AMD's Next Generation GPU's to Use 32nm Process; No Evergreen Refresh Next Year

[caveman-jim]

Leaked slides from a confidential presentation show AMD's roadmap for 2010 and 2011.

Courtesy of Japanese hardware web portal ASCII.jp, we got our hands on two slides from confidential presentations concerning AMD's future hardware platforms and gained an insight how 2010-2011 is taking shape.
The information given on slides is somewhat controversial, because it contradicts with some of information we had before.

These are official slides, thus we can confirm that AMD plans to launch two 32nm next-generation graphics architectures in 2010 and 2011. But, according to the leaked slides, desktop platform will stick with current 40nm Evergreen series throughout 2010 i.e. no desktop refresh. The only new GPU parts planned to debut are 32nm Manhattan ones, targeted to be a discrete option for mobile platforms in 2010.

Manhattan is a discrete GPU option for Danube and Nile notebook platforms, paired with quad-core Champlain and dual-core Geneva processors. By default, Danube and Nile notebooks support DirectX 10.1 API courtesy of RS880 Chipset [integrated Radeon 4000 series], and if you want DirectX 11.0 support - adopt one of three Manhattan GPUs in the works: Park, Madison and Broadway.

Getting into 2011, AMD plans to debut Northern Islands, their true next-generation part. This is the part that is being designed with DirectX 11.1 specification in mind [according to sources inside AMD, Evergreen also supports 11.1 specification. Upon our insisting, we were told that is not entirely true - DX11.1 is not finalized and they cannot be sure if Evergreen will support 11.1 or will fall short].

The DirectX 11.1 is currently being worked upon, and among our sources, it is widely expected to debut in the winter of 2010, with hardware following either in late 2010 or early 2011. According to information at hand, we are talking about a brand new architecture which follows the prolonged cadence between new architectures [R600 - RV770: May 2007-July 2008, RV770-Evergreen: July 2008 - September 2009, Evergreen-Northern Islands: September 2009-February 2011?].

Source - Bright Side of News