This was a rumor that circulated for a long time, but now we have confirmation: AMD has decided to avoid (like the plague) the heading directly to a 20nm manufacturing process for its 14nm R9 400 GPUs whose output is scheduled for half of 2016.
AMD to Skip 20nm Arctic Island, Jump Straight to 14nm Process Node
Problems experienced on chips to 20nm were essentially yield, very low, convincing the company of Sunnyvale that the game was not worth the candle completely given that, given the success of the competition in the green (NVIDIA), there is no more room for mistakes.
The line-up of AMD Radeon video cards for 2016 code-named is Arctic Islands, then will land directly on 14nm FinFET technology in combination with memory modules HBM2, a stratospheric leap considering the current solutions (as well as upcoming) 28nm.
Recall that, at the time, only Samsung and Intel are traveling on 14nm, respectively Exynos SoC 7 and Broadwell.
The icing on the cake, the code name for the future GPU flagship series R9 400 to 14nm will Greenland, hoping that this name brings a dowry a concrete reduction of generated heat and a fire extinguisher is not bundled with the card.
AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN)
| Years | Series | Codename |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 -2013 | Radeon HD 7000 Radeon HD 8000 |
Southern Islands Sea Islands |
| 2013 -2014 | Radeon Rx 200 | Volcanic Islands |
| 2015 | Radeon Rx 300 (?) | Pirate Islands |
| 2016 | Radeon Rx 400 (?) | Arctic Islands |
