AMD Moves to Sea Islands, Volcanic Islands for GPU Names
As 2012 and AMD's current 7000-series GPU generation comes to a close, there is word on the upcoming code names the company's next graphics processors.
As VR-Zone reports, AMD's will shift from the previous Northern Islands and current Southern Islands to Sea Islands (SI) in 2013, Volcanic Islands in 2014 and Pirate Islands in 2015. The first example of Sea Islands is the recently uncovered Oland, a small Island in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden.
The choice of code names is not quite as interesting, but typically much more complex than thought. Not only are those names exposed to potential negative public opinion and potentially negative connotations, but they can also collide with trademarks and copyright issues. Over at Intel, Russ Hampsten, who is frequently involved in code-naming products at the blue team, recently described the task of finding code-names as "the most thankless job you ever do." Primarily because of legal implications, code-names often use geographic items.
The SI Oland GPU will debut as the Radeon HD 8800 series and will debut as a 28 nm chip with 3.4 billion transistors. Compared to the current 7800 generation, the 8800 series will be featuring a significant jump in floating point performance and texture fill rates.
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blazorthon I guess that those are interesting names. Maybe we can figure out some other more specific code names for the families within each series knowing this information.Reply -
bak0n Unless it a single slot gpu that'll fit into my itx case, I'll stick with my 7750 kkthx.Reply -
blazorthon bak0nUnless it a single slot gpu that'll fit into my itx case, I'll stick with my 7750 kkthx.Reply
I've heard news of single-slot 7850s, so there could be some single slot 8850s if they do turn out to have similar power consumption, but there would almost definitely be some single slot 87xx cards. -
DRosencraft Code naming is the most thankless job. No one notices it until someone screws up and picks a name they shouldn't have (like MSFT's business with the 'Metro' name). It's even more important when you're a company that's trying to hide what you're doing, like game company's original IP names. However, I don't know how much it really matters for the GPU market since most people refer to them by their alpha-numeric sequence (GTX 680, Radeon HD 7800). But maybe I'm missing a part of the appreciation factor there.Reply -
cscott_it I hear they are going to finally bump up the ROPs on the 8970 to 48.Reply
I know increasing the ROPs isn't some magical gateway to increased performance, but it's going to be interesting to see how this works out. -
Au_equus blazorthonI've heard news of single-slot 7850s, so there could be some single slot 8850s if they do turn out to have similar power consumption, but there would almost definitely be some single slot 87xx cards.Yeah, checking them out earlier. made by afox (spinoff of foxconn) and not available in the US. runs hotter than ref 7850 but well within tolerable limits. makes for a pretty powerful gaming machine in an itx form factorReply