It has been quite some time since the RDNA 4 graphics architecture has been in the talks. It is the upcoming technology from the house of AMD and will aim to improve the graphics performance of AMD’s graphics cards greatly.
Currently, the latest graphics architecture AMD has in the market is RDNA 3, which came out in late 2022. The first graphics cards to feature RDNA 3 architecture were in the AMD Radeon RX 7000 lineup. Now that it has been over a year since the launch of RDNA 3, we are expecting its successor to be just around the corner.
AMD Recently Posted a New Patch Series for Linux
In recent news, the Linux team at AMD released a new patch series. And it seems like they are preparing for a new graphics architecture. This could very possibly be AMD’s own RDNA 4. According to Phoronix, a site revolving around Linux, the patch series enables some intellectual property (IP) blocks. These blocks concern the AMD GPU driver developed for the Linux kernel.
A few months ago, in 2023, we also saw AMD post some initial patches for GFX12. GFX12 hinted at a new upcoming graphics architecture, which was very much anticipated to be RDNA 4. This was backed by the fact that GFX10 references RDNA 3 graphics architecture in Linux.
The IP blocks enabled with the new patches are ATHUB 4.1, HDP 7.0, IH 7.0, and LSDMA 7.0. Looking at the high version numbers of these IP blocks, we can say with fair certainty that these components are meant for the RDNA 4 graphics architecture.
When can we expect to see RDNA 4?
The upcoming version of Linux (Linux 6.9) is expected to come around the middle of this year. According to previous rumors and news, RDNA 4 graphics architecture could see its launch around the third quarter of this year. AMD has yet to release any information about the same. So, it will be best to wait and watch.