AMD’s First Exascale APU Rumored To Be Instinct MI300: Powered By Zen 4 CPU Cores & CDNA 3 GPU Cores For Blistering Fast HPC Performance

AMD also seems to be working on its first-generation Exascale APU product, the Instinct MI300, powered by Zen 4 CPU & CDNA 3 GPU cores. The details of this HPC chip have also been leaked over in the latest video by AdoredTV.

The first references to AMD's Exascale APU date all the way back to 2013 with more bits and pieces being revealed in the coming year. Back in 2015, the company revealed its plan to offer the EHP, an Exascale Heteorgenous Processor, based on the then-upcoming Zen x86 cores and Greenland GPU with HBM2 memory on a 2.5D interposer. The original plans were eventually scrapped & AMD went on to release its EPYC and Instinct lineup in their own CPU and GPU server segments. Now, AMD is bringing EHP or Exascale APUs back in the form of the next-gen Instinct MI300.

Once again, the AMD Exascale APU will form a harmony between the company's CPU & GPU IPs, combining the latest Zen 4 CPU cores with the latest CDNA 3 GPU cores. This is said to be the first generation Exascale & Instinct APU. In the slide posted by AdoredTV, it is mentioned that the APU will be taped out by the end of this month which means we can see a potential launch in 2023, the same time the company is expected to unveil its CDNA 3 GPU architecture for the HPC segments.

The first silicon is expected to be in AMD's labs by Q3 2022. The platform itself is regarded as MDC which could mean Multi-Die Chip. In a previous report, it was stated that the APU will carry a new 'Exascale APU mode' and feature support on the SH5 socket which is likely coming in the BGA form factor.

Besides the CPU and GPU IPs, another key driver behind the Instinct MI300 APU would be its HBM3 memory support. Though we still aren't sure of the exact number of dies featured on the EHP APU, Moore's Law is Dead has previously revealed die configurations with 2, 4, and 8 HBM3 dies. The die shot is shown in the slide in the latest leak and also shows at least 6 dies which should be a brand new configuration. It is possible that there are several Instinct MI300 configurations being worked upon with some featuring just the CDNA 3 GPU dies and APU designs with both Zen 4 & CDNA3 IPs.

So it looks like we are definitely going to see the Exascale APUs in action after almost a decade of wait. The Instinct MI300 is definitely aiming to revolutionize the HPC space with insane amounts of performance never seen before and with core and packaging technologies that are going to be a revolution for the tech industry. The chip will be competing against NVIDIA's Grace+Hopper Super Chip and Intel's Ponte Vecchio HPC accelerators next year.