Jack Huynh, Deputy Head of the Computing and Graphics Business Group at AMD, sat down for an interview with IT media at IFA 2024 in Germany, unveiling the plan to merge the GPU architectures of RDNA and CDNA into UDNA.
After the end of the Graphic Core Next (GCN) era, AMD adopted a strategy of separating the RDNA architecture for gaming, first used in the Radeon RX 5000 series in 2019, while CDNA was reserved for data center GPUs with the Instinct series starting in 2020.
Although RDNA and CDNA originate from the same roots, they are distinct, requiring software developers to work harder. This differs from NVIDIA’s approach of using a unified architecture for gaming and data center GPUs, giving AMD a competitive disadvantage in market share.
Huynh explained that AMD previously segmented architectures to optimize performance for different types of workloads. However, this approach made it challenging for developers, prompting the company to integrate architectures gradually over the long term (up to RDNA 7 and UDNA 7) while maintaining backward compatibility.
It is expected that AMD will introduce the RDNA 4 GPU architecture this year (following RDNA 3 in 2022), paving the way for the integration of UDNA architecture starting with RDNA 5 in the future.
TLDR: AMD is merging RDNA and CDNA architectures into UDNA, aiming to improve developer efficiency and maintain backward compatibility in future GPU releases.
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