



AMD 's current generation Vega graphics architecture – which powers its Radeon RX Vega family of graphics cards -- is based on a 14nm manufacturing process, but the chip company is already moving along with next generation process technology. During the company's conference call with analysts following its Q1 2018 earnings report (which it knocked out of the park , by the way), AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su made some comments regarding its upcoming 7nm GPUs.

"I'm also happy to report that our next-generation 7-nanometer Radeon Instinct product, optimized for machine learning workloads, is running in our labs," said Dr. Su. "We remain on track to provide samples to customers later this year."

If you recall, Radeon Instinct is AMD's product line for machine intelligences and deep learning accelerators. The current lineup features a mixture of Polaris- and Vega-based GPUs and could be considered competitors for NVIDIA's Tesla family of products.

Dr. Su went on to confirm that it has two partners with regards to 7nm production for its next-generation GPUs. "So, our foundry strategy is to use both TSMC and GlobalFoundries on the first 7-nanometer product. We are using TSMC for that product and we have a very strong relationship with them. And so, we do see a good momentum on it from what we see, and I'm not concerned about capacity."

The comments by AMD's CEO come weeks after we came across references to Vega 20 in a Linux driver package. Half a dozen Vega 20 SKUs were identified, although no other details were revealed. Vega 20 is rumored to have 64 Compute Units and 32GB of HBM2 with 1TB/s of memory bandwidth. It will also boast PCI-Express 4.0 support and have a TDP of 150W.

According to commentary from AMD at this year's CES, 7nm Vega products for mobile along with the 7nm Radeon Instinct accelerators will ship during the latter half of 2018.