What is the latest on AMD’s Sea Islands?

Not much new, not too exciting

Oct 11, 2012 by

AMD logoWhat is the latest on AMD’s Sea Islands (CI) line of GPUs? The short story is not much, it is pretty ho-hum.

Sea Islands is not going to be a 2012 product, it is looking like a March 2013 release for now. Things could of course change, but that is unlikely given what the card is. CI is a 28nm evolution of the current 7xxx line of cards, think optimizations rather than massively new features.

As far as performance goes, AMD was promising AIBs roughly a 30% speed boost from the new silicon a few months back. That we hear is fairly optimistic, with more measured sources saying +15% is more likely. AMD is power bound and die size equals cost, so what you are looking at is process improvements and algorithm optimizations rather than any new big bangs.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate