Last year Nvidia launched it's new Fermi GPU architecture. Fermi was a shift from the GPU just being about graphics to taking on a bigger role as in general computing. Gamers were a bit concerned about so much die space now going to things that no longer directly improved gaming performance. But non-gaming industries have really taking a liking to the potential power of our graphics cards and Nvidia wants to sell products to them too.

Now it's AMD's turn. Graphics Core Next is a major architecture overall that tosses out graphics technologies used since the Radeon 9700 in order to make the GPU more capable at general computing.

GCN will include unified x86-64 memory addressing. This sounds like the discrete GPU will be able to access the system RAM via the PCI-E bus and CPU will be able to access the graphics card memory. Though of course there is a performance hit by using memory further away from the processor that needs it, so data will be copied to the memory that is closest to the processor doing the work.

Anandtech.com has a really thorough history lesson and analysis of what GCN is so far.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4455/amds-graphics-core-next-preview-amd-architects-for-compute

The presentation focused on the computing side of the GPU. But it's still a GPU and there will be improvements for gaming as well, however almost none of those details have been given yet. More to come later.

Anantech believes this technology may first come to high end GPUs in 2012 and would trickle down to lower end parts by 2013.

AMD is launching the Southern Islands GPU later this year, but it's mostly using the same architecture as the 6900 series, shrank down to a 28nm GPU and some tweaks.

Less than a month ago it seemed like AMD would be launching a refresh of the 6000 series, using the new 28nm process from TSMC. The new Southern Island GPUs would include some improvements, but would not include a new architecture, would still be VLIW-4 based like the current Cayman.

Well it may be completely wrong. Catalyst 11.7 driver leaks and now an interview with AMD's CTO all but confirm a the Graphics Core Next architecture will arrive in the Southern Islands GPUs by Q4 of this year.

http://www.rage3d.com/interviews/amdchats/eric_demers_july_2011/index.php?p=4

"AMD's Graphics Core Next Gen architecture is scheduled to appear in products due in Q4, 2011, as both Eric Demers and Rick Bergman confirmed for us. It is likely they will use TSMC's 28nm process, and have a dual architecture split like Northern Islands. If so, then this time Cayman VLIW-4 architecture hits the mainstream, and the next generation architecture debuts in the high end - similar to AMD's deployment of VLIW-4 in the Radeon HD 6000 series."

This likely means the September rumors aren't going to be correct. But certainly better news that we are getting a new architecture this year rather than just a refresh.

This site pulled some info from the Catalyst 11.7 drivers to come up with a chart of possible upcoming product names and the architecture they'll be using. Because like with the 6000 series, AMD will put it's new stuff in the higher end cards first and reuse older stuff with the lower end cards.

http://www.chw.net/2011/07/catalyst-11-7-early-revela-gpus-southern-islands-y-apus-trinity/

7990 dual core GCN
7970/7950 GCN
7870/7850 GCN
7790 GCN
7600 and below VLIW-4

I was under the impression that GCN wouldn't be for years, but this is great news if true.

If GPUs start using system memory hopefully the push for faster access to the memory will finally be enough to make somebody re-design motherboard layout and remove the RAM sticks from obstructing airflow from the front of the case to the CPU and heatsink base.

 

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Good, I have plans to grab a new GPU come end of year.

 

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New toys are always nice!

Now what I started wondering today is.. What if AMD was able to cook up a Mobo that could handle 2 of their APUs that would run as a dual quad core + dual GPU. Two of those things running together would be something to be excited about for just 280$. I am sure AMD had thought of that but that is probably never going to happen.