headers in the table listed b ...
*
AMD Radeon Software
AMD Radeon Software is a device driver and utility software package for AMD's graphics cards and APUs. Its graphical user interface is built with Electron and is compatible with 64-bit Windows and Linux distributions.
Software bundle
Func ...
*
GPUOpen
*
ROCm
ROCm is an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) software stack for graphics processing unit (GPU) programming. ROCm spans several domains: general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), high performance computing (HPC), heterogeneous c ...
References
External links
RDNA's official page on AMD.comRDNA 2's official page on AMD.comAMD RDNA 1.0 Instruction Set Architecture – Reference Guide - developer.amd.comAMD RDNA 2 Instruction Set Architecture – Reference Guide - developer.amd.com
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AMD microarchitectures
Computer-related introductions in 2019
Graphics microarchitectures