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AMD's CEO and CTO on Radeon VII, ray tracing and beyond
After lagging behind with Vega desktop GPUs for a few years, AMD announced a major upgrade today: the Radeon VII, the first 7nm GPU for gamers. It's a powerful card capable of serious 4K performance. Its new architecture means it won't use up too much power, leaving plenty of room for overclockers to take it even further. But there's no real-time ray tracing, a technology that NVIDIA has been pushing since last year, when it unveiled its RTX desktop GPUs. So where does this leave AMD?
AMD is gearing up for 7-nanometer CPUs and graphics cards
Intel recently told investors that its 10-nanometer "Cannon Lake" chips won't be ready until 2019, but by then, it might get leapfrogged by its PC arch-rival. AMD told investors that it's sampling next-gen Zen 2 processors with 7-nanometer tech in preparation for a launch in 2019. The company is also testing a Radeon Instinct machine learning graphics cards that use 7-nanometer Vega-based technology. The GPUs will be manufactured by TSMC, said AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, but the company will also use Global Foundries, presumably for processors and other products.
AMD's Radeon Vega GPU is headed everywhere, even to machine learning
For 2018, AMD is building on its major innovations from last year: its new Ryzen CPU architecture and Radeon Vega graphics. Indeed, Vega is so versatile even its main competitor, Intel, has tapped it for its upcoming high-performance laptop chips. At CES, AMD revealed the Radeon Vega Mobile GPU, a dedicated graphics offering that'll go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA's GTX 10-series. Additionally, it'll be bringing Vega graphics into upcoming Ryzen desktop chips, as well as a new machine learning product.
AMD's new CEO has a background in mobile technology
It feels like just yesterday that AMD brought in Rory Read to turn around its ailing fortunes, but today there's another changing of the guard. The chip designer has announced that chief operating officer Lisa Su is its new CEO, effective immediately; Read will stick around as an advisor until the end of the year. The company isn't going into detail about the reasons behind the shift, but it does say that Read has been planning a succession with the board of directors. It's an "ideal time" for Su to take the reins, the board's Bruce Clafin says.
