AMD Southern Island codenames revealed by driver

A new driver release from ATI, Catalyst 10.8, has brought with it 36 codenames of future hardware. The product codenames likely refer to next-generation ATI graphics processors, dubbed Southern Islands but likely to make up the ATI Radeon 6000 series. The codenames are prefixed by NI, which could stand for Northern Islands, a codename used for the next-gen GPUs when they were thought to be based on 40nm architecture rather than 28nm as the upcoming ones are expected to be.

Among the 36 listings are the Cayman, Antilles and Blackcomb designations. Caymans have GL in the name, suggesting they could be FirePro devices. Cayman XT and Pro are expected to be desktop cards, while the Antilles Pro and Antilles XT that make up the Cayman family may be notebook versions.

There are four Blackcomb variants, with the Blackcomb XT/PRO and Blackcomb LP in standard and Gemini variants. These are likely to be dual-core versions and while the LP designation seems to have replaced the traditional LE, it likely stands for Low Power.

The same variants of the products thus far named Whistler and Seymour will be available. Barts-labeled products will be available in GL/FirePro forms, and Barts XT and Barts Pro for desktops and notebooks. The Turks sub-family includes the Onega, Turks XT and Turks PRO. The last one is Caicos, which covers the Caicos GL PRO, Caspian PRO and Caicos PRO.

The broad range of new products indicates that products for desktop, workstation and notebook computers are due and the 10 codenames may cover more than just the next generation. As such, they may include both Southern Islands and some of the Northern Islands products. Hints have come from codenames based on islands in the West Indies, with some (Barts, Turks and Caicos) being southern islands and others (Whistler, Blackcomb) being northern islands.

When the products are released remains unknown, but likely to be relatively soon. [via VR-Zone]

By Electronista Staff