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RDNA (Radeon DNA) is a
graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...
(GPU)
microarchitecture In electronics, computer science and 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 ...
and accompanying
instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, ...
developed by
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
. It is the successor to their
Graphics Core Next Graphics Core Next (GCN) is the codename for a series of microarchitectures and an instruction set architecture that were developed by AMD for its GPUs as the successor to its TeraScale microarchitecture. The first product featuring GCN was lau ...
(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 or Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, the world' ...
'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 chann ...
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. It was announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...
and
Xbox Series X/S The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are the fourth generation of consoles in the Xbox series, succeeding the previous generation's Xbox One. Released on November 10, 2020, the higher-end Xbox Series X and lower-end Xbox Series S are part o ...
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 Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...
's
Exynos The Samsung Exynos (stylized as SΛMSUNG Exynos), formerly Hummingbird (), is a series of ARM architecture, Arm-based System on a chip, system-on-chips developed by Samsung Electronics' System LSI division and manufactured by Samsung Foundry. I ...
2200 as the graphics architecture. The third iteration of RDNA was announced on November 3, 2022, and is featured in the Radeon RX 7000 series of consumer desktop and mobile graphics cards. The fourth iteration of RDNA was unveiled on January 6, 2025 at CES and is used in the Radeon RX 9070 series of desktop 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 Elec ...
. The launch occurred on July 7, 2019.


Architecture

The architecture features a new processor 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 and Xbox Series S are the fourth generation of consoles in the Xbox series, succeeding the previous generation's Xbox One. Released on November 10, 2020, the higher-end Xbox Series X and lower-end Xbox Series S are part o ...
and
PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...
) to preserve native compatibility with their pre-existing eighth generation game libraries designed for GCN. It features multi-level cache hierarchy and an improved
rendering pipeline The computer graphics pipeline, also known as the rendering pipeline, or graphics pipeline, is a framework within computer graphics that outlines the necessary procedures for transforming a 3D computer graphics, three-dimensional (3D) scene into ...
, 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 con ...
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 Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...
-controlled. The display controller in RDNA has been updated to support
Display Stream Compression Display Stream Compression (DSC) is a VESA-developed video compression algorithm designed to enable increased display resolutions and frame rates over existing physical interfaces, and make devices smaller and lighter, with longer battery life. ...
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 RDNA devices. It details the instruction set and the microcode formats native to this family of processors that are accessible to programmers and compilers.
Documentation Documentation is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance, and use. As a form of knowledge managem ...
is available for: * th
Radeon DNA 1 instruction set
* th
Radeon DNA 2 instruction set
* th
Radeon DNA 3 instruction set
* th
Radeon DNA 3.5 instruction set
* th
Radeon DNA 4 instruction set


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.


Chips

Discrete GPUs: * Navi 10 found on Radeon RX 5600, Radeon RX 5600 XT, Radeon RX 5600M, Radeon RX 5700, Radeon RX 5700M, Radeon RX 5700 XT, Radeon Pro 5700, Radeon Pro 5700 XT, 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 5300, Radeon RX 5300 XT, Radeon Pro 5300, Radeon Pro W5300, Radeon RX 5500, Radeon RX 5500 XT, Radeon Pro 5500, Radeon Pro 5500 XT, and Radeon Pro W5500, branded graphics cards; Radeon RX 5300M, Radeon Pro 5300M, Radeon Pro W5300M, Radeon RX 5500M, Radeon Pro 5500M, and Radeon Pro W5500M 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 Clock rate or clock speed in computing typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses used to synchronize the operations of its components. It is used as an indicator of the processor's ...
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 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 Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su (; pinyin: ''Sū Zīfēng''; born 1969) is an American billionaire business executive, computer scientist, and electrical engineer who is the president, chief executive officer (CEO), and chair of the semiconductor company Adv ...
and
Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from h ...
's CEO
Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...
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 The Samsung Exynos (stylized as SΛMSUNG Exynos), formerly Hummingbird (), is a series of ARM architecture, Arm-based System on a chip, system-on-chips developed by Samsung Electronics' System LSI division and manufactured by Samsung Foundry. I ...
SoC, later introduced in January 2022 as Exynos 2200, utilizing a custom Xclipse 920 GPU with 3 workgroup processors. 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 name for a CPU microarchitecture designed by AMD, released on September 27, 2022. It is the successor to Zen 3 and uses TSMC's N6 process for I/O dies, N5 process for CCDs, and N4 process for APUs. Zen 4 powers Ryzen 7000 per ...
-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

Discrete GPUs: * Navi 21 * Navi 22 * Navi 23 * Navi 24 Integrated into APUs/CPUs: * Rembrandt (as "Radeon 660M" and "Radeon 680M" models found on Ryzen 6000 series mobile APUs) * Raphael (as "Radeon Graphics" branded iGPU found on Ryzen 7000 series desktop CPUs) * Mendocino (as "Radeon 610M" model found on Ryzen 7020 series mobile APUs) * Rembrandt-R (as "Radeon 660M" and "Radeon 680M" models found on Ryzen 7035 series mobile APUs) * Dragon Range (as "Radeon 610M" model found on Ryzen 7045 series mobile APUs)


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. It was announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...
from
Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...
,
Xbox Series X and Series S The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are the fourth generation of consoles in the Xbox series, succeeding the previous generation's Xbox One. Released on November 10, 2020, the higher-end Xbox Series X and lower-end Xbox Series S are part o ...
consoles from
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
, 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 Slurry, slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically Pip ...
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 was projected for a launch in Q4 2022 per AMD's gaming GPU roadmap. At an August 29 reveal event for Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, AMD CEO
Lisa Su Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su (; pinyin: ''Sū Zīfēng''; born 1969) is an American billionaire business executive, computer scientist, and electrical engineer who is the president, chief executive officer (CEO), and chair of the semiconductor company Adv ...
teased RDNA 3 and revealed that it would utilize chiplets built on
TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC or Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, the world' ...
'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 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. These are the first commercial GPUs to be based on
multi-chip module A multi-chip module (MCM) is generically an electronic assembly (such as a package with a number of conductor terminals or Lead (electronics), "pins") where multiple integrated circuits (ICs or "chips"), semiconductor Die (integrated circuit), d ...
(MCM) design. On October 5, 2023 and October 24, 2024 respectively, Samsung announced Exynos 2400 and Exynos 1580, which utilized RDNA 3 microarchitecture-based custom-design GPU, Xclipse 940 and 540.


Chips

Discrete GPUs: * Navi 31 found on Radeon RX 7900 GRE, Radeon RX 7900 XT, Radeon RX 7900 XTX, Radeon Pro W7800 and Radeon Pro W7900 branded graphics cards; Radeon RX 7900M branded mobile graphics cards * Navi 32 found on Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT branded graphics cards * Navi 33 found on Radeon RX 7600, Radeon RX 7600 XT, Radeon Pro W7500 and Radeon Pro W7600 branded graphics cards; Radeon RX 7600S, Radeon RX 7600M, Radeon RX 7600M XT and Radeon RX 7700S branded mobile graphics cards Integrated into APUs/CPUs: * Phoenix (as "Radeon 740M", "Radeon 760M" and "Radeon 780M" models found on Ryzen 7040 series and Ryzen Z1 series mobile APUs) * Hawk Point (as "Radeon 740M", "Radeon 760M" and "Radeon 780M" models found on Ryzen 8040 series mobile APUs)


Comparison of RDNA chips


See also

*
List of AMD graphics processing units The following is a list that contains general information about Graphics processing unit, GPUs and video cards made by AMD, including those made by ATI Technologies before 2006, based on official specifications in table-form. Field explanation ...
* AMD Radeon Software * GPUOpen *
ROCm ROCm is an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) software stack for graphics processing unit (GPU) programming. ROCm spans several domains, including general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), high performance computing (HPC), and h ...


References


External links


RDNA's official page on AMD.com

AMD RDNA 1.0 Instruction Set Architecture – Reference Guide - developer.amd.com

AMD RDNA 2 Instruction Set Architecture – Reference Guide - developer.amd.com

AMD RDNA3 Instruction Set Architecture – Reference Guide - developer.amd.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:RDNA AMD microarchitectures Computer-related introductions in 2019 Graphics microarchitectures