AMD Navi May Head to Workstation Graphics Cards

[harlan4096]

AMD has been sticking with its Vega graphics microarchitecture when it comes to workstation products. However, the chipmaker's new Navi microarchitecture might be venturing into the workstation world soon.

As reported by Phronix, a couple of AMDGPU Linux kernel DRM driver patches reveal device IDs for three different workstation graphics cards that are reportedly based on the Navi 14 silicon. We first learned of the existence of Navi 14 from a Linux driver back in June. An alleged Navi 14 graphics card with 24 Compute Units (CUs) and 4GB of memory popped up a month after. Today's sighting is the first time the Navi 14 silicon has been associated with a workstation product.

The description for the patches specifically state that the 0x7341, 0x734 and 0x734F device IDs are for workstation SKUs. Strangely, the 0x734F device in particular makes reference to WKS SKU Pro-XLM, which we haven't seen or heard of until today. The Navi 14 die is expected to be the lowest variant of the Navi family and power AMD's entry-level products, such as the Radeon RX 5500 or RX 5600 series. Therefore, it's reasonable to suspect that the three new Navi 14 device IDs represent budget workstation graphics cards.

Let's not forget that AMD also has other things on the horizon for workstation users to look forward to. The chipmaker is reportedly working on Arcturus, which is seemingly shaping out to be a Vega-based graphics card potentially built on an improved 7nm manufacturing process, perhaps the 7nm+ node.

AMD has been inadvertently feeding us information through AMDGPU patches for a while now. Hopefully, the chipmaker continues this practice and we can soon learn exactly what AMD is planning for the Navi and workstations.

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