Tensor Cores are the latest additions to GPU architectures. Nvidia has DLSS and Intel has XeSS. AMD, on the other hand, has relentlessly tried to include full Tensor Cores in its RDNA series GPUs.
The application of Tensor Cores seems to raise numerous questions for users, and AMD has claimed that its RDNA 3 chips won’t have Tensor Cores. They will keep usage of this technology for their next-gen Data Center architecture CDNA.
In a Tom’s Hardware interview with AMD’s Senior Vice President, Sam Naffziger, the executive was asked about the inclusion of these mathematical objects in its new RDNA 3 architecture, to which Naffziger responded that applying a bunch of matrix cores into “consumers graphics products” is unnecessary. Additionally, Naffzinger stated that the FP16 support that RDNA 2 already uses is sufficient enough for inference-type workloads.
Why AMD will not use Tensor cores in RDNA 3
This decision might seem a little counterintuitive, though. Tensor cores have proven to be a significant improvement in performance for some PC games. Although, it is true that the main usage of these mathematical calculations is for physics and engineering environments to solve problems in fluid mechanics, electromagnetism, and astrophysics, or machine learning and deep learning.
So AMD may be right about skipping entirely on the extra AI hardware for now. Besides, Team Red has been doing an excellent job segmenting its public. In a way, it already has hardware and GPUs with Tensor Cores, and it treats that as a completely different market. An example of this is the Instinct MI250X and the upcoming MI300 data center GPUs, which already leverage Tensor Cores.
Does RDNA 3 support ray tracing?
The 50% improvement in performance that RDNA 3 will bring over the current GPU generation should boast over two times the ray tracing responses in the new components. Although RDNA 3 does not use Tensor Cores in its architecture, AMD is still leveraging cutting-edge technology to improve already existing cores to boost the overall performance in a way that ray tracing will be even better.
- Now read everything we know about RDNA 3
