When AMD re-branded most of its Radeon HD 7000 series SKUs to HD 8000 series, for OEMs, we saw this coming from a parsec away. AMD's next discrete GPU family for the retail channel will be placed along the Radeon HD 9000 series, and it debuts no later than this October, according to a Guru3D report. Interestingly, the report states that the first parts in the family will be based on existing 28 nanometer silicon fab processes, and will be codenamed "Curacao" and "Hainan."
We've had our run-ins with "Curacao," from time to time. It's been rumored to be an upgrade of existing "Tahiti" silicon, with 2,304 stream processors based on Graphics CoreNext 2.0 architecture, 144 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The Guru3D report adds to that with the mention of an improved front-end, which adds four asynchronous computing engines (ACEs), and three independent geometry engines.
"Curacao" will make up most of the top-tier, likely Radeon HD 9900 series; while "Hainan" succeeds "Pitcairn," filling up the performance-segment. "Hainan" reportedly features 1,792 GCN 2.0 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, a 256-bit wide memory interface, and fewer ACEs and geometry engines than "Curacao."
