AMD's next-gen 'Arctic Islands' GPU will be on 16nm process with HBM2

Before we exclusively revealed AMD was opting with the Radeon R9 Fury X name for its next-gen, HBM-based video card, we reported on the purported Radeon R9 490X that would arrive in 2016. We knew it would be based on the 16nm process, and use HBM2, but it looks like we were wrong with the name.

During AMD's recent earnings call, President and CEO Lisa Su talked about the company playing around with a couple of its first FinFET designs. Su said that FinFET is going to be very important for the company as we move into the new year. But, she also reiterated that a good design and architecture is just as, if not more important than the manufacturing process - something we definitely agree on.

AMD will be releasing its 'Arctic Islands' architecture next year, its next-generation GPU architecture based on the 16nm manufacturing process, and using the next-gen HBM2. HBM2 will deliver 8GB of HBM2 on a video card, with memory bandwidth of 1024GB/sec - up from the 512GB/sec found on the Radeon R9 Fury X. But what we need to know is: what will AMD call this card? Surely it can't be the Fury X 2, as I'm sure the dual-GPU card coming out later this year will take up the Fury X2 (no space) name. Could AMD release it as the Fury XX? Because I can't wait to see the third iteration: Fury XXX.

On the CPU side of things, we should see FinFET-based Zen CPUs next year, something that will combat the Kaby Lake architecture from Intel that is arriving 2016. AMD's new Zen CPUs will be based on the even-smaller 14nm process, which makes for some incredibly exciting times over at AMD.