AMD has already begun work on drivers for its upcoming Navi-based graphics cards for Linux-based operating systems. The well-known resource Phoronix found information in the new lines of AMD driver code that Navi GPUs will still use the good old GCN architecture.
The codename "GFX1010" was discovered in the AMDGPU LLVM backend. This is clearly the code name for Navi GPUs, as current Vega GPUs are referred to as "GFX900". And the following lines of code indicate the use of the GCN architecture:
- EF_AMDGPU_MACH_AMDGCN_LAST=
- EF_AMDGPU_MACH_AMDGCN_GFX1010
As noted by Phoronix, full support for Navi is unlikely to be implemented in the next Linux 5.2 kernel, and will most likely be delayed until the release of the Linux 5.3 kernel. At the moment, the release of the stable Linux 5.3 kernel is only scheduled for September. Until then, Linux users may have to use some crutches and tricks to get the new Navi GPUs to work properly. Unless, of course, Navi-based video cards really come out this summer, as previously thought.
Interestingly, various sources have previously indicated that Navi will be a completely new graphics architecture, and not the next version of GCN. This could mean that the new GPUs would be able to bypass the 4096 stream processors per chip limit that is built into the GCN. However, as you can see, this is not the case. Recall that the first version of the GCN architecture was developed back in the days of 28nm AMD GPUs in Radeon 7000 video cards. Therefore, it is not very well suited for 7nm chips, and not only because of the limitation on the number of stream processors.
Source: 3dnews.ru