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Vega µarch
General Info
Arch Type	GPU
Designer	AMD
Manufacturer	GlobalFoundries
Introduction	2017
Process	12 nm
Succession
Polaris Navi

Vega (also known as Graphics core next 5th generation) is both a microarchitecture and GPU family developed by AMD as a successor to the GCN4 microarchitecture and the arctic islands family.

Codenames

Codename	Description
Raven Ridge	Mobile processors based on Zen CPUs and a Vega GPU

Models

Vega IGP Models			Standards
Name	Compute Units	Shaders	Vulkan		Direct3D			OpenGL		OpenCL
			Windows	Linux	Windows	Linux	HLSL	Windows	Linux	Windows	Linux
Vega 8	8	512	1.1		12	N/A	-	4.6	4.6	2.2
Vega 10	10	640
Vega 11	11	704

Vega Dedicated Models			Standards
Name	Compute Units	Shaders	Vulkan		Direct3D			OpenGL		OpenCL
			Windows	Linux	Windows	Linux	HLSL	Windows	Linux	Windows	Linux
Vega 56	56	3584	1.1		12	N/A	-	4.6	4.6	2.2
Vega 64	64	4096

Mobility CPUs

CPU Core Architecture	Zen 6	Zen 5/5c	Zen 5	Zen 5	Zen 5/5c	Zen 5/5c	Zen 4/4c	Zen 4	Zen 4	Zen 3+	Zen 3	Zen 2	Zen+	Zen
Family Name	Sound Wave?	Bald Eagle Point	Krackan Point	Fire Range	Strix Point Halo	Strix Point	Hawk Point	Dragon Range	Phoenix	Rembrandt	Cezanne	Renoir	Picasso	Raven Ridge
Family Branding	TBD	Ryzen AI 400	TBD	TBD	Ryzen AI 300	Ryzen AI 300	Ryzen 8040	Ryzen 7045	Ryzen 7040	Ryzen 6000/7035	Ryzen 5000	Ryzen 4000	Ryzen 3000	Ryzen 2000
CPU Clocks	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	5.1GHz	TBD	5.4GHz	5.2GHz	5.0GHz (Ryzen 9 6980HX)	4.80GHz (Ryzen 9 5980HX)	4.3GHz (Ryzen 9 4900HS)	4.0GHz (Ryzen 7 3750H)	3.8GHz (Ryzen 7 2800H)
CPU Cores / Threads	TBD	12/24	8/16	16/32	16/32	12/24	8/16	16/32	8/16	8/16	8/16	8/16	4/8	4/8
L2 Cache	TBD	12MB	TBD	TBD	24MB	12MB	4MB	16MB	4MB	4MB	4MB	4MB	2MB	2MB
L3 Cache	TBD	24MB + 16MB SLC	32MB	TBD	64MB + 32MB SLC	24MB	16MB	32MB	16MB	16MB	16MB	8MB	4MB	4MB
GPU Core Architecture	RDNA 3+ iGPU	RDNA 3.5 4nm iGPU	RDNA 3+ 4nm iGPU	RDNA 3+ 4nm iGPU	RDNA 3.5 4nm iGPU	RDNA 3.5 4nm iGPU	RDNA 3 4nm iGPU	RDNA 2 6nm iGPU	RDNA 3 4nm iGPU	RDNA 2 6nm iGPU	Vega 8 Enhanced 7 nm	Vega 8 Enhanced 7 nm	Vega 10 14 nm	Vega 11 14 nm
GPU Cores	TBD	16 CUs (1024 shaders)	12 CUs (786 shaders)	2 CUs (128 shaders)	40 CUs (2560 shaders)	16 CUs (1024 shaders)	12 CUs (786 shaders)	2 CUs (128 shaders)	12 CUs (786 shaders)	12 CUs (786 shaders)	8 CUs (512 shaders)	8 CUs (512 shaders)	10 CUs (640 shaders)	11 CUs (704 shaders)
GPU Clocks	TBD	2.9GHz	TBD	TBD	TBD	2.9GHz	2.8GHz	2.2GHz	2.8GHz	2.4GHz	2.1GHz	1.75GHz	1.4GHz	1.3GHz
TDP (cTDP Down/Up)	TBD	15-45W (65W cTDP)	15-45W (65W cTDP)	55-75W (65W cTDP)	55W- 125W	15-45W (65W cTDP)	15-45W (65W cTDP)	55-75W (65W cTDP)	15-45W (65W cTDP)	15-55W (65W cTDP)	15-54W (54W cTDP)	15-45W (65W cTDP)	12-35W (35W cTDP)	35-45W (65W cTDP)
Process	3 nm	3 nm	4 nm	5 nm	4 nm	4 nm	4 nm	5 nm	4 nm	6 nm	7 nm	7 nm	12 nm	14 nm
Launch	2026?	2025?	2025?	2H 2024	2H 2024	2H 2024	Q1 2024	Q1 2023	Q2 2023	Q1 2022	Q1 2021	Q2 2020	Q1 2019	Q4 2018

Performance

The original target of the RX Vega series was to compete with Nvidia's latest Pascal architecture. RX Vega 64 -> GTX 1080 RX Vega 56 -> GTX 1070

The performance is generally good, but when it comes to performance per watt, or PPW, Vega is outperformed by Pascal.

Hardware Accelerated Video

[Edit] Zen with Radeon Vega Hardware Accelerated Video Capabilities
Codec	Encode			Decode
Max FPS	@1080p	@1440p	@2160p	@1080p 4:2:0	@2160p 4:2:0
MPEG-2 (H.262)				60 FPS	N/A
VC-1
VP9 8bpc				240 FPS	60 FPS
VP9 10bpc
MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) 8bpc	120 FPS	60 FPS	30 FPS
MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) 10bpc
HEVC (H.265) 8bpc	120 FPS	60 FPS	30 FPS
HEVC (H.265) 10bpc
JPEG/MJPEG 8bpc

Process Technology

See also: 14 nm process

Vega is manufactured on GlobalFoundries' 14 nm process.

Architecture

Key changes from Arctic Islands

• New programmable geometry pipeline
  • Up to 2x throughput
  • Primitive shaders
  • Improved workload balancing
• Tile based rendering
• New low precision instructions
  • Half precision floating point with 2x performance
  • 8 bit integer with 4x performance
• 15% higher clock speeds
• HBM 2
  • 2x bandwidth
  • 4x memory capacity
• New memory controller
• Render back-end is now a client of the L2 cache
• The instruction buffer has been enlarged

HBM 2

Vega makes use of 2 stacks of HBM 2 (High bandwidth memory).

single stack	HBM 1	HBM 2
dies	4 + 1 4 dram die, 1 control die	2-8 + 1 2,4 or 8 dram die, 1 control die
Gb/die	2Gb	8Gb
total Gb	8Gb	16-64Gb
bus width	1024	1024
clock speed	500 MHz	945 MHz
bandwidth	128 GB/s	238 GB/s

References

• AMD 2017 Financial Analyst Day, May 16, 2017

Documents

• White Paper: Radeon’s next-generation Vega architecture

See also

• list of microarchitectures
• Gen9
• Raven Ridge