AMD Instinct MI200 CDNA 2 ‘Aldebaran’ MCM HPC GPU Accelerator Launching Later This Year, Will Compete Against Intel Ponte Vecchio & NVIDIA Ampere

AMD's CEO has confirmed that the successor to the CDNA architecture-powered Instinct GPU HPC accelerator is on its way for launch later this year.

AMD Instinct MI200 With CDNA 2 MCM GPU Architecture Landing Later This Year, Will Power HPC Workloads

The confirmation came during JPMorgan's 49th Annual Global Technology Communications and Media conference. AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, stated that they will be launching the next generation of CDNA architecture later this year. Following is the transcript from the conference (Source: Seeking Alpha).

Last year, we talked about our first-generation CDNA architecture. This year, as I said, we’re putting together our next-generation CDNA architecture. This is actually a key component that enabled us to win the largest supercomputer bids in the US around the Frontier Oak Ridge National Labs installment as well as the Lawrence Livermore National Labs installment with El Capitan and many others.

But it’s a coherent interconnect between CPUs and GPUs that allow us to fully optimize for HPC and for AI and ML applications. And we will be launching the next generation of that architecture, actually, later this year. We’re very excited about it. I think it’s progressed extremely well. It’s the next big step in sort of innovation around the data center architectures.

Dr. Lisa Su (AMD CEO)

Here's Everything We Know About AMD's CDNA 2 Architecture Powered Instinct Accelerators

The AMD CDNA 2 architecture will be powering the next-generation AMD Instinct HPC accelerators. We know that one of those accelerators will be the MI200 which will feature the Aldebaran GPU. It's going to be a very powerful chip and possibly the first GPU to feature an MCM design. The Instinct MI200 is going to compete against Intel's 7nm Ponte Vecchio and NVIDIA's refreshed Ampere parts. Intel and NVIDIA are also following the MCM route on their next-generation HPC accelerators but it looks like Ponte Vecchio is going to be available in 2022 and the same can be said for NVIDIA's next-gen HPC accelerator as their own roadmap confirmed.

In the previous Linux patch, it was revealed that l that the AMD Instinct MI200 'Aldebaran' GPU will feature HBM2E memory support. NVIDIA was the first to hop on board the HBM2E standard and will offer a nice boost over the standard HBM2 configuration used on the Arcturus-based MI100 GPU accelerator. HBM2E allows up to 16 GB memory capacity per stack so we can expect up to 64 GB HBM2E memory at blisteringly fast speeds for Aldebaran.

The latest Linux Kernel Patch revealed that the GPU carries 16 KB of L1 cache per CU which makes up 2 MB of the total L1 cache considering that the GPU will be packing 128 Compute Units. The GPU also carries 8 MB of shared L2 cache but carries 14 CUs per Shader Engine compared to 16 CUs per SE in the previous Instinct lineup. Regardless, it is stated that each CU on Aldebaran GPUs will have a significantly higher computing output.

Other features listed include SDMA (System Direct Memory Access) support which will allow data transfers over PCIe and XGMI/Infinity Cache subsystems. As far as Infinity Cache is concerned, it's looking like that won't be happening on HPC GPUs. Do note that AMD's CDNA 2 GPU will be fabricated on a brand new process node & are confirmed to feature a 3rd Generation AMD Infinity architecture that extends to Exascale by allowing up to 8-Way coherent GPU connectivity.

AMD Radeon Instinct Accelerators

Accelerator Name	AMD Instinct MI400	AMD Instinct MI350X	AMD Instinct MI300X	AMD Instinct MI300A	AMD Instinct MI250X	AMD Instinct MI250	AMD Instinct MI210	AMD Instinct MI100	AMD Radeon Instinct MI60	AMD Radeon Instinct MI50	AMD Radeon Instinct MI25	AMD Radeon Instinct MI8	AMD Radeon Instinct MI6
CPU Architecture	Zen 5 (Exascale APU)	N/A	N/A	Zen 4 (Exascale APU)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
GPU Architecture	CDNA 4	CDNA 3+?	Aqua Vanjaram (CDNA 3)	Aqua Vanjaram (CDNA 3)	Aldebaran (CDNA 2)	Aldebaran (CDNA 2)	Aldebaran (CDNA 2)	Arcturus (CDNA 1)	Vega 20	Vega 20	Vega 10	Fiji XT	Polaris 10
GPU Process Node	4nm	4nm	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	6nm	6nm	6nm	7nm FinFET	7nm FinFET	7nm FinFET	14nm FinFET	28nm	14nm FinFET
GPU Chiplets	TBD	TBD	8 (MCM)	8 (MCM)	2 (MCM) 1 (Per Die)	2 (MCM) 1 (Per Die)	2 (MCM) 1 (Per Die)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)
GPU Cores	TBD	TBD	19,456	14,592	14,080	13,312	6656	7680	4096	3840	4096	4096	2304
GPU Clock Speed	TBD	TBD	2100 MHz	2100 MHz	1700 MHz	1700 MHz	1700 MHz	1500 MHz	1800 MHz	1725 MHz	1500 MHz	1000 MHz	1237 MHz
INT8 Compute	TBD	TBD	2614 TOPS	1961 TOPS	383 TOPs	362 TOPS	181 TOPS	92.3 TOPS	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
FP16 Compute	TBD	TBD	1.3 PFLOPs	980.6 TFLOPs	383 TFLOPs	362 TFLOPs	181 TFLOPs	185 TFLOPs	29.5 TFLOPs	26.5 TFLOPs	24.6 TFLOPs	8.2 TFLOPs	5.7 TFLOPs
FP32 Compute	TBD	TBD	163.4 TFLOPs	122.6 TFLOPs	95.7 TFLOPs	90.5 TFLOPs	45.3 TFLOPs	23.1 TFLOPs	14.7 TFLOPs	13.3 TFLOPs	12.3 TFLOPs	8.2 TFLOPs	5.7 TFLOPs
FP64 Compute	TBD	TBD	81.7 TFLOPs	61.3 TFLOPs	47.9 TFLOPs	45.3 TFLOPs	22.6 TFLOPs	11.5 TFLOPs	7.4 TFLOPs	6.6 TFLOPs	768 GFLOPs	512 GFLOPs	384 GFLOPs
VRAM	TBD	HBM3e	192 GB HBM3	128 GB HBM3	128 GB HBM2e	128 GB HBM2e	64 GB HBM2e	32 GB HBM2	32 GB HBM2	16 GB HBM2	16 GB HBM2	4 GB HBM1	16 GB GDDR5
Infinity Cache	TBD	TBD	256 MB	256 MB	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Memory Clock	TBD	TBD	5.2 Gbps	5.2 Gbps	3.2 Gbps	3.2 Gbps	3.2 Gbps	1200 MHz	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	945 MHz	500 MHz	1750 MHz
Memory Bus	TBD	TBD	8192-bit	8192-bit	8192-bit	8192-bit	4096-bit	4096-bit bus	4096-bit bus	4096-bit bus	2048-bit bus	4096-bit bus	256-bit bus
Memory Bandwidth	TBD	TBD	5.3 TB/s	5.3 TB/s	3.2 TB/s	3.2 TB/s	1.6 TB/s	1.23 TB/s	1 TB/s	1 TB/s	484 GB/s	512 GB/s	224 GB/s
Form Factor	TBD	TBD	OAM	APU SH5 Socket	OAM	OAM	Dual Slot Card	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Half Length	Single Slot, Full Length
Cooling	TBD	TBD	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling
TDP (Max)	TBD	TBD	750W	760W	560W	500W	300W	300W	300W	300W	300W	175W	150W

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