AMD Big Navi Gets MALL Power Saving Feature

[harlan4096]

Every watt counts!

As reported by Phoronix, AMD is reportedly working on a feature called Memory Access at Last Level (MALL) for its Big Navi graphics card. The Linux patches don't explain the what MALL is in detail, but the Linux publication thinks that it has something to do with improving power saving.

Apparently, MALL belongs to AMD's Display Core Next (DCN) 3.0 featureset, but it's not currently available for all Navi-based offerings. For the meantime, only Sienna Cichlid seems to support MALL. 

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Specifications*
Silicon Codename Compute Units Stream Processors Clock Speed (MHz) Single-Precision Performance (TFLOPs) Power Limit (W)

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Navi 21 Sienna Cichlid 80 5,120 2,050 - 2,200 21 - 22.5 200 - 238
Navi 22 Navy Flounder 40 2,560 2,500 12.8 170
Navi 23 Dimgrey Cavefish 32 2,408 ? ? ?*Specifications are unconfirmed.

's said to feature the Navi 21 silicon, which brings a whopping 5,120 Stream Processors (SPs) to the table. It's unknown of support if MALL will eventually land for Navy Flounder (Navi 22) or Dimgrey Cavefish (Navi 23).

AMD will reveal its Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards on October 28. The new graphics cards come wielding the chipmaker's RDNA 2 architecture that promises 50% more performance per watt in comparison to RDNA 1. It'll be interesting to see how MALL ties in to AMD's claims.
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