A couple of weeks ago I was in Las Vegas with AMD, at the launch event of the new AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. As usual in this type of press conference, after the initial announcement by Dr. Lisa Su, we attended a series of closed-door technical sessions where They tell us much more in depth about the architecture and the productsas you may have seen in this article about the RDNA 3 architecture which we have just revealed.
In one of these sessions I had the chance to chat with Joe Macri, one of AMD’s brightest and most notorious engineers, currently a vice president and CTO of the same. Joe Macri specializes in memory solutions and is a member of the steering committee of JEDEC itself.
It all came down to how the RDNA 3 GPU in the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is designed. Something that characterizes this new generation of graphics chips is that use chiplet technology similar to that used in Ryzen CPUs. This allows them to combine the graphics computation block made at 5nm with cache blocks made at 6nm.
If we look at the diagram of the RDNA 3 GPU, the layout is made so that the compute graphics blocks are in and the L3 cache blocks are out. In the Zen 3 CPU architecture, the first with a product with 3D V-Cache like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the layout is similar, but with the compute cores outside and the L3 cache inside.
In both cases is vertically symmetricwhich would make it easier to place additional cache blocks on top of existing ones, necessitating structural silicon blocks on top of the compute blocks.
In the case of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the additional L3 block is placed directly on top of the existing L3 cache blocks and it is supported by another 2 layers of silicon over the computing cores that give structure to the entire system. In the case of RDNA 3, the solution could surely be the opposite; L3 cache blocks on top of the existing L3s at the top and bottom of the diagram and a structural silicon block in the middle.
Although all these conjectures are not necessarily indicative of the use of 3D V-Cache, in my chat with Joe Macri I ventured to ask him if it was possible to add more cache to RDNA 3 GPUs using this technology or if it was something impossible or crazy. His response was that not only was he not unreasonable at all, but it was possible to do it.
Gaming performance would be directly benefited by the use of 3D V-Cache on RDNA 3 GPUS
Immediately afterwards I asked him if it made sense to do it and he said that, of course, that more cache always means better performance. Joe Macri, also explained to me that precisely gaming performance would benefit thanks to the use of a larger cache.
Neither Joe Macri nor AMD have confirmed or denied at any time that there will be any graphic product using 3D V-Cache technology. However, the answers to my questions seem to indicate that AMD has an ace up its sleeve that you can use to push out graphic products that are superior to those just announced, should you see the need. This could certainly improve its competitiveness against NVIDIA and turn the scales in your favor as far as the performance crown is concerned, which it already did with the almighty Ryzen 7 5800X3D in its fight against Intel.
End of Article. Tell us something in the Comments!
