Radeon Instinct MI100 Arcturus Early Specifications Show Impressive 200W TDP

[harlan4096]

The big chief is on its way.

It's been a while since we've seen any leaks regarding Arcturus, AMD's rumored upcoming professional accelerator. Respected hardware leaker @KOMACHI_ENSAKA has shared what appears to be the potential specifications for the Radeon Instinct MI100, which is reportedly based on the Arcturus silicon.

Although it's not confirmed, Arcturus is believed to be a derivative of AMD's Vega microarchitecture. Like the other Radeon Instinct accelerators, Arcturus is likely coming out of TSMC's 7nm FinFET furnace. However, it remains to be seen whether it'll be the 7nm or 7nm+ process node.

An early prototype of the Radeon Instinct MI100 suggests that the accelerator utilizes a variant (D34303) of the Arcturus XL die. It seemingly runs with a 1,090 MHz base clock and 1,333 MHz boost clock. There is no mention of the number of Stream Processors (SPs) on the Radeon Instinct MI100, but the Arcturus silicon is rumored to carry up to 128 Compute Units (CUs), which would equal to a whopping 8,192 SPs.

It's not carved in stone, but the model name usually holds some clue to the accelerator's performance numbers. The Radeon Instinct MI60 and MI50 accelerators offer up to 58.9 TFLOPS and 53 TFLOPS of peak INT8 performance, respectively. Therefore, it's sound to assume that the Radeon Instinct MI100's INT8 performance should scale up to the 100 TFLOPS mark.

The Radeon Instinct MI100 will reportedly show up with 32GB of HBM2 memory that could operate at 1 GHz or 1.2 GHz. The Radeon Instinct MI60 and MI50 have their memory running at 1 GHz across a 4,096-bit memory interface to provide a memory bandwidth up to 1,024 GBps.

If the Radeon Instinct MI100 retains the 4,096-bit memory bus and 1 GHz memory, it would deliver the same level of memory bandwidth as the Radeon Instinct MI60 and MI50. However, if the memory is clocked at 1.2 GHz, the Radeon Instinct MI100 can supply a memory bandwidth up to 1,229 GBps.

The leaker highlights that the test board for the Radeon Instinct MI100 is rated for 200W, however, the final product could vary. Assuming that AMD maintains this value, the Radeon Instinct MI100 would be a very efficient performance monster considering that the existing Radeon Instinct MI60 and MI50 conform to a 300W TBP (Total Board Power). A 100W improvement almost sounds too good to be true, but we're crossing our fingers that AMD can pull it off.

AMD reorganized its Radeon Instinct accelerator product stack a few months ago. The chipmaker relegated the Radeon Instinct MI60, which was the previous flagship, to a request basis. The Radeon Instinct MI50 (32GB) has since taken the Radeon Instinct MI60's place on the throne. However, AMD will, in all likelihood, pass the flagship mantle down to the Radeon Instinct M100 once the Arcturus-powered accelerator debuts.
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