At this 12 months’s AMD Computex 2021 keynote occasion, CEO Lisa Su, amongst a sequence of varied new product bulletins and expertise disclosures, has teased some new particulars on the corporate’s cooperation with Samsung regarding the new RDNA GPU IP that’s been licensed out and the 2 firms have been engaged on to ship within the next-generation Exynos SoCs.
The authentic licensing and cooperation settlement had been first introduced in June of 2019, and seemingly offered itself as a fairly distinctive IP licencing deal between AMD and Samsung LSI, because it seemingly went past the standard IP block licensing deal. While we nonetheless don’t have too many official particulars on the precise settlement construction, the deal is alleged to be extra of a collaborative effort between the 2 events when it comes to creating the IP and adapting and optimising it for low-power cellular SoC usages. This comes at distinction with the standard IP block licensing behavior within the trade the place the IP supplier has full, and sole management over the design.
Earlier this 12 months, Samsung LSI’s VP and GM Dr. Inyup Kang had introduced that the division is planning on integrating the brand new AMD RDNA-based GPU within the next-generation Exynos flagship SoC.
At the occasion right this moment, Dr. Lisa Su additional commented on a number of new particulars concerning the GPU IP:
The subsequent place you’ll discover RDNA 2 would be the high-performance cell phone market. AMD has partnered with trade chief Samsung to speed up graphics innovation within the cellular market, and we’re pleased to announce we are going to convey customized graphics IP to Samsung’s subsequent flagship SoC, with ray-tracing and variable price shading capabilities. We’re actually trying ahead to Samsung offering extra particulars later this 12 months.
The new particulars being divulged right here is the truth that Samsung’s implementation of the RDNA GPU will proceed to hold over ray-tracing and variable-rate shading capabilities from its bigger AMD PC and console GPU structure siblings. These are two vital options coming into the cellular market; whereas the introduction of VRS wouldn’t be the primary available on the market – notably being applied on this 12 months’s Adreno 660 GPU within the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, it could be the second such confirmed applied cellular GPU, and the one one from a GPU IP vendor, which AMD now seemingly is.
The addition of ray-tracing capabilities would even be a primary within the cellular market. While it’s not clear how this might translate over in precise recreation titles on smartphones and tablets, having RT capabilities is actually an vital function set that Samsung LSI will undoubtedly reap the benefits of of their advertising and marketing of the next-gen SoCs. Again, this might be the primary and solely RT-capable GPU IP that we’ve got affirmation on being applied within the trade – no less than within the cellular market. Imagination’s next-gen C-Series GPU IP can be marketed to have RT, nonetheless the corporate in recent times has had no cellular IP wins, and AMD and Samsung will seemingly beat them to market. Meanwhile, Arm has additionally teased that they’re engaged on VRS and RT GPU IP, nonetheless the just lately introduced Mali-G710 doesn’t comprise these options, and as such we received’t expect any suitable cellular Mali GPU implementation until 2023 at minimal.
The one factor that was odd about right this moment’s announcement was the truth that AMD and Dr. Lisa Su was partly referring to the GPU IP as RDNA 2. I believe this was a confounding of IP generations for the keynote and normal public’s sake – RDNA 2 as a graphics IP is a 2020 matter and Samsung’s next-gen Exynos SoC popping out on the finish of 2021 for 2022 flagship gadgets would very a lot point out that that is an RDNA three IP era. AMD not having formally introduced or detailed RDNA three as of but, and Dr. Lisa…
